How prosecutors came to dominate the criminal-justice system

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Under the Microscope (2015) - how the FBI helped convict innocent men and stonewalled after DNA testing exonerated them

in 2012, after three high-profile exonerations in hair-related cases, the FBI began an internal review of how its agents had undertaken hair analysis.

In a damning assessment it found that the testimony of its staff was scientifically invalid 95 percent of the time.

With hundreds of potentially innocent people living behind bars - how will the criminal justice system and the FBI respond?

 

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Rape Survivor Sues After Texas Authorities Jailed Her For A Month
July 22, 2016

A rape survivor is suing Texas' Harris County after she was jailed for more than a month and subjected to beatings and "psychological torture."

According to court documents, she had suffered a mental breakdown while testifying against her rapist, and authorities checked her into the general population at Houston's Harris County Jail because they feared she would flee before finishing her testimony.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...fter-texas-authorities-jailed-her-for-a-month

 

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The Houston Man Who Refused to Plead Guilty Does Not Want an Apology
August 15, 2016

His attorney told him he could be out of jail in ten days if he took the plea deal — but 58-year-old Gilbert Cruz refused, saying he wasn’t going to plead guilty to something he didn’t do.

He had just been booked on charges of interfering with the duties of a public servant, after a former neighbor, whom Cruz says was recently homeless, called the police on him when Cruz told her he wouldn’t allow her to stay with him. Then she accused Cruz of beating her.

The arrest that would lead to more than two months in Harris County Jail and cause Cruz to lose his job and his car and almost his home, however, had nothing to do with assault — an accusation police and prosecutors agreed did not withstand scrutiny.

On May 14, after a Harris County sheriff’s deputy arrived at Cruz's northwest Houston apartment, he asked Cruz to leave the apartment so he could interview the woman alone. Cruz, explaining that the woman did not live there, said he did not feel comfortable leaving his own home, and he asked the deputy to interview the woman outside instead — an idea that apparently did not sit well with the officer. When Cruz would not leave, Deputy R. Delgado forcibly removed him — then punched him in the face. Delgado cuffed him, and backup showed up to haul Cruz off to jail for interfering with the investigation.

http://www.houstonpress.com/news/th...plead-guilty-does-not-want-an-apology-8667533

 

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Texas man serving life sentence innocent of double murder, judge says
DNA evidence shows he and three codefendants weren’t involved in fatal shootings of two teenagers, judge says, as case heads to appeals court

20 August 2016 14.14 EDT

A central Texas man serving a life sentence for a double murder in 1992 is innocent, as are three codefendants no longer in prison, a state judge has found.

Retired district judge George Allen ruled Friday that Richard Bryan Kussmaul, 45, should be free. His three codefendants each received 20-year sentences and have already been released.

DNA evidence not available two decades ago shows the four weren’t involved in the fatal shootings of 17-year-old Leslie Murphy and 14-year-old Stephen Neighbors at a home near Moody, south of Waco, Allen said in a four-page opinion.

At the hearing last month, Long, Shelton and Pitts all testified they gave false testimony against Kussmaul at his trial because a prosecutor promised them probation. They also said their confessions were coerced by a deputy who threatened them with the death penalty.

The three said at Kussmaul’s trial in 1994 that he and they raped Murphy before Kussmaul shot the two victims. After they were sentenced to 20 years in prison, each recanted his confession. Kussmaul did not testify at the hearing.

“I was willing to say anything they wanted me to say because I thought I was getting probation and no prison time,” Long said at the July hearing. “I had two small children and I was afraid of going to prison for life or, worse, getting executed.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...sentence-innocence-dna-richard-bryan-kussmaul

 

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This small Indiana county sends more people to prison than San Francisco and Durham, N.C., combined. Why?
SEPT. 2, 2016

LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — Donnie Gaddis picked the wrong county to sell 15 oxycodone pills to an undercover officer.

If Mr. Gaddis had been caught 20 miles to the east, in Cincinnati, he would have received a maximum of six months in prison, court records show. In San Francisco or Brooklyn, he would probably have received drug treatment or probation, lawyers say.

But Mr. Gaddis lived in Dearborn County, Ind., which sends more people to prison per capita than nearly any other county in the United States. After agreeing to a plea deal, he was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison.

“Years? Holy Toledo — I’ve settled murders for a lot less than that,” said Philip Stephens, a public defender in Cincinnati.

“I am proud of the fact that we send more people to jail than other counties,” Aaron Negangard, the elected prosecutor in Dearborn County, said last year. “That’s how we keep it safe here.”

He added in an interview: “My constituents are the people who decide whether I keep doing my job. The governor can’t make me. The legislature can’t make me.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/upshot/new-geography-of-prisons.html?_r=0

 

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Activist who helped expose Steubenville rape of a minor facing 16 years in prison. The two convicted rapists served 10 months and 22 months./r/all (mic.com)

 

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it's about time! hopefully this law is only the beginning and will be used as a pattern across the USA

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Prosecutors who withhold or tamper with evidence now face felony charges

The office of Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas was removed from one of its most high-profile cases: the prosecution of mass murderer Scott Dekraai. The judge said prosecutors repeatedly violated Dekraai’s rights by failing to turn over evidence.

Amid an ongoing controversy in the Orange County courthouse involving accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, a new law will ratchet up penalties for California prosecutors who tamper with evidence or hide exculpatory material from the defense.

Under the law, which was introduced by Assemblywoman Patty Lopez (D-San Fernando) and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday, a prosecutor can receive up to three years in prison for altering or intentionally withholding evidence that defendants might use to exonerate themselves. Previously, those acts were considered misdemeanors.

“I hear so many stories about innocent people across California, and across the country, who have been wrongfully convicted,” Lopez said. “I just hope that when people think the rules don’t apply to them, they will think twice before they abuse their power.”

Matthew Guerrero, president of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, a legislative advocacy group that pushed for the law, said the Orange County scandal “really invigorated our organization to recognize that there’s a problem.”

“The prosecution in that situation seemed to be acting with impunity,” Guerrero said. “So we wanted to send a strong signal that the criminal justice system needs to do the right thing in the right way.”

The California District Attorneys Assn. initially had opposed the bill but took a neutral position on the final version.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-prosecutor-misconduct-20161003-snap-story.html