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Erick Daniels case
Topic Started: Sep 19 2008, 08:05 AM (4,571 Views)
Quasimodo

abb
Sep 27 2008, 03:31 AM

Published: Sep 27, 2008 12:30 AM
Modified: Sep 27, 2008 01:41 AM
Only a fish fry can fix this fix
Barry Saunders,

One hopes that their day in court ends quickly, with a kick in the pants and a substantial bill for wasting the court's time with such an obviously frivolous moneygrab.



Jason Whitlock, Kansas City Star: (after the first "60 Minutes" program)

"The charges against the Duke lacrosse players should be dropped immediately, and the people demanding the dismissal the loudest and most forcefully should be the very people who have made a living allegedly fighting against racial injustice."

"I've said this before, but it's worth saying again: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should be in Durham, N.C., today, promising civil disobedience until the charges are dropped and prosecutor Mike Nifong resigns."

"Anyone who has been mistreated by law enforcement or had a friend or family member treated unjustly by our criminal-courts system should be concerned about what is transpiring in Durham."
"It is in the best interest of all black people, especially poor black people, that black people with a voice and a platform call for an end to the persecution of the Duke lacrosse players and program."

"Speaking out in support of the wealthy Duke players enhances our credibility when we claim that someone poor and black is being treated unfairly. Poor people need that credibility because they can't afford to make bail, let alone a team of high-priced attorneys."

"By remaining silent about this obvious miscarriage of justice, black leadership looks as racist and cowardly as it paints white people who ignore obvious mistreatment of blacks."
"Standing up for Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans would be standing up against injustice, and what we're learning is that injustice recognizes opportunity more than color. In America, there is more opportunity for injustice to visit poor people of color. Their best defense is standing against all injustice, regardless of race."


(Not that the Durham media would ever run such an editortial...)
Edited by Quasimodo, Sep 27 2008, 09:20 AM.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1389680.html


Published: Feb 01, 2009 12:30 AM
Modified: Feb 01, 2009 12:44 AM

Erick Daniels, 22, who served a third of his life behind bars for a crime he didn't commit, heads out to run errands, having recently obtained his driver's license. He lives in Durham with his disabled grandmother. Family was the thing he missed most, he says.
Staff Photos by Ted Richardson

Erick Daniels get a hug from his mother, Karen Daniel, and aunt Denise Spivey moments after he was freed.

Daniels flips through family photos at home in Durham, where he cares for his grandmother, Gwendolyn Ettson. Daniels helps Ettson out of bed each morning, fixes breakfast for her and puts her to bed at night.
Staff Photo by Ted Richardson


After injustice, Durham man's eyes are on the future
Anne Blythe, Staff Writer

Their names became a three-count indictment of the incompetence and injustices of the Durham court system: Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, the Duke lacrosse players wrongly accused of gang-raping an escort service dancer.

As the nation followed the legal travails of the players, there was another young man who shared many of their circumstances but lacked their advantages in resisting a wrongful charge.

Erick Daniels is not a household name, but his case represents one of Durham's more flagrant miscarriages of justice.

At 15, he was tried as an adult for an armed robbery and sentenced to spend 10 years behind bars for a crime a judge now says he did not commit. His defense at the trial level was inept, that judge found, and there are allegations that the prosecutor failed to pursue evidence of his innocence.

The three from Duke have received handsome settlements for their mistreatment and are going after more. Daniels has gotten nothing. The Duke three avoided a single night in jail. Daniels spent a third of his life in prison.

Only the tenacious efforts of Daniels' mother and the intervention of a second defense lawyer exposed his wrongful conviction and led to his release.

The Duke three, exonerated and declared innocent with the help of some of the state's best lawyers, will live long in legal history. Daniels lives in anonymity, caring for his grandmother, trying to land a $10-an-hour job and hoping the government will say it's sorry.

Although anger simmers at times, Daniels, 22, would rather relish the freedom a judge granted him in mid-September.

"I don't like to be angry, I don't want to be mad," Daniels said. "The same system that incarcerated me was the same system that let me out. They acknowledged their mistakes, and that let me out. That makes me better."

Now Daniels feels free to dream again, and those dreams include a pardon from the governor and state compensation for the years he lost behind bars.

"I'm still getting used to just being free," Daniels said recently. "The realities of being free, the grave responsibilities of life -- a lot of this can be overwhelming."

But Daniels can never truly be freed from such an experience. He knows any future trouble could be magnified by his history.

"In Durham, I feel like I'm already labeled," Daniels said. "You can be pardoned, get your record expunged, get compensated, but in some people's minds I'm always going to be guilty. If I'm stopped for anything, even driving 10 miles over the speed limit, I'll make the front page of the newspaper. I don't have room to be guilty of anything."

Daniels lives with his grandmother, a disabled woman who relies on his help getting from her wheelchair to bed each night and then up in the morning. He fixes her breakfast, makes sure she has what she needs and encourages her to be strong and soldier on since her husband's recent death.

"Erick has the soul of an old man," said Gwen Ettson, his grandmother. "He has been a blessing to me since he's been here."

Sometimes he leaves the house to shop for clothes, shoes and fashionable sunglasses, a whim of his. He also enjoys being the playful uncle to his sister's children -- little ones just down the street.

In recent days, Daniels has set his sights on getting a job. He has his hopes with a company that not only would put him to work for $10 an hour but also pay for community college courses.

A couple of weeks ago Daniels got his first driver's license, another liberating experience.

"I've got wheels," he said with as much excitement as a 16-year-old.

Finally, redemption

A smile spreads across his face as he recalls the September hearing when Judge Orlando Hudson dismissed the burglary and robbery charges that sent him away.

In a hearing full of incriminating details about Durham's justice system, there was evidence that prosecutor Freda Black failed to pursue assertions that another man had confessed to the crime, claims she counters.

Not only did Hudson, Durham's chief resident Superior Court judge, find that Daniels had ineffective counsel at his 2001 trial. He said he had little confidence in the jury's verdict given the new information.

On a day Daniels had hoped at best to win a new trial, Hudson issued a ruling that transformed a doubter into a believer. The courtroom erupted in loud cheers. Daniels just put his head down and wept.

"Durham's justice system is just terrible," Daniels said recently. "The way they do things, it's like there's no law. I'm lucky my case worked."

A frightening world

Seven years have passed since Daniels jumped the courtroom gate and tried to run from the jury's wrongful conviction.

"I was 15. I was scared," he said.

The bailiffs stopped the bewildered teen and wrestled him to the floor. They handcuffed him and ushered him into a closed-off world where dangerous and troubled youth were his peers.

"Mommy," he cried. "Mommy."

Karen Daniel, who dropped the "s" from her last name, felt the rip at her heart. Her boy was in trouble, in need of her steadfast support. The determined mother had no idea of the legal education ahead as she would appeal to lawyers, judges, pastors, the media -- anybody -- to help free her son.

"My family stood up for me," Daniels said. "It was never like I was an inmate with my mom."

At the youth detention center in Morganton, where convicts under 18 are housed, Daniels did little but sleep for his first three years.

For a while the frustrated teen held out hope that his nightmare would end soon. But the legal system kept giving him unwanted jolts. All his appeals were rejected.

"I came to the conclusion that, man, I'm not going to get out," Daniels recalled. "You have to adapt."

As teens on the outside finished high school and prepared for life's next stages, Daniels tried to do the same. He received a high school equivalency diploma and took classes for plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, horticulture, commercial cleaning, human resource development, anger and stress management.

"I took advantage of my incarceration," Daniels said.

His family played a major role in his adapted attitude. They visited on weekends often and tried to bolster his spirits while keeping him grounded.

"He was sensible before he went to prison," said Ettson, his grandmother. "I could tell when I went to visit him that they had not corrupted him."

Karen Daniel finally found the legal help she needed when she persuaded Durham lawyer Carlos Mahoney to take up her cause.

With traditional appeals exhausted, Mahoney sought to win Daniels a new trial. In addition to the ineffective counsel argument and his assertion that prosecutors withheld evidence, Mahoney homed in on what he described as a flawed police photo lineup used to identify Daniels as a suspect.

Ruth Brown, a police department employee, told investigators back then that two armed robbers burst into her home on Sept. 21, 2000, and stole her pocketbook containing $6,231.

Daniels, only 14 at the time, had had a few scrapes with the law, including possession of $5 worth of marijuana.

"I'm no angel," Daniels said recently. "But I'm not guilty of this."

The night of the robbery, Daniels and his sister Erica had gone to a basketball game at a Durham YMCA.

Suspicious eyebrows?

The newly freed man still bristles at how his life was disrupted because Brown identified him as a suspect after studying his sixth-grade photo in a Chewning Middle School yearbook.

His thick, dark, crescent-shaped eyebrows caught her attention. The robbers, according to Brown's account to investigators, wore bandannas over their faces. Little more than their eyes showed.

With no fingerprints, weapon or other evidence linking Daniels to the crime, prosecutors built a case around Brown's hesitant finger-pointing.

"Someone can say they recognize your eyebrows and you get this?" Daniels said, still flabbergasted.

Hudson, the judge who dismissed the charges, picked up on issues in the Daniels case that still trouble him.

"There were some serious questions raised by his lawyer about the prosecution going forward without sufficient evidence," Hudson said.

The Daniels case went through the Durham courts nearly five years before lawyers in the high-profile Duke lacrosse case exposed the prosecutorial misconduct that ousted the district attorney.

Now some in Durham look at cases in a different light.

Hudson, who has seen much in his 20 years in Superior Court, worries that law enforcement sometimes has tunnel vision and tries to pin crimes on initial suspects without investigating leads that could blow their theories and send them on hunts for others.

"I worry about them not looking and not tracking down people who might be involved in the crime," Hudson said. "That's serious."

It was up to Karen Daniel to track down those leads in her son's case.

Eventually, Robert Harris, the Durham lawyer who defended Daniels at trial and was criticized for his inadequate defense, came forward with information that opened the door for a new hearing.

After Daniels' trial, a client told Harris that he committed the burglary and robbery, details that put the lawyer in a difficult spot.

The claim could exonerate Daniels, Harris knew, but under rules governing attorney-client relationships, the details were privileged.

Eventually Harris told Black, an assistant district attorney at the time, that another person had confessed to the crime.

"Robert Harris came to me one time after the trial and said, 'We've got a man in federal prison who said he committed the crime and I think you should reopen the case.' But he would not give me a name," Black recalled this week. "I don't know how I can investigate something I don't have any information about."

Following the September hearing, Harris declined to comment further beyond his testimony.

Karen Daniel said she has appealed to the N.C. State Bar to discipline Black. Black said she has gotten no notice of the complaint. The Bar committee that reviews grievances has not issued public notice of plans to pursue the matter.

Daniel also raised concerns with the school system that let her son be pulled out of class as a 14-year-old and questioned by police without her permission.

She also has gone to city leaders and complained about law enforcement officers. She plans to rattle others for changes.

"Duke lacrosse," Daniel said, "has given me a lot of position."

Erick Daniels leaves most of the agitating to his mother. Occasionally, he dwells on what might have been.

"Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two," Daniels said. "That's what I missed. Who really knows? Hopefully, I would have been doing better than I was in prison."

anne.blythe@newsobserver.com or 919-932-8741
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Quasimodo

Quote:
 
The three from Duke have received handsome settlements for their mistreatment and are going after more. Daniels has gotten nothing. The Duke three avoided a single night in jail. Daniels spent a third of his life in prison.


They are indeed "going after more", but the "more" is all about reforms in Durham and getting the truth out, not just money. But I'm sure that the N&O won't manage to get that truth across to the people of Durham.

Quote:
 

The Duke three, exonerated and declared innocent with the help of some of the state's best lawyers, will live long in legal history. Daniels lives in anonymity, caring for his grandmother, trying to land a $10-an-hour job and hoping the government will say it's sorry.


A better paragraph:

"The story of Duke three, pilloried and tried in advance by all of the state's media, including the N&O, will long live in journalistic history. The bloggers who were supporting the Duke three were supporting Daniels long before the N&O took up his case."

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HSLAXMOM

Here's a copy of my email to Anne Blythe...

Dear Ms. Blythe:

I think that you missed the point when you compared the Duke lacrosse players and Eric Daniel. Your comparison of jail time and "profit" for the lawsuits and suffering is skewed towards black and white and political correctness.

The lax players lawsuit is not primarily for money. It is for justice within the corrupt Durham legal system.

Part of the suit requests monitoring of the police department to make sure that illegal photo line ups cannot occur, that exculpatory evidence cannot be hidden and that there is no "rush to judgment" by police or the district attorney.

The discovery of wrongdoing on the part of the City of Durham, the District Attorney's office and, for many of the players, Duke University, is of paramount importance. This is because the whole Duke Lacrosse Hoax involved civil rights violations and a frameup that could have put innocent people in jail for 30 years.

The lax players are fighting for the rights of ALL who may be involved in the Durham justice system. If they prevail in their lawsuits, Durham will never again be able to do something as horrible to an innocent such as Erick Daniels ever again.

An interesting and informative point of your article would have been to interview any of the attorneys of the lacrosse players or any of the players. For example, Reade Seligmann's current lacrosse team [Brown University] raised money at his behest for the Innocence Project. The goal is to free those who were wrongfully convicted and could not afford the cost to fight these convictions.

You took the easy and trite way out in this story by comparing black and white, rich and poor. The story should be about justice denied and how the "rich guys" are using their position to try and ensure justice for all, regardless of their ability to pay.

When will you get it? The lacrosse players are the "good guys"! They're the responsible, ethical, moral ones. Yes, I know they had a party and underaged ADULTS were drinking. Yes, I know they hired strippers for that party, but they were so naive and so ethical that they paid $800 for a ten minute dance by two women who were not "what they ordered" because they didn't discriminate based on race. And then, they apologized to the University for having a party during Spring Break. No, Ms. Blythe, you're still following the PC line and missing the big picture. These kids are fighting for liberty and justice for all. It's not the popular rich/poor story, but it's the truth!
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Quasimodo

Quote:
 
The lax players are fighting for the rights of ALL who may be involved in the Durham justice system. If they prevail in their lawsuits, Durham will never again be able to do something as horrible to an innocent such as Erick Daniels ever again.

An interesting and informative point of your article would have been to interview any of the attorneys of the lacrosse players or any of the players. For example, Reade Seligmann's current lacrosse team [Brown University] raised money at his behest for the Innocence Project. The goal is to free those who were wrongfully convicted and could not afford the cost to fight these convictions.

You took the easy and trite way out in this story by comparing black and white, rich and poor. The story should be about justice denied and how the "rich guys" are using their position to try and ensure justice for all, regardless of their ability to pay.

When will you get it? The lacrosse players are the "good guys"! They're the responsible, ethical, moral ones. Yes, I know they had a party and underaged ADULTS were drinking. Yes, I know they hired strippers for that party, but they were so naive and so ethical that they paid $800 for a ten minute dance by two women who were not "what they ordered" because they didn't discriminate based on race. And then, they apologized to the University for having a party during Spring Break. No, Ms. Blythe, you're still following the PC line and missing the big picture. These kids are fighting for liberty and justice for all. It's not the popular rich/poor story, but it's the truth!


:thup: Good post!
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