On September 2, a Robeson County judge freed both men based on DNA evidence. 2d 552, 557 (La. Prosecutor Carolyn McCann was told by the FBI lab which conducted the DNA tests that: “He has been excluded. On October 28, 2009, Travis County, Texas, prosecutors moved to dismiss all charges against Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, who had been convicted of the murder of four teens in an Austin yogurt shop in 1991. 1987); Erwin v. Henman, No. Both McCrimmon and Minnitt remained incarcerated on other unrelated charges. Photo courtesy Scott Lewis, News & Observer.) Shirely Evans, a friend of Orange, testified that Orange was with her the night of the murders (State v. Orange, 521 N.E.2d 69, 72 (Ill. 1988). The original trial, however, was marred by corruption, as the the judge in the case, Circuit Judge Thomas Maloney, accepted a $10,000 bribe during the trial. On August 1, 2002, Illinois Governor George Ryan issued a pardon to Smith based on innocence. (Harris by & Through Ramseyer v. Blodgett, 853 F. Supp. After an independent investigation, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office filed a motion on September 4, 2020 to dismiss all charges against Flowers, with prejudice, and the trial court granted the motion. Charges were finally dismissed in 2007 when the new District Attorney, John Snyder dropped the case due to “insufficient admissible evidence.” Jonathon Hoffman spent 12 years on death row. Bufford was acquitted of all charges. 1989), Time, 4/3/89, and ABA Journal, 7/89). Press of Mississippi 2009. Yarris believed that he would be freed if he could tell investigators he knew the killer’s identity. Nickelodeon is the creator of the annual Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, an award show celebrating children's favorites in entertainment media. Hinton’s lawyer did not know the law and mistakenly believed that funding to hire a qualified firearms expert was not available. Alex Smith on WFT: 'They didn't want me there' Coming off a gruesome leg injury, the quarterback says the Washington Football Team wasn't entirely supportive of his comeback. In 1990, the state Supreme Court reversed Smith’s first conviction and cast doubt on the prosecution’s theory. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/18/96). Erwin remains in federal prison for drug trafficking crimes. Willis, who was staying briefly at the house where the fire occurred, escaped from the house. A federal court hearing also provided evidence that the state’s mental health doctor had made significant errors in administering and scoring tests he had relied upon in testifying that Newman had been competent to stand trial. Judge John F. Michela released Burrows in September of 1994, while Burrows was awaiting his new trial. Official Nickelodeon Auditions 2020-2021 | Casting, Dates & Details We are pleased to inform you about Nickelodeon Auditions 2020-2021 | Casting, Dates & Details Here We will shed more light about how to contact nickelodeon for auditions, nickelodeon casting call 2021, counting stars nickelodeon, disney channel auditions, disney auditions nickelodeon cast 2020, nickelodeon actor … Georgia Conviction: 1975, Charges Dismissed: 1978. Prosecutors accused Wright of murdering Paula O’Conner—a white woman with whom he had an affair—and their 15-month-old son Alijah supposedly to “avoid a child support obligation and … maintain a ‘bachelor lifestyle.’” The court noted that “none of the evidence presented at trial directly tied Wright to the murders” and that the victim’s young-adult daughter, who had a volatile relationship with the victim, also had a financial motive, having received more than $500,000 in life insurance benefits as a result of her mother’s and half-brother’s deaths. A former Marine with major depression, chronic posttraumatic stress disorder from childhood abuse, and an IQ in the intellectually disabled range, Newman was seriously mentally ill and homeless at the time he was charged with murdering Marie Cholette. Toney was killed in an automobile accident one month after his release. At a hearing on December 9, Kwame Ajamu (formerly Ronnie Bridgeman) was formally exonerated of the 1975 murder for which he was convicted and sentenced to death. Moore was originally found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of Karen Tipton in 2002. Mississippi — Conviction: 1994, Charges Dismissed: 2015. L. Falkenberg, Mother of 3 pressured into changing story, but jailed anyway, Houston Chronicle, July 7, 2014. “This is the right decision.”. However, at Fields’ retrial, Judge Vincent Gaughan found Hawkins “incredible,” saying that “If someone has such disregard for human life, what regard will he have for his oath?”, Fields spent almost twenty years in prison, including 11.5 years on death row. On February 28, 2005, Ohio Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus dismissed all charges against Derrick Jamison for the murder of a Cincinnati bartender after prosecutors elected not to retry him in the case. Instead, Griffin’s continued incarceration for Bausley’s murder is premised on the recanted testimony of inmate Curtis and the impeached testimony of deceased inmate Mozee. In her original story to the police, she did not mention Jimerson. Arizona Conviction: 1993, Acquitted: 1997. Tolliver was acquitted of the aggravated murder charges on retrial. Gordon “Randy” Steidl was freed from an Illinois prison May 28, 2004, 17 years after he was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the 1986 murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads. He was acquitted at his re-trial and released in 1991 after presenting evidence that witnesses against him had lied under oath. On appeal, Quick raised the issue that his defense counsel was improperly denied access to a free transcript of the previous trial due to his indigent status. This lab found no conclusive results to exclude Yarris or include anyone else. The conviction was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court because the verdict was not supported by the weight of the evidence, and the state decided not to retry the case. On appeal, he was released by the Florida Supreme Court, which found that the evidence used to convict Scott was not sufficient to support a finding of guilt. The conviction was overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court in January, 1995. Judge Obbish wrote in his ruling, “The accounts of the unrelated incidents…are sufficiently similar to the accounts testified to by (Solache and DeLeon-Reyes) in that they all include threats, abuse and coercion to secure statements and occurred within a range of time so as to constitute a pattern and practice.”, Mike Hayes and Melissa Segura, Murder Convictions Overturned, Two Men Are Immediately Seized By ICE, BuzzFeed News, December 22, 2017, Megan Crepeau, Prosecutors drop murder charges against 2 who allege cop beat them into confessing, Chicago Tribune, December 21, 2017, Melissa Segura, Two More Guevara Defendants See Their Charges Dismissed, BuzzFeed News, December 21, 2017, Melissa Segura, A Chicago cop is accused of framing 51 people for murder. Bryan ordered Harris released from custody if not brought to a speedy retrial. Ernest Ray Willis was sentenced to death for the 1986 deaths of two women who died in a house fire that was ruled an arson. Harris maintains his innocence and says he was framed. During Hoffman’s first trial, the state’s key witness, Johnell Porter, received immunity from federal charges for testifying against his cousin. None of the blood or other items tested contained Howard’s DNA. Adams’ appellate attorney, J. J. Barter, said “it’s not a matter of him being there but not being culpable. (People v. Cruz, 643 N.E.2d 636 (1994). Parham began to reassemble the case and review the evidence, he hired former Harris County assistant district attorney Kelly Siegler as a special prosecutor. According to Beninati, Quick drove to the scene of the crime and showed him the bodies of his victims. The prosecution announced that it was dropping all charges against Jones in November, 1996, after he had been on death row for 14 years. She became the ninth person exonerated from death row in Arizona and the second female in the U.S. M. Kiefer, Arizona Supreme Court declines review of appeal that freed Debra Milke, Arizona Republic, March 17, 2015. Hoffman won a new trial in 2004 (Order of the General Court of Justice Superior Court Division: 95-CRS-15695-97) because information favorable to Hoffman was withheld from the defense. Supreme Court. Also the state did not divulge in a timely manner that the key witness against D’Ambrosio had died. On this day in 1960, a group of students at Johnson C. Smith University begin lunch counter sit-ins in Charlotte, inspired by those in Greensboro. During Erwin’s trial, the court failed to compel the testimony of a witness who was subpoenaed for trial but did not appear in court. In exchange for his testimony, Dye received an 8-year reduction on his prison sentence on theft and firearms charges. The prosecution also concealed evidence that linked two other suspects to the murders and subsequently lost or destroyed 47 latent fingerprints and 15 unknown hairs recovered from the scene that did not match Lee, preventing Lee’s post-conviction lawyers from examining this exculpatory physical evidence to identify the actual perpetrators. In December 2013, a Philadelphia trial court overturned Williams’ conviction based upon forensic and medical evidence showing that White’s version of how the murder occurred was physically impossible. Milke spent 23 years on death row for allegedly arranging for two men to kill her 4-year-old son so she could collect an insurance payout. The California Supreme Court noted that Jean had written two pretrial letters on West’s behalf, asking a fellow prosecutor and the parole board to grant West leniency for other crimes to reward his testimony against Morris. Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said his office will not appeal Gray’s decision. The defendant in that case, Ronald Frye, was executed in 2001. Georgia Conviction: 1975, Charges Dismissed: 1980. UPDATE: Andrew Golden died in Texas from a heart attack in May 2015. See a list of all of the additional exonerations here. Ford, who has always maintained his innocence, was tried and sentenced to death by an all-white jury. The verdict marked the end of the third trial for Quick who was charged with shooting of John Hughes and Nathan King, on October 26, 1995. His conviction was overturned in 1980, but he was recharged with the offense in 1990. In 2002, three top firearms examiners testified that the bullets could not be matched to Hinton’s gun, and may not have come from the a single gun at all. Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg issued a statement that said in part: “Make no mistake, this is a difficult decision and one I would rather not have to make.”. … I’m sorry this man was on death row for so long and that there were so many lost years.” (Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2004). Steven Smith was convicted of the murder of Virdeen Willis Jr., an off-duty assistant warden at the Illinois penitentiary in Pontiac, in 1985. Christopher McCrimmon was convicted and sentenced to death for a triple murder that occurred in Tucson’s El Grande Market in 1992. (Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 30, 2014). On August 1, 2002, Illinois Governor George Ryan issued a pardon to Lawson based on innocence. At trial, three witnesses testified against McMillian and the jury ignored multiple alibi witnesses that testified McMillian was at a picnic. District Attorney Harry Cornick Sr. decided on January 8, 1999 not to pursue the case further. Each of Williams’s samples was found inches away from the victims’ blood. Prosecutors then dropped the charges against him. 1995)). Tibbs was sentenced to death for the rape of a sixteen-year-old white girl and the murder of her companion. The charges carried an automatic death sentence. “I’d never been under such pressure, people yelling and screaming at me,” McCollum said of his interrogation. The first trial resulted in a conviction and death sentence, but that conviction was overturned in part because Lawson’s public defender had been an assistant State’s Attorney when Lawson was arrested. Prosecutors told the jury that Elsen’s blood had been found on a tan jacket owned by Browning. Bowen, on the other hand, maintained his innocence, provided twelve alibi witnesses to confirm that he was 300 miles from the crime scene just one hour prior to the crime, and could not be linked by any physical evidence to the crime. The California Supreme Court had granted the former farmworker a new trial in March 2018, calling his convictions for sexually assaulting and murdering Consuelo Verdugo a product of “extensive,” “pervasive,” “impactful,” and “false” forensic testimony. The CIU and defense counsel jointly moved the court to overturn Ogrod’s conviction. Creamer was resentenced to life in prison in September 1973. 2d 301 (1996)). Now judges call his murder conviction a ‘miscarriage of justice.’, Raleigh News & Observer, January 30, 2019. In 2007, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin granted Chapman a new trial, citing withheld evidence, “lost, misplaced or destroyed” documents, the use of weak, circumstantial evidence, false testimony by the lead investigator, and ineffective assistance of defense counsel. The men were convicted on the testimony of a 12-year-old boy who later recanted his testimony, and who now has said he did not witness the crime at all. In 1999, at his last trial, Manning was represented by expert death penalty attorney, David Bruck. (Brown v. Wainwright, 785 F.2d 1457 (11th Cir. * Prosecutors said they had received “credible evidence” that Ford “was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder” of which he was convicted in 1984. Radi was tried together with three codefendants. Michael Blair was sentenced to death for the 1993 murder of 7-year old Ashley Estell. Aaron Patterson spent 17 years on death row and always maintained his innocence in the stabbing deaths of an elderly couple in 1986. (Associated Press, Oct. 13, 2005). “Ethically, and on my duty, I could not proceed in this case and had to dismiss it,” Prater said. 6, 2006). Alabama Conviction: 1992, Acquitted: 1997. Recent DNA tests indicate that none of the four men were involved in the crime, and another man has confessed to the murder. Illinois — Conviction: 1986, Acquitted: 2009. After conducting a post-trial hearing on Tolliver’s motion for a new trial, the trial court ruled that Cuyahoga County prosecutors had unconstitutionally exercised their peremptory challenges to remove jurors on the basis of race. The judge noted, “Given the weakness of the prosecution’s case and its heavy reliance on the testimony of Lovely Lorden, there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.”. When it was discovered that the state failed to disclose exculpatory evidence, Bloodsworth received a new trial, at which he was convicted and given a life sentence. Elsen also said his assailant had shoulder-length Jheri curls, which was completely inconsistent with Browning’s Afro-styled hair. The Prosecutor in the case, Charles Zalar, acknowledged that the only evidence against Mr. Burrows was the eyewitness accounts, “we don’t have much without them.” (New York Times, September 25, 1994). Creamer was sentenced to death for a murder allegedly committed with six other individuals who were sentenced to life. Wilkerson’s conviction was vacated in 1983 by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals when it ruled that the trial court erred in admitting statements taken from Wilkerson illegally by the police without an attorney present. Hospital records that were never presented at trial showed that the examining physicians from Consuelo’s initial hospitalization had not seen any signs of bleeding when she was brought to the emergency room, and a nurse who helped treat the child reported that neither she nor any of her colleagues had seen evidence of anal or vaginal trauma when the Consuelo arrived at the hospital.