| Ruling could free man from prison; Another false prosecution; Frankie Washington case - Durham | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 2 2008, 11:00 AM (2,540 Views) | |
| abb | Sep 25 2008, 06:55 AM Post #31 |
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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/story/172123.html More malpractice in Durham DA office? Appeals court nixes conviction, raises question about identity Posted: Friday, Sep. 05, 2008 The botched investigation and wrongful indictment of Duke University lacrosse players wasn't the only severe problem in the Durham district attorney's office. As a unanimous panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals noted Tuesday, the prosecution of Frankie Delano Washington was flawed in two ways: It violated Mr. Washington's right to a speedy trial because prosecutors took four years and nine months before trying him for kidnap, burglary, robbery and attempted sexual assault. He was sentenced to more than 60 years in jail. Prosecutors may have had the wrong man. The process they used to identify Mr. Washington was sloppy. He did not match the victims' description of the person who broke into a Durham home in 2002. And worse yet, investigators failed to consider that another man might be the right suspect. He was tried and convicted for similar crimes, using a similar weapon and breaking into nearby homes around the same time.This case is astonishing despite the fact that the Durham district attorney's office already had been shown to be incompetent, motivated by political concerns and fully capable of extraordinary error. That office wrongly charged three Duke lacrosse players with sexual assault at a team party in 2006. N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper later determined that the charges were false and that the players were innocent. Former Durham district attorney Mike Nifong has been disbarred and sued for his actions in pursuing the false charges. Given the bizarre way prosecutors pursued that case, the revelations in this opinion are hardly surprising. They're appalling, too. As Judge Douglas McCullough noted, the state ignored requests by the defendant's lawyers to have the State Bureau of Investigation test evidence from a suspect charged in similar crimes before and after the May 2002 incident to determine if there was a fingerprint or DNA match with the other suspect. Incredibly, a lower court denied that request after a forensic scientist testified that it's SBI policy not to make fingerprint comparisons in cases where a suspect has already been identified – unless the state specifically asks for it. That policy is nuts. It only serves to confirm the widespread suspicion that in certain judicial districts, prosecutors are less interested in the truth than in winning a conviction. The court noted, “We conclude that the state's failure to request that such comparisons be made is evidence of the state's repeated neglect of this case over the course of the prosecution.” The court said the prosecution's failure to try Mr. Washington for nearly five years deprived him of his right to a speedy trial, guaranteed under both the federal and the state constitutions, and merited a reversal of his conviction. This decision – from three conservative appellate judges not known for coddling criminals – is a chilling reminder that prosecutors must not only make sure they nab the right suspect, but also must follow the law of the land. |
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| abb | Feb 7 2009, 06:53 AM Post #32 |
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http://www.newsobserver.com/978/story/1397024.html Published: Feb 07, 2009 12:30 AM Modified: Feb 07, 2009 01:04 AM Cline is city's first female and first black district attorney. New DA Cline tries to cut case backlog At issue is the right to a speedy trial Anne Blythe, Staff Writer Comment on this story Tracey Cline, who made local history last month when she was sworn in as Durham's first female and first black district attorney, hopes to change another course of history during her early weeks in office. The state Court of Appeals rebuked the District Attorney's office in a September ruling when a three-judge panel found that a man sentenced to more than 60 years in prison on charges of burglary, robbery, kidnapping and attempted sexual assault had been robbed of his right to a speedy trial. Since then, Cline has been working with Orlando Hudson, the chief resident superior court judge, defense lawyers and others to identify lingering cases so they can be scheduled for trial. "What we've done is focus on people in custody first," Cline said in an interview shortly after becoming the district attorney. The case that has the lawyers and judge keeping an eye on jail custody lists is Frankie Delano Washington's. Washington, 48, was an auto mechanic who waited four years and nine months to go to trial on accusations that he invaded a Trinity Park home, not far from Duke's East Campus, and traumatized two adults and two children inside. The home invasion occurred in May 2002. The trial was in February 2007. Washington was in jail, awaiting trial for 366 days, before bail was reduced to $37,500 and he was able to post it. The Court of Appeals tossed out the charges against Washington in September. On the fifth floor of the Durham County courthouse, there was evidence this past week of the renewed effort to whittle down the backlog of cases, particularly the more violent charges. On Tuesday, a jury quickly rendered a guilty verdict in the first-degree murder case against Mario Fortune, one of four men accused in a 2004 gang-related killing of Reginald D. Johnson. In a courtroom just down the hall, expert witnesses testified in the retrial of Timothy Uzzelle, the man accused of killing Ahmed Raja in a convenience store robbery caught on videotape in May 2005. Hudson, the judge who presided over the Fortune trial, said there are many variables to consider when looking at how quickly cases move through the justice system. Fortune was in jail, awaiting trial, for four years. But Hudson said when more than one suspect is charged in a homicide, as often happens in Durham, it can take years to resolve all the cases. Prosecutors like to try the suspects in a specific order to get information from one that can bolster their case against another. Defense lawyers, too, can delay trials with requests for information that might help their clients at trial. As the legal maneuvering goes on, judges have to weigh bail requests with worries in Durham about some murder suspects who have been released from jail and charged with additional violent crimes while awaiting trial on the earlier charges. "We don't want anybody sitting over there in jail for more than a year if we can help it," Hudson said. "But there are some cases when that's going to happen." anne.blythe@newsobserver.com or 932-8741 |
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| Quasimodo | Feb 7 2009, 08:01 AM Post #33 |
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This is ridiculous. The Constitution requires a speedy trial (to protect the rights of the innocent; and to prevent the state from pressuring someone to confess to charges without trial; or to in effect force someone to serve a sentence without trial). Four years is a sentence served, without a conviction. California requires a trial within 60 days of arrest, and most other states have similar provisions. ONLY NC and a handful of other states claim they are unable to meet this requirement. But there's no excuse, none. Edited by Quasimodo, Feb 7 2009, 08:01 AM.
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| abb | Feb 7 2009, 08:11 AM Post #34 |
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While Anne did bring up the Frankie Washington catastrophe in her story today, she left out huge quantities of information on the circumstances. And who the prosecutor was. Fortunately, our wayback machine can take care of that. http://www.newsobserver.com/news/durham/durham/story/1204256.html ...Tracey Cline, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case... |
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| Bill Anderson | Feb 7 2009, 08:24 AM Post #35 |
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Prosecutors love to have people languish in jail for years awaiting trial. First, it makes it easier to get a plea bargain, as prosecutors will dangle "time served" as a carrot. It is the incentive system of, "Agree with us, even if you did not do it, and you can get out of jail much sooner." Second, it makes a mockery of the truth. If a "justice" system cannot get at the foundation of the truth of a case, then it is not a justice system. It is an injustice system. Take the case of Betsy Kelly, who was accused in the infamous Little Rascals case. She served several years being held under a bond she could not post, so Nancy Lamb, the prosecutor (who was despised by the late Kirk Osborn, who told me she was a "witch") offered her a deal: plead nolo contendere and you can be out in a year. At that time, Betsy had seen her husband and Dawn Wilson convicted of false charges and sentenced to life in prison. She knew that the deck was stacked, and acted accordingly. That the convictions would be overturned was information that she did not have at the time. All she knew was that "justice" in North Carolina was a stacked deck, and she would have to play by Nancy Lamb's rules, even if they were a lie. Think about it. The courts perpetuated a Big Lie and now Betsy has the lifetime tag of being a "sex offender" even though she never did the things that the government accused her of doing. Look at what Nifong was able to do, even though the charges a lie, and he and those bringing the charges knew they were lies. So, we never should be surprised when the prosecutors pull every trick in the book to get convictions. They simply don't care anymore about guilt and innocence or even right and wrong. They just follow the Al Davis dictum of "Just Win, Baby." By the way, Lamb just got a recent conviction in Elizabeth City that almost surely is based on lies. She is as bad as Mike Nifong, but will be gainfully employed as an official prosecutor for as long as she wants the job. That is the reality of "justice" these days.
Edited by Bill Anderson, Feb 7 2009, 08:26 AM.
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