Wrongful Conviction Lawsuit Defense Blog : Wrongful Conviction Defense Lawyer & Attorney : Andrew M. Hale Law Firm

According to the PR/Newswire:  

Cook County Judge Clayton Crane ruled Wednesday that attorneys for Cortez Brown may begin a process to subpoena former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge to testify about the beating inflicted on Brown during a 1990 murder investigation. Brown falsely confessed to the crime after Burge's subordinates bludgeoned him with a flashlight and committed other abuses. He continues to languish in state prison due to the wrongful conviction.  Seeking to void that conviction, Locke Bowman, Legal Director of the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center, and Attorney for Cortez Brown sought leave to subpoena Burge and former Detective Tony Maslanka, who currently live out-of-state, as material witnesses. The certification that Burge and Maslanka are material witnesses in the Brown case permits the attorneys to seek a subpoena within the jurisdiction in which Burge and Maslanka live. In 1990, Brown was arrested for the murders of Devin Boelter and Curtis Sims. Brown alleges that Area 3 police detectives John O'Brien, John Paladino and Tony Maslanka - all of whom worked directly under Burge - verbally threatened him and beat him repeatedly with fists and a flashlight until he agreed to submit a bogus confession to the crimes.  At trials for both murders, Brown's coerced confessions were the principal evidence used to tie him to the alleged crimes. And in both cases, the larger pattern of atrocities that Burge inflicted on other black suspects was not revealed. Burge is currently under federal indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice based on his sworn denials that suspects were abused and tortured. Brown finished serving the 30 year sentence imposed on him for one of the murders, but seeks release from his natural life sentence for the second.

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The Chicago Tribune is reporting: 

"A Chicago police sergeant and two officers were acquitted today in connection with the off-duty beating of several patrons at a West Loop bar in December 2006.

Following a bench trial several weeks ago, Circuit Judge Thomas V. Gainer Jr. found Sgt. Jeffery Planey and Officers Gregory Barnes and Paul Powers not guilty of aggravated battery charges in the attack at the Jefferson Tap and Grille.

The judge also acquitted Planey of obstruction of justice and official misconduct for allegedly waving away on-duty police responding to a silent alarm from the bar. Security video was central to the prosecution case, but only Planey was caught on the tape getting physical with one victim.

Gainer was brief in his comments, saying he had reviewed all the testimony at trial as well as security videotapes and audio from a 911 call.

"After doing all of that, I have come to the conclusion that the state has failed to meet its burden in the charges against these men," he said.

"Prosecutors had alleged the officers jumped brothers Barry and Aaron Gilfand and two of their friends as they played pool. When police showed up at the bar, the off-duty officers felt they wouldn't be held accountable because Planey formerly worked in the district, Assistant State's Atty. Lauren Freeman said in closing arguments.

Attorneys for the officers said the attack was provoked by the alleged victims mocking Powers for crying over the recent death of his father. They contended the Gilfands exaggerated their injuries and altered their accounts of that night to boost their chances at winning a lot of money in their pending federal lawsuit against the officers and the city. Barnes' attorney, William Fahy, said that describing the Gilfands as victims was an insult to real crime victims, calling the brothers "a couple of loud-mouthed drunks." Fahy said Aaron Gilfand recently identified Barnes as his attacker for the first time after the state's only independent witness, bartender Lindsay Vanderford, said in a deposition for the lawsuit that she could have been mistaken about her identification of Barnes. During the trial, Vanderford again admitted that she was likely mistaken about her identification.

In his defense of Planey, attorney Thomas Needham stitched together dozens of bits of evidence, testimony and what he argued were reasonable inferences in an attempt to persuade Gainer that his client did not order or intend to send police away from the scene. Planey, the only defendant whose alleged crimes were captured on security video, faces two counts of aggravated battery for his alleged attack on Barry Gilfand -- that he caused bodily harm and that he insulted the alleged victim through his actions. But Needham said Gilfand was uninjured and that just because the sergeant pushed him against the wall did not mean he insulted Gilfand. Attorney Lori Lightfoot said her client, Powers, could not have assaulted Barry Gilfand in the manner he described because his testimony is contradicted by his appearance in security video moments after the alleged attack and the absence of bruises or significant injury." 

Amanda Antholt who represents plaintiffs in a lawsuit against these officers and the City of Chicago says she is disappointed with the verdict but she is confident that the civil suit will provide "justice" for her clients.

We will wait and see what happens in the civil case.  For now - congrats to the criminal defense team.  

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Discovery Channel to air new six-part series DALLAS DNA, which premieres Tuesday, April 28 at 10 PM ET.  According to their website:

Dallas DNA chronicles a pioneering unit within the Dallas County District Attorney's office where post-conviction DNA testing is being used to clear the innocent, as well as confirm the guilty. When Craig Watkins ran for district attorney in Dallas County, he promised to fight for justice and through an innovative and unconventional new division he founded; he's been true to his word. In July 2007, Watkins created the nation's first Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) run by a DA's office and tasked it with re-examining hundreds of petitions submitted by inmates seeking post-conviction DNA testing and reinvestigating the cases that could be possible examples of injustice. Dallas County has more exonerations than any other jurisdiction in the nation since state law began allowing post-conviction testing in 2001. In that time, more than 40 cases have received post-conviction DNA evidence analysis and the results have stunned the nation—to date, 19 cases were found to have wrongful convictions, and under DA Watkins' leadership ten innocent men have walked free.

 Here is the full schedule.

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The Houston Chronicle is reporting that the prosecutors and defense attorneys will request that Gary Alvin Richard be released on bond next week pending a further investigation. A jury convicted Richard of an attack on a nursing student in 1987 in a trial based largely on bood-type evidence from the Houston Police Department Crime Lab. The Chronicle reports that there were several problems with the conviction including the fact that the victim identified Richard seven months after the crime, there were conflicting conclusions by crime lab analysts, and a rape kit had been destroyed.

Bob Wicoff, Richard's attorney stated that he was troubled by the fact the Rape kit was not preserved:

“The real crime is that another rape kit has been destroyed or discarded,” Wicoff said. “The standards for preserving evidence were less stringent in 1987, but that is no excuse.” Without the rape kit, analysts at a California lab tested Richard’s body fluids and drew conclusions that Wicoff said establish his innocence. “He could not have been the source of the semen at the crime scene,” Wicoff said.

The new evidence derives from saliva samples that were preserved. The Crime Lab representative testified at trial that Richard was non-secretor, meaning his blood type was not shown in the saliva sample. However, upon retesting, it was found that Richard's saliva was secretor, showing his blood type. That blood type did not match the blood type left at the scene. Prosecutors say it is too early to say whether Richard should be cleared of the crime, even though they support his release. The District Attorney in Houston, Pat Lykos, is using Richard's case to call for an independent crime lab separate from the Houston Police Department. Four people have been exonerated due to errors made by the HPD Crime Lab

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The AP is reporting that Alton Logan, who was convicted in 1983 of shooting a security guard at McDonald's, has been issued a certificate of innocence by Chief Judge Paul Biebel Jr. in the Cook County Circuit Court. Logan was convicted by a jury, but two attorneys last year revealed his innocence. A client of theirs had admitted to them that he had committed the crime, however, they could not come forward until that client passed away in 2007. 

Alton Logan's case made national headlines last year when attorneys Dale Coventry and Jamie Kunz revealed that Logan was innocent because their client, Andrew Wilson, who they were defending for killing two policemen, confessed to them that he had also killed the security guard at McDonald's - the crime Logan was charged with. Watch Coventry and Kunz explain why they kept this a secret all these years. 

As a result of the revelation of this secret - Logan's attorney Jon Loevy is now considering a lawsuit against the Chicago Police.  

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Today, the U.S. Supreme Court held the following in Arizona v. Gant:  Holding: Police may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. When these justifications are absent, a search of an arrestee’s vehicle will be unreasonable unless police obtain a warrant or show that another exception to the warrant requirement applies 

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The newswire is reporting that a documentary called "Witch Hunt" -  a story about the arrest, conviction, and later exoneration of dozens of Bakersfield, California adults for alleged child sex abuse in the mid-1980s - will make its world television premiere April 12 on MSNBC.

According to the press release: 

Witch Hunt weaves the larger Bakersfield story through the travails of John Stoll, a construction worker, who while in the midst of a custody battle over his young son was accused of sexually abusing the boy and five other children. Stoll was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison despite glaring problems, among them, a lack of physical evidence, suggestive questioning of the children by authorities, irregularities in the investigation, and overreaching by prosecutors.

Stoll's conviction was ultimately reversed after three Northern California Innocence Project attorneys and 10 Santa Clara University law students proved, after two years and thousands of borrowed dollars, that the methods used to interview the child witnesses produced false testimony.

After witnessing firsthand the dedicated team and vital services provided by the Innocence Project, which has lost the government funding it once received, directors Dana Nachman and Don Hardy decided to donate a portion of the profits from the sale of the DVD to NCIP.

"We learned a little bit about the epidemic of wrongful convictions in this country, where over two million people are incarcerated," said Hardy. "If even one percent of those prisoners are innocent, a very low estimate by most experts, that means more than twenty thousand people are looking toward agencies like the Innocence Project for help. Dana and I want to do our part to help them continue to fight for the rights of the wrongly convicted.

The documentary is narrated by Academy Award(R) winning actor Sean Penn, with music by Pearl Jam (whose lead singer, Eddie Vedder, donated the song after viewing an early version of the film).

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