| Blog and Media Roundup - Sunday, April 10, 2011; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 10 2011, 04:18 AM (304 Views) | |
| abb | Apr 10 2011, 04:18 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.laxmagazine.com/college_men/DI/2010-11/news/040911_denver_upsets_duke_lacrosse_on_coaches_old_stomping_grounds Denver Upsets Duke on Coaches' Old LI Grounds April 10, 2011 April 9, 2011 by Chris R. Vaccaro | LaxMagazine.com | Live Blog Replay Denver's Todd Baxter benefitted from Duke's focus on Mark Matthews, scoring three of his four goals in the second half of the 10th-ranked Pioneers' 12-9 upset of the fourth-ranked Blue Devils in the Battle of Bethpage. © Greg Shemitz BETHPAGE, N.Y. – It was a familiar setting for Duke coach John Danowski and Denver coach Bill Tierney. The Long Island natives turned NCAA Division I men's lacrosse coaches returned to their native land for a non-conference, historic showdown less than 10 miles from their former stomping grounds. Tenth-ranked Denver came away with a 12-9 upset victory over fourth-ranked Duke Saturday at Bethpage High School's Howard C. Vogt's Field before 6,000 fans in the first Battle of Bethpage. "This is just the beginning of something that could be fantastic," said Tierney, who coached high school lacrosse at Levittown-Division and Great Neck on Long Island before hitting the college ranks. "Only in the sport of lacrosse can you pull something like this off, where you get two teams in the top 10, two coaches willing to give up games to travel 1,000 miles to play in a high school venue. This is what lacrosse is all about. I would give up anything to play in an event like this again at Bethpage." Danowski, the former head coach of Hofstra University, played high school lacrosse at East Meadow, and was a science teacher and coach in the Bellmore-Merrick School District on the Island. His Duke team competed nearby at the Big City Classic in New Jersey last weekend, and he hoped for a different outcome this time around after losing to Syracuse. Denver (8-2), however, outscored Duke (8-4), 7-4, in the second half and never trailed in the final 30 minutes of the contest. Todd Baxter scored three of his four goals in the final two quarters, including three straight for Denver in the third quarter. Duke's Robert Rotanz, who led the Blue Devils with four goals and was named his team's game MVP, scored two goals in the second quarter to push Duke ahead, 5-4, before Baxter tied the score at 5 with 33 seconds remaining in the half. Denver has played its best lacrosse of the season in the third quarter and capitalized from the onset, going up 7-5 on goals from Chase Carraro and Baxter to open the quarter. It was a lead the Pioneers would never relinquish. Carraro scored twice and won 11-of-24 faceoffs, winning the game MVP honor for Denver. Duke made a point to neutralize Mark Matthews, Denver's leading scorer coming into the game with 40 points (26g). While Matthews finished with one goal and two assists, it was Baxter who was the beneficiary of open lanes. "With locking off Mark, it was really five-on-five," Baxter said. "There were a bunch of open looks, and they happened to come to me this time. I canned them and put them away." For Danowski, the day was fruitful because he was able to watch his daughter Kate, 28, coach her girls' lacrosse team at Bethpage against MacArthur after the men's game. Since their schedules conflict and he lives down south, he hasn't been able to watch her coach much. The Battle at Bethpage afforded him that opportunity. "It says something about our sport," he said. "It was an event. It was more than just a game." Tierney on the other hand was looking to forge some name recognition and make the people of Long Island aware of Denver's ability. "We think we made a step in the direction we wanted to go in," he said. Denver hosts Ohio State next weekend at Invesco Field in Denver, while Duke hosts Presbyterian Monday and Virginia Saturday. |
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| abb | Apr 10 2011, 04:23 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/apr/09/probe-prosecution-christian-newsom-slayings-had-he/ Probe, prosecution of Christian-Newsom slayings had hefty price tag By Jamie Satterfield Saturday, April 9, 2011 One of Knoxville's most horrific crimes is likely to go down in the record books as one of the state's most expensive prosecution efforts. It is difficult to pin a price tag on the investigation of the January 2007 torture-slayings of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, and resulting prosecutions. Some figures - jury expenses, expert witnesses, defense bills, for example - are readily available, and they tally more than $1.1 million so far. Others, including the man-hours expended by teams of local, state and federal agents, are impossible to quantify but are sure to exceed the costs ever incurred in any other single investigation. As John Gill, special counsel to Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols, noted, there has never been a case in Tennessee like this one. "Not four defendants where the death penalty is sought (against each)," Gill said. "It is unprecedented." Calling the cavalry The crime was itself unprecedented: a young couple kidnapped by strangers, held captive, beaten, tortured, raped and killed. The scope of the probe was also extraordinary. Entire squads from both the Knoxville Police Department and Knox County Sheriff's Office were joined by teams of agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals Service. The U.S. Attorney's Office set up a "war room," with three state prosecutors joining as many as a half-dozen federal prosecutors managing the effort first to find Christian after Newsom's body had been discovered, and, second, to hunt down their killers. "From the very start, you had an indication of people fleeing the state," Gill said. "The feds came in as a result, which is extraordinary (in a local murder case). You start out with horrific crimes and very little information. It was very confusing to have so many people out beating the bushes. But, at the same time, it was very helpful to have all that assistance." Federal and state judges were enlisted to issue search warrants. Cellular phone providers were called on to provide information for those search warrants. KPD employed its Special Operations Squad, and the Knoxville branch of the Marshals Service assigned its entire fugitive squad to take down accused ringleader Lemaricus Davidson, who was hiding in a vacant house in Mechanicsville, and his convicted helper, Eric Boyd. Eventually, the manhunt for the couple's killers led to Lebanon, Ky., where law enforcers from the Kentucky State Police, local police there and the Kentucky branch of the Marshals Service joined in. KPD, KCSO and the ATF sent agents there. Then-Sheriff Tim Hutchison employed his agency's helicopters in the Kentucky hunt for suspects Letalvis Cobbins, George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman. All of that cost money - lots of it. But no one can say just how much. "Nobody quantifies (the law enforcement side of a case)," noted Susan Shipley, a Knoxville attorney who is a veteran of capital murder defense work. Law enforcers in this case say it is simply impossible to try. "There's no way," said Martha Dooley, KCSO spokeswoman for Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, when presented with the News Sentinel's request for information on the office's work in the case. KPD spokesman Darrell DeBusk had a similar reaction. "Nearly every unit of the department was utilized at some point in the investigation," DeBusk said. Those included the agency's entire violent crimes section of the Criminal Investigation Division and its supervisors, its 15-member Forensics Unit and the Organized Crime Unit. There were teams of patrol officers from two patrol districts, a search and recovery team, and the Special Operations Squad, DeBusk said. KCSO also devoted teams of patrol deputies, detectives and forensics specialists to the initial manhunt, which spanned five days, and the ensuing follow-up probe, which spanned months. Crime laboratories of both the TBI and FBI processed 850 pieces of evidence gathered from eight crime scenes. The Knox County Medical Examiner's Office sent both its chief and an investigator to the Chipman Street house where the couple had been held captive. There were also plenty of suits involved, including Police Chief Sterling Owen IV, since retired, two KPD deputy chiefs, Hutchison, Jones and at least two of KCSO's chief deputies as well as public information officers from both agencies. The feds likewise can't quantify how much manpower was devoted to the first phase of what would be a three-year prosecution effort that's still not over. But if trial testimony is any indication, there easily could have been more than 100 law enforcers in two states involved in the initial effort to round up suspects and start building a case. And with annual salaries for those lawmen and women ranging from roughly $37,831 for a crime scene technician to $52,352 for a patrol sergeant, the cost of the law enforcement arm alone easily could be in the hundreds of thousands. And that was just the beginning. Launching the war Even the most mundane trial is expensive. Consider a 2009 Duke University study that estimated it costs $1,416 for one day in court with one judge, one clerk, one court reporter and two bailiffs. That figure, however, can't even offer a baseline for the prosecution effort in this case. As for the two-bailiff estimate, it was actually closer to four in the Knoxville cases. Court security? A half dozen inside court and more outside in the racially charged case of black defendants and white victims. In the state prosecution effort, even the judge had a security detail. "The sheriff's department had undercover deputies crawling the hallways looking for crackpots," Shipley said. So double that Duke estimate. In the murder cases, the entire court, complete with that massive security apparatus, was literally transported to Nashville twice and to Chattanooga once for jury selection in three of the four trials. Again, no one can offer up numbers, but there would have been hotel rooms, meals and transportation costs. The first person to be tried was Boyd, accused in a federal indictment of being an accessory to a fatal carjacking by hiding out Davidson after the killings. Boyd appeared in U.S. District Court before his April 2008 trial 13 times for various pre-trial hearings. Each time, the Marshals Service boosted its security three-fold. Jury selection spanned three days. His trial lasted five days, and a sixth day was afforded for sentencing. He is currently serving an 18-year prison term. So, if you used the Duke figure as a base and then doubled it for the extra security, merely opening the courtroom doors cost more than $60,000 over that span of time. The U.S. District Court clerk's office did not respond to a request for the cost of Boyd's defense. Attorney Phil Lomonaco, appointed to the case after Boyd fired court-appointed lawyer Richard Gaines, said he can't recall how much he billed. There is typically a $6,100 cap on defense fees in routine federal cases, but that cap was lifted in Boyd's case because of the sheer volume of evidence through which Lomonaco had to wade. He would have billed an average of $110 for every hour he spent on the case. He worked a lot, he said. "There were a lot of facts, a lot of evidence," he said. "We had to go through a ton of material." And until this week, he wasn't finished. An appeal had been pending in the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. A single trip to Cincinnati, where the federal appeals court is located, cost taxpayers more than $650, according to a travel voucher filed by one of Lomonaco's legal associates. The court shot down the appeal Thursday. Boyd still has one other, remote appeal option, but those are usually summarily dismissed with little additional paperwork. The U.S. Attorney's Office assigned two prosecutors to the case. One, a veteran, earns more than $100,000 a year, the other, then a relative newbie, a bit less. The office can't say exactly how many hours the pair devoted to the case. A third veteran, whose salary also topped $100,000, presented the case to a federal grand jury over a period of weeks. But Boyd's trial was merely a prelude to the main event. Pulling out the big guns Most killers in Tennessee work alone or in pairs. There are rare exceptions. In 1986, for instance, authorities in Gatlinburg charged four people in the slayings of Rocky Top Village Inn clerk Melissa Suttles Hill and security guard Troy Dale Valentine. But only two of the four were tried, with convicted mastermind Edward "Tattoo Eddie" Harris being sentenced to death. The remaining two took deals to testify against their co-horts. And that's the way it usually works, according to veteran capital defense attorney Jim Simmons of Nashville. Faced with a band of killers, prosecutors hone in on the most culpable when seeking death and use the less culpable to shore up a capital murder case against the ringleaders. But with an outraged public and an outspoken set of surviving relatives, Nichols opted to seek death against not only ringleader Davidson but also compadres Cobbins, Thomas and Coleman. "I think that was very unusual because typically they'll use the others to take on the most culpable one," Simmons said. "I have never tried (a capital case) with multi-defendants." With even one death penalty case, the cash register goes into overdrive. The Duke study estimated that a capital murder case costs some $329,000 more in court-related expenses than a noncapital murder case. Nichols' aide Gill acknowledged that prosecutors can and sometimes do weigh the extra costs of seeking death against the cheaper alternative of a life sentence. But dollar signs were nowhere to be found in the room when Nichols and his staff considered the unprecedented move of seeking the death penalty against all four accused in the Christian/Newsom case. "I don't think that was even a close (call) in the consideration of this case," he said. Gill argues that the decision did not carry an additional price tag for his office. "We would have spent the same money on personnel if that case had never occurred," he said. That's true - technically. In practice, however, it's not so clear. Assistant District Attorney General Leland Price set aside his regular caseload to do nothing but work on Christian-Newsom over a three-year period. That meant other staffers had to shoulder the cases he left behind. His partner in the case, prosecutor TaKisha Fitzgerald, kept her normal caseload but lengthened her days to do so. Figures put a state prosecutor's average annual salary at $60,000. So, factoring in just Price's time, the state invested a minimum of $180,000. That doesn't count Fitzgerald's work and the costs of support staff, including two victim-witness advocates. The Knox County Finance Department did provide an accounting of some witness expenses billed by the prosecution, totaling $22,488. An examination of court files provided more detail. Prosecutors paid $100 a pop to house at the Hilton each of five witnesses from Kentucky for each of the four murder trials, for instance. It cost nearly $2,000 to fly in and put up for the night a cellular phone provider from Kansas. There were bills for food and lodging for a variety of other witnesses as well as mileage and food expenses for deputies transporting the defendants from Kentucky. At the request of the News Sentinel, TBI spokeswoman Kristin Helm calculated the cost of the agency's DNA testing on 200 samples sent to the lab at $64,260. "This cost does not include the time spent by our crime scene team or other disciplines who worked this case," Helm said. Gill acknowledged death penalty cases are much pricier. But in this case, he said, it was all money well spent. "We don't seek the death penalty unless there are very sound reasons to do so," Gill said. "But it is going to take more resources." Attorney Shipley pointed out that, unlike defense attorneys in a capital case, the DA's office has an entire crime laboratory at its disposal and needs no permission from state budget-crunchers to pursue expert testing and testimony. "Nobody puts limits on how much testing the prosecution gets to do," she said. Not so with the defense. Defending the indefensible While neither law enforcement nor the prosecution can or must put a public price tag on its work, court-appointed defense attorneys are required to do just that, so the spotlight often shines on defense bills in the wake of a high-profile case. Recall, for example, the public outrage over the money afforded defense experts and attorneys in the years-long prosecution of Knox County's only accused serial killer - Thomas Dee "Zoo Man" Huskey. So far, the Huskey defense tab tops $750,000. It's hard to compare the Huskey case to the Christian/Newsom case. The tab in Huskey's case covers expert expenses and attorneys fees for a capital murder trial that ended in a hung jury, four rape trials and appeals that ultimately led to the dismissal of the original murder charges. In the Christian-Newsom case, the defense bill, including the cost of expert witnesses and testing, for all four capital murder trials is so far at just more than $910,000. The tally, which includes attorneys fees, expert witnesses and forensic testing, breaks down this way: * Cobbins: $346,139 * Davidson: $283,557 * Thomas: $210,394 * Coleman: $74,060 Cobbins was the first to be tried and, therefore, his defense team shouldered responsibility for most of the early legal heavy-lifting, so his bill is highest. Coleman's parents initially funded her defense before running out of money, and lead attorney Ted Lavitt hasn't filed any vouchers for defense experts, so her bill is lowest. For the defense, there is no unfettered access to cash in a capital case. The state Administrative Office of the Courts must approve funding for all defense requests. There are limits on which experts they can use, what those experts can charge and from how far away they can travel to testify. "It has to be a person they approve of," Shipley said. "You have to get approval from the state before you can even hire that person. We spend a lot of time fighting with the state to get funding." A defendant facing death is entitled to two attorneys who must be veterans of criminal defense and, particularly, capital murder. After all, it isn't a client's freedom at stake but his or her life. In this case, there wasn't a defense attorney in town willing to step up to the plate. "These were horrible facts," said Simmons, who has defended some 25 capital murder cases in 20 years. "They were lucky to get anybody to handle this case at all," Shipley said. "Everything they do or don't do is going to be scrutinized. There was so much public outrage the defense attorneys were taking a personal risk." Judge Richard Baumgartner, who since has resigned after confessing unrelated official misconduct, pressed local attorneys qualified to handle death penalty cases into service. He tapped Kim Parton and Scott Green to represent Cobbins; Tom Dillard and Steve Johnson to represent Thomas; David Eldridge and Doug Trant to represent Davidson; and Russell Greene to assist Lavitt in Coleman's defense. None wanted to be interviewed on the impact the high-profile case - which generated death threats against them - had on his or her practice. They each issued brief statements reminding an outraged public that they were duty-bound to represent their clients once tapped by Baumgartner. But Simmons and Shipley know the price the attorneys of some of the state's most notorious defendants paid. "There's nobody making money off death penalty cases," Simmons said. Most defense attorneys of the caliber appointed in the Christian-Newsom case can earn $250 to $300 per hour in private practice. The state, instead, pays them $75 to $100 per hour in a capital case. "We can't bill for paralegals and support staff," Simmons said. "(The state rate) doesn't cover your overhead expenses." For a solo practitioner like Parton, taking on such a high-profile death case essentially shuts down her practice, said Simmons and Shipley, both of whom also operate on their own. "It prohibits you from taking other cases," Simmons said. "They are extremely time-consuming." "You have to front the expenses yourself," Shipley added. "This is a case where defense counsel had thousands of dollars in copying expenses alone. You have to finance that yourself." Attorneys in capital cases are required not only to mount a defense but also to assume a conviction and, therefore, prepare for sentencing even while readying for trial. It is in the sentencing stage that most expert witnesses are employed. One legal misstep by the defense could net a defendant a new trial later, upping the price tag even more, Shipley said. Then, there's the fallout from public opinion, which could keep new business away in the future. "Certainly, you don't get any thanks from the public," Simmons said. "If you lose one of these, they never go away. You start the appeals process and that goes on for 20 years. … I have never asked for a death penalty case. I got involved because a judge called me." Housing the troops Taxpayers didn't just shoulder the burden of the investigation, prosecution and defense. They also had to cough up big bucks to care for the ordinary citizens called upon to decide the suspects' fates. In Boyd's case, jury expenses were relatively cheap. Exact figures weren't provided by the U.S. District Court clerk's office, but jurors in federal court are paid $40 per day. Eighty were summoned for a three-day selection process, and 14, including two alternates, spent five days hearing and deciding the case. The likely jury cost, then, totaled roughly $12,400. Knox County did not get away so cheap. The state murder trials spanned two weeks each. In three of those trials, jurors were selected from Nashville and Chattanooga and had to be bused here. The 12 jurors and four alternates selected in each case were housed in area hotels, guarded by a "matron" and "two or three" court officers overnight each night, said Criminal Court Clerk Joy McCroskey. For their troubles, jurors were paid $11 a day. The total price tag for paying, transporting, feeding, housing and entertaining jurors: $161,862. "It's very expensive, but it had to be done," McCroskey said. "These cases combined are probably the longest I can remember that we've had to sequester a jury." Lodging accounted for much of that tab. It cost between $20,000 and $25,000 to house each jury panel and its security minders at an area hotel for the duration of each trial. Meals also took a chunk of change. Lunch from the Lunchbox Restaurant for a single day could run as high as $200. Salsaritas? $225 for one meal. Rothchild Catering? $368. Copper Cellar? $333. Calhouns? $389. At three meals a day for a total of nearly 40 days, the food bill took the largest slice of the jury expense pie. Gentry Trailways billed the county $1,900 for a charter bus to take jurors from Nashville to Knoxville and back again. There were two such round trips. The cost to take jurors from Chattanooga to Knoxville and back again was slightly cheaper - $1,700. McCroskey said transportation costs could have been much higher had the county been forced to keep a charter bus available throughout the trial to ferry jurors to and from the courthouse, various outings and restaurants. But court security officer Dennis Bowman has a chauffeur's license and offered to drive jurors around in a KCSO bus normally used to transport inmates. "We got lucky," she said. The county also forked out thousands to entertain jurors. They went to the movies - $100 or more for each flick. They caught a Tennessee Smokies baseball game - $133 - and visited the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame - $34. "Would you want to sit all those weeks with nothing on your minds but those cases?" McCroskey said. The county paid to rent and stock a hospitality room at the hotel with snacks and games, she said. "I'd want that if I was on a jury like that," she said. "You think about being locked up that long. You feel like a prisoner yourself." McCroskey said the county will be able to bill the state to recoup some of that expense, although it is still taxpayers who ultimately foot the cost. Settling in for the siege The trials are over, but the price of justice in the Christian-Newsom case continues to climb. Cobbins and Thomas escaped death, with their respective juries sentencing them instead to life without parole. Coleman, deemed by her jury panel a facilitator only, was sentenced to 53 years. Davidson was the only one of the quartet to draw death. The court battles aren't over. Motions for new trial, filings required in all jury trials that end in conviction, are pending. Cobbins, Thomas and Coleman will each get a shot at a state court appeal. If they lose, the law allows them to essentially fire their trial attorneys, get new ones and launch another set of appeals. Davidson's death sentence guarantees him a slew of appeals in both state and federal court. Eventually, a team of state and federal lawyers will be assigned to try to save his life. All of those appellate fights will be funded by taxpayers. Shipley insisted that taxpayers can't well complain if they want killers to be put to death. "It's absolutely not cost-effective (compared with life without parole)," she said. "If people in the state of Tennessee want the death penalty, they're going to have to pay for it." Jamie Satterfield may be reached at 865-342-6308. Follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jamiescoop. |
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| abb | Apr 10 2011, 03:51 PM Post #3 |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/opinion/10thompson.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1 April 9, 2011 The Prosecution Rests, but I Can’t By JOHN THOMPSON New Orleans I SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row. I’ve been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case I’d won against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence — which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasn’t mine. Because of that, prosecutors are free to do the same thing to someone else today. I was arrested in January 1985 in New Orleans. I remember the police coming to my grandmother’s house — we all knew it was the cops because of how hard they banged on the door before kicking it in. My grandmother and my mom were there, along with my little brother and sister, my two sons — John Jr., 4, and Dedric, 6 — my girlfriend and me. The officers had guns drawn and were yelling. I guess they thought they were coming for a murderer. All the children were scared and crying. I was 22. They took me to the homicide division, and played a cassette tape on which a man I knew named Kevin Freeman accused me of shooting a man. He had also been arrested as a suspect in the murder. A few weeks earlier he had sold me a ring and a gun; it turned out that the ring belonged to the victim and the gun was the murder weapon. My picture was on the news, and a man called in to report that I looked like someone who had recently tried to rob his children. Suddenly I was accused of that crime, too. I was tried for the robbery first. My lawyers never knew there was blood evidence at the scene, and I was convicted based on the victims’ identification. After that, my lawyers thought it was best if I didn’t testify at the murder trial. So I never defended myself, or got to explain that I got the ring and the gun from Kevin Freeman. And now that I officially had a history of violent crime because of the robbery conviction, the prosecutors used it to get the death penalty. I remember the judge telling the courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body. If the first attempt didn’t kill me, he said, they’d put more volts in. On Sept. 1, 1987, I arrived on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary — the infamous Angola prison. I was put in a dead man’s cell. His things were still there; he had been executed only a few days before. That past summer they had executed eight men at Angola. I received my first execution date right before I arrived. I would end up knowing 12 men who were executed there. Over the years, I was given six execution dates, but all of them were delayed until finally my appeals were exhausted. The seventh — and last — date was set for May 20, 1999. My lawyers had been with me for 11 years by then; they flew in from Philadelphia to give me the news. They didn’t want me to hear it from the prison officials. They said it would take a miracle to avoid this execution. I told them it was fine — I was innocent, but it was time to give up. But then I remembered something about May 20. I had just finished reading a letter from my younger son about how he wanted to go on his senior class trip. I’d been thinking about how I could find a way to pay for it by selling my typewriter and radio. “Oh, no, hold on,” I said, “that’s the day before John Jr. is graduating from high school.” I begged them to get it delayed; I knew it would hurt him. To make things worse, the next day, when John Jr. was at school, his teacher read the whole class an article from the newspaper about my execution. She didn’t know I was John Jr.’s dad; she was just trying to teach them a lesson about making bad choices. So he learned that his father was going to be killed from his teacher, reading the newspaper aloud. I panicked. I needed to talk to him, reassure him. Amazingly, I got a miracle. The same day that my lawyers visited, an investigator they had hired to look through the evidence one last time found, on some forgotten microfiche, a report sent to the prosecutors on the blood type of the perpetrator of the armed robbery. It didn’t match mine; the report, hidden for 15 years, had never been turned over to my lawyers. The investigator later found the names of witnesses and police reports from the murder case that hadn’t been turned over either. As a result, the armed robbery conviction was thrown out in 1999, and I was taken off death row. Then, in 2002, my murder conviction was thrown out. At a retrial the following year, the jury took only 35 minutes to acquit me. The prosecutors involved in my two cases, from the office of the Orleans Parish district attorney, Harry Connick Sr., helped to cover up 10 separate pieces of evidence. And most of them are still able to practice law today. Why weren’t they punished for what they did? When the hidden evidence first surfaced, Mr. Connick announced that his office would hold a grand jury investigation. But once it became clear how many people had been involved, he called it off. In 2005, I sued the prosecutors and the district attorney’s office for what they did to me. The jurors heard testimony from the special prosecutor who had been assigned by Mr. Connick’s office to the canceled investigation, who told them, “We should have indicted these guys, but they didn’t and it was wrong.” The jury awarded me $14 million in damages — $1 million for every year on death row — which would have been paid by the district attorney’s office. That jury verdict is what the Supreme Court has just overturned. I don’t care about the money. I just want to know why the prosecutors who hid evidence, sent me to prison for something I didn’t do and nearly had me killed are not in jail themselves. There were no ethics charges against them, no criminal charges, no one was fired and now, according to the Supreme Court, no one can be sued. Worst of all, I wasn’t the only person they played dirty with. Of the six men one of my prosecutors got sentenced to death, five eventually had their convictions reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. Because we were sentenced to death, the courts had to appoint us lawyers to fight our appeals. I was lucky, and got lawyers who went to extraordinary lengths. But there are more than 4,000 people serving life without parole in Louisiana, almost none of whom have lawyers after their convictions are final. Someone needs to look at those cases to see how many others might be innocent. If a private investigator hired by a generous law firm hadn’t found the blood evidence, I’d be dead today. No doubt about it. A crime was definitely committed in this case, but not by me. John Thompson is the director of Resurrection After Exoneration, a support group for exonerated inmates. |
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| abb | Apr 10 2011, 04:57 PM Post #4 |
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http://justice4nifong.blogspot.com/2011/04/politicians-lack-of-will-and-courage.html Sunday, April 10, 2011 Politicians’ lack of will and courage hamper justice in Duke Discrimination case On this blog site I have frequently complained about the gross mistreatment I received when I attended a public event on Duke campus in April 2010. I have also mentioned my attempts to reach out to politicians who represent me in hopes that they would help resolve this issue to everyone’s satisfaction. The other day, a commenter asked the following: Anonymous said... Sidney, give us the specific reasons why your US Representative declined to intervene with Duke University on your behalf. Could you quote the reasons word for word. April 7, 2011 7:31 AM Therefore, I devote this blog in response, with links to the letters in question. I wrote not just one, but three politicians who represented me… U.S. Congressmen David Price and Brad Miller, and State Representative Deborah Ross. What I basically sought from them was a letter seeking an explanation from Duke University about its alleged treatment of me, or if they were satisfied with the extensive amount of evidence presented on my website, a letter to admonish Duke for its excessive and barbaric treatment of me. In other words, I wanted Duke University to know that my political representatives, if not concerned about my treatment, were at least giving it their attention. Not to my surprise, all three of the politicians who represent me refused to get involved. To do so would require the will to seek justice for me, and the courage to go up against Duke University – attributes which, with regards to this instance, were regrettably lacking among Price, Miller, and Ross. The media, employing its Jedi mind-tricks on the public, has made support of former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong political poison… regardless of issues of fairness, ethics, and justice. In addition, Duke University is a powerful conglomeration with deep pockets which are capable of filling coffers of candidates. Requesting assistance from my representatives in the form of a letter was both appropriate and doable. Congressmen Price and Miller both tried to convince me that their First Amendment Right to Free Speech was somehow impinged by their roles in the U.S. Capitol. They should know better than anyone that their right to express concern, support, disappointment, or any other emotion on a constituent of theirs who has been mistreated, is protected by the Bill of Right and by common decency. I do take offense from Mr. Price making the reference about “self-imposed exile from the (Duke) campus,” which is meant to absolve Duke from any responsibility for me not feeling comfortable to return to Duke. There is no doubt in my mind that Duke University would have arrested me had I not had the fortune of running into Duke law professor James Coleman. Professor Coleman is a friend of mine, and his intercession on my behalf is the only thing that kept me from being tossed into the clinker. By its actions, Duke did, in effect, exile me. Mr. Price also attempts to give credence to Duke’s flimsy excuse of solicitation, which I find insulting. No reasonable adult would believe that handing out a business card to a selected number of individuals and inviting them, in a private conversation, to visit a website should be construed as soliciting. Bottom line regarding Mr. Price is that he had two of his constituents who were at odds with one another. He choose to side with the constituent with deep pockets rather than the one with justice on his side. At the time that Congressman Miller and Representative Ross responded to my appeal, they redefined my problem as being a legal matter, which it wasn’t. I had hoped for their intervention on my behalf for the explicit purpose of preventing it from becoming one. Unfortunately, that was not the case and I was left with no option but to take it to the next level. Had a politician aggressively become involved in seeing that justice was served, I believe there would have been a decent chance that the issue could have been amicably and expeditiously settled. Below is the link to the letters. LINK: http://justice4nifong.com/direc/irepoDirec/irepoB2/ltr5reps.htm |
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| DMom | Apr 10 2011, 06:38 PM Post #5 |
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Dear Sidney, he really, really tries. Bless his heart. |
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| Quasimodo | Apr 10 2011, 10:09 PM Post #6 |
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3:29 AM Jul 11