"Ought To Be Free" &" The Innocence Project"

[Aeon]

If someone is not guilty of the crime, they are not guilty of the crime.
Errors in justice are not corrected by being pig headed and bureaucratic about it.

There are times when appeals make no sense, and pleas of innocence are ridiculous. If you have mulitple human heads in your freezer, "not guilty" isn't applicable to you.

[Whisper]

These cases are why I am skeptical about the DP unless theres 1 million percent positive they did it
This guys lucky this wasnt a capital case,he'd be dead

Michael Morton Freed After DNA Clears Him In Wife's Slaying 25 Years Ago

GEORGETOWN, Texas — A Texas grocery store employee who spent nearly 25 years in prison in his wife's beating death walked free Tuesday after DNA tests showed another man was responsible. His attorneys say prosecutors and investigators kept evidence from the defense that would have helped acquit him at trial.

Michael Morton, 57, was convicted on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to life in prison for the August 1986 killing of his wife, Christine. Morton said he left her and the couple's 3-year-old son to head to work early the morning of the slaying, and maintained through the years that an intruder must have killed her.

Prosecutors had claimed Morton killed his wife in a fit of rage after she wouldn't have sex with him following a dinner celebrating his 32nd birthday.

Wearing a simple button-down shirt and a nervous smile, Morton hugged each of his half-dozen defense attorneys, then hugged his parents after District Judge Sid Harle said he was a free man.

"You do have my sympathies," Harle said. "You have my apologies. . . . We do not have a perfect system of justice, but we have the best system of justice in the world."

Addressing reporters moments later, Morton struggled to hold back tears.

"I thank God this wasn't a capital case. That I only had life because it gave these saints here at the Innocence Projects time to do this," he said.

Texas has executed more prisoners than any other state. The New York-based Innocence Project, which helped Morton secure his release, specializes in using DNA testing to overturn wrongful convictions.

This summer, using techniques that weren't available during Morton's 1987 trial, authorities detected Christine Morton's DNA on a bloody bandana discovered near the Morton home soon after her death, along with that of a convicted felon whose name has not been released.

"Colors seem real bright to me now. Women are real good looking," Morton said with a smile. He then headed to a celebratory dinner with his family and lawyers.

The case in Williamson County, north of Austin, will likely raise more questions about the district attorney, John Bradley, a Gov. Rick Perry appointee whose tenure on the Texas Forensic Science Commission was controversial. Bradley criticized the commission's investigation of the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 after being convicted of arson in the deaths of his three children. Some experts have since concluded the forensic science in the case was faulty.

Bradley did not try the original case against Morton. But the Innocence Project has accused him of suppressing evidence that would have helped clear Morton sooner. That evidence — including a transcript of a police interview indicating that Morton's son said the attacker was not his father and that his wife's credit card and personal checks were used after she was killed — was ultimately obtained through a Texas Public Information Act request.

Bradley agreed Morton should be freed after the other man's DNA was tied to a similar slaying in January 1988 — after Morton was already in prison.

Harle signed an agreement Monday recommending that Morton's conviction be overturned. It was passed on to the state Court of Criminal Appeals, which will make the final ruling that could make Morton eligible for state compensation of $80,000 per year he was wrongfully imprisoned — about $2 million total.

Morton is not allowed to leave Texas until the Court of Criminal Appeals rules. Innocence Project co-founder Barry Sheck said that process usually takes at least a month but could take two or three.

Asked if he ever thought he would be released, Morton said, "I prayed for it, and I had faith it would arise."

[...]
Morton's defense attorney, John Raley, said his client was told a few years ago that if he showed remorse for the crime, he likely would have been paroled.

"I don't know what I would respond after the system had let me down the way it had and I'd been in prison 23, 24 years," Raley said. "But this man told them, 'All I have left is my actual innocence. And if I have to spend the rest of my life in prison I'm not giving that up.'"

Morton's release could become an issue for Perry, who is vying for the Republican presidential nomination. Perry appointed Bradley to the forensic commission in 2009, but the Texas Senate refused to confirm him after he told reporters Willingham was a "guilty monster."
A report indicating that the science in the Willingham case might have been flawed was submitted to Perry's office as part of the appeals Willingham's lawyers filed before his execution.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world...a-1194146.html

Michael Morton, right, reacts after leaving the Williamson County courthouse in Taylor, Texas with John W. Raley, Jr. on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011. Morton was freed from a life sentence after recent DNA tests linked Christine Morton's murder to a felon identified only as John Doe in court records because he is not in custody.

Michael Morton, center embraces his parents, Bill and Pat Morton, after Michael gained his freedom at the Williamson County Justice Center in Georgetown, Texas, on Tuesday Oct. 4, 2011. Morton spent 25 years on prison after being wrongly convicted of murdering his wife.

[Whisper]

Exonerated Inmates Fight Lawyer’s Lobbying Fees
The Lubbock lawyer teamed up with Innocent Project lawyer Jeff Blackburn to see the state compensation for exonerees raised. Now both men are under fire from their clients.

Kevin Glasheen is being sued for his billing in wrongful conviction cases.

Kevin Glasheen has billed Steven C. Phillips, above, for more than $1 million of his payments in a wrongful conviction case.

DALLAS — If you are a wrongly convicted inmate in Texas and are exonerated, you stand to receive a very rewarding apology from the state. Steven C. Phillips, 53, who was proved innocent of rape by DNA tests in 2008 after serving nearly 25 years, got a $2 million lump-sum payment, with substantial annual payments to come.
But then came a legal bill: $1,024,166.67.
The tab did not come from the lawyer who helped free him. Instead, it came from the lawyer he hired afterward to sue the City of Dallas and the state for his wrongful imprisonment, with an agreed contingency fee of 25 percent of any award.
But no suit was filed on Mr. Phillips’s behalf. Instead, the lawyer, Kevin Glasheen, lobbied the Legislature to pass a bill that in 2009 increased the payout to exonerated prisoners. What had been a simple payment of $50,000 for every year served became $80,000 for every year behind bars; the bill also called for paying freed inmates an additional $80,000 a year. Those who had been exonerated still had the option of suing, but the richer terms for settling outright significantly shifted the balance of the decision.
It was on that basis, as a successful lobbyist, that Mr. Glasheen claimed a share of Mr. Phillips’s compensation for himself and another lawyer.
Mr. Phillips was astonished.
“I was trembling,” he said. He called his mother and said, “I’m not fixing to give those dudes a million bucks.” So he sued Mr. Glasheen.
So did Patrick Waller, another exonerated inmate billed by Mr. Glasheen who had served nearly 16 years after a false conviction for aggravated robbery and kidnapping. And now so has the state bar association, which asserts that the fees are “prohibited by law” and “unconscionable.”
The disputes have bitterly divided the community of lawyers and advocates who struggle to help the falsely accused, and they have brought an uncomfortable spotlight to the practices of some within the Innocence Project of Texas, whose co-founder and chief counsel, Jeff Blackburn, is in line to collect $413,000 of the Glasheen fee for referring the Phillips civil case to him.
To Mr. Glasheen, the cases are “a simple fee dispute” and not unusual. “When the money came in, they didn’t want to pay us,” he said.
Mr. Glasheen predicted that the lawsuits from his former clients would be dismissed, and that the bar’s petition to the court would evaporate. “Meanwhile,” he said, “I’ve got drug behind the pickup truck.”
Mr. Phillips’s lawyer in the suit against Mr. Glasheen, Randy Turner, called Mr. Glasheen’s actions “obscene.” The Innocence Project “does great work,” he said, but argued that Mr. Glasheen — who in turn sued Mr. Turner for pursuing the case — “wants a million dollars for being a lobbyist when he wasn’t hired to be a lobbyist.”
n fact, the word “lobbying” does not appear in the contracts, and perhaps with good reason. Much of the legal world operates on contingency fees, allowing people with no money to get to court. The lawyer takes on the financial risk and, if successful, reaps a healthy chunk of the reward. But in Texas it is a felony to lobby the Legislature on a contingent-fee basis, because it can skew the incentives underlying public policy.
Mr. Glasheen did not even file the one-page state compensation forms for Mr. Phillips and Mr. Waller, who filled them out themselves. The state bar suit notes that the form can be completed by “a lay person with no legal skill.”
Mr. Turner also disputed Mr. Glasheen’s accounting of the money owed to him, which includes a portion of a lifetime’s worth of annual $80,000 payments. Under the 2009 law, those payments end when the former inmate dies, or if he is convicted of another felony
Glasheen is attempting to charge Steven 25 percent of the amount that Steven Phillips might, someday, recover if all goes well and he lives to a ripe old age,” he said. The exoneration bill that Mr. Glasheen helped to pass expressly prohibits “assignment” or “encumbrance” of anticipated annuity money.
Charles Silver, a professor at the University of Texas law school, said that whenever a contract is vague, “the fact of the matter is the law tends to favor the clients.” He said he doubted that any court would allow a contingency fee for lobbying, despite Mr. Glasheen’s contention that he operated under a narrow judicial exception to the law. “The Legislature has declared it against public policy,” Professor Silver said.
Mr. Glasheen said all of his clients understood that the contracts covered fees for the lobbying effort — especially Mr. Phillips, whom he called “a sociopath” conditioned by the prison system to lie to survive. In a letter to fellow lawyers, Mr. Glasheen said his firm “spent thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars advancing this group of wrongful conviction cases.”
n an affidavit he filed in the case, Mr. Glasheen stated, “The contingency nature of the fee as well as the amount is reasonable and not unconscionable.”
In an interview, Mr. Glasheen noted that he had a dozen exonerated clients who had paid $5 million in fees, and that he pursued the lobbying effort as an alternative to litigation, and one that greatly benefited his clients. He said that he could have opted for the bar complaint to be heard quietly by a local panel, but demanded a public hearing because it would allow him to put on evidence. He contends that the bar is essentially passing on the complaints of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Waller without “any meaningful review.”
Maureen Ray of the State Bar of Texas disagreed with Mr. Glasheen’s characterization of its procedures. “A degree of investigation does go on,” she said.
Mr. Blackburn, the Innocence Project lawyer, defended his decision to bring Mr. Glasheen into exoneree cases as a way to get the biggest state payment for the clients. Disparaging the concerns of “do-gooder civil rights lawyers,” he said, “when you’re trying to get the most money, you’ve got to find the guy who’s best at doing that.” Getting paid is the reward of success, he argued. “If you can’t afford to practice this kind of law, nothing is going to happen.”
State Representative Rafael Anchia, who sponsored the Texas measure that increased the payments to exonerated prisoners, introduced a new bill in the Legislature’s current session that would expressly prohibit the kind of contract that Mr. Glasheen is defending and allow only a simple hourly fee for helping to file the forms. “I’m closing the door on that,” Mr. Anchia said.
[...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/us/10exonerate.html

Kevin Glasheen Fought to See Innocent Prisoners Compensated, Then Fought To Take Millions For Himself
Aug 11 2011

Steven Phillips is suing his attorney, Kevin Glasheen, over legal fees.

Steven Phillips was about to boil over. This, the attorneys in the room must have known, wasn't good for anyone.
At 51, Phillips had a delicate drawl, but the rest of him was all rangy wildcat sinew. He was a bit of a genetic oddity. He didn't lift weights, yet his neck was thick, tapered upward from a large pair of muscles that sat like small hillocks on his shoulders. He was a native Texan, born in Abilene, but he'd grown up in the Arkansas Ozarks and had, until just recently, handled himself just fine for 25 years in a couple of Texas prisons, including the Coffield Unit, populated by violent felons.
[...]

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2011-0...s-for-himself/

Jeff Blackburn, the Innocence Project of Texas' chief legal counsel, has come under fire for fees he took from exonerated prisoners.

Exonerated prisoners like Steven Phillips have been paid millions by the state. But no one's made more than their lawyers.

And now his ex wife wants some of the money
Exoneree's Ex-Wife Takes Him to Court For a Piece of the Millions He Got From the State
Dec. 12 2011

Steven Phillips spent 25 years in prison as an innocent man for a string of rapes he didn't commit. He was exonerated in 2008 based on DNA evidence. He has always said life is much more complicated outside prison walls. Better, sure, but complicated. Add around $4 million dollars in tax-free compensation from the state for his wrongful imprisonment, and he wound up a free man with a fresh start -- and a couple of heretofore unknown and completely novel legal troubles.

Seems like no sooner had he he settled with his former attorney after a prolonged and acrimonious fight over legal bills than he was due back in court again. This week, ex-wife Traci Tucker will ask a jury for a portion of Phillips's millions. It's what legal experts call a "case of first impression." There is exactly zero case law regarding what, if anything, a former spouse is owed if an innocent man gets convicted and the state compensates him handsomely for his troubles. The two were married for 10 years, almost all of it during his imprisonment. Phillips says he didn't see much of his wife after the first three years on the inside. They divorced in 1991. "She's been with a guy for 20, 25 years," Phillips tells Unfair Park. "They're married and have a child now. She didn't do that time. She didn't visit me down in prison or take care of me."

Tucker, on the other hand, said in an affidavit that Phillips became "bitter," confessed "bizarre and disgusting things" about his troubled sexual history as a Peeping Tom and serial genital exposer, and finally pushed her away completely. It was Phillips, she says, who asked for the divorce.

The couple has a child together -- a son, born the year after Phillips went to jail. Tucker has since been compensated under the Tim Cole Act for the unpaid child support.

An email from a spokesperson for Houston attorney Jerry Patchen, who is representing Tucker, says Phillips's compensation amounts, in part, to lost wages, which Tucker would have been entitled to under a divorce settlement as "community property."

Phillips's attorney, Tom McKenzie, says there is no language in the Tim Cole Act indicating that the compensation is for lost wages -- it's more like "winning the lottery 20 years after a divorce." Besides, he points out, Phillips was a roofer before he went to prison and the compensation provides $160,000 a year for each year of wrongful imprisonment, split into a lump sum and an annuity.

"The overall issue," McKenzie says, "is when people come into money, everybody comes out of the walls."
[,,,]

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfa...kes_him_to.php

[Whisper]

FORT WORTH (AP) — Hundreds gathered to unveil a historical marker at the grave of a man who died in prison but was later cleared by DNA testing of the crime that sent him there. U.S. Army veteran and Texas Tech University student Tim Cole was convicted of the 1985 rape of a fellow student. He always maintained his innocence, even though admitting to the crime could have earned him parole. In 1999, at 39, Cole died in prison of asthma complications.[...]

http://www.ktbb.com/?SPSID=106680&DB_OEM_ID=27300

[Apostle of Chaos]

Exonerated Inmates Fight Lawyer’s Lobbying Fees
The Lubbock lawyer teamed up with Innocent Project lawyer Jeff Blackburn to see the state compensation for exonerees raised. Now both men are under fire from their clients.

Kevin Glasheen is being sued for his billing in wrongful conviction cases.

Kevin Glasheen has billed Steven C. Phillips, above, for more than $1 million of his payments in a wrongful conviction case.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/us/10exonerate.html

Kevin Glasheen Fought to See Innocent Prisoners Compensated, Then Fought To Take Millions For Himself
Aug 11 2011

Steven Phillips is suing his attorney, Kevin Glasheen, over legal fees.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2011-0...s-for-himself/

Jeff Blackburn, the Innocence Project of Texas' chief legal counsel, has come under fire for fees he took from exonerated prisoners.

Exonerated prisoners like Steven Phillips have been paid millions by the state. But no one's made more than their lawyers.

And now his ex wife wants some of the money
Exoneree's Ex-Wife Takes Him to Court For a Piece of the Millions He Got From the State
Dec. 12 2011
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfa...kes_him_to.php

What a bunch of greedy bitches. Specially the wife.

[Whisper]

Larry Smith hugs his mother, Sherry Miller, outside the Marshall County Sheriff's Office on Friday.

A Marshall County man was released from jail Friday after serving more than 17 years in prison. He was even on Alabama’s death row for capital murder.

Larry Randell Smith hugged his mother, Sherry Miller, as soon as he walked out of the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office. Other friends waited to greet him.

Smith was convicted in August 1996 of the September 1994 robbery and shooting death of his friend, Dennis Harris.

He appealed, and his conviction and death sentence was upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court in 1999.

Smith continued to appeal, and in 2010, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously ruled that he had an ineffective attorney defending him.

On Friday, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit armed robbery in the first degree.

District Attorney Steve Marshall said prosecutors are comfortable with the resolution because the victim’s mother, Diane Maier, believes it is appropriate.

“The mother of the victim, who sat through the original trial as well as the [capital punishment hearing], firmly believed that Larry Smith did not pull the trigger and kill her son,” Marshall said.

“She believed he was involved, but also believes that Larry Smith can help that family determine who else was involved in the murder of her son. She felt it was very important that that be part of what happened.”

Maier is in poor health and was not present for this court appearance, but affirmed her support for Smith during a phone call with prosecutors Friday morning.

The district attorney said the plea agreement was also due to a lack of evidence.

“This is a murder case that’s almost 20 years old,” said Marshall. “For us to be able to go back and retry it was next to impossible.”

“I think any time you have delay in the prosecution of cases, it is to the disadvantage of the prosecution,” Marshall added. “It was a significant disadvantage in this case to have the facts presented to us almost 20 years later to have to deal with it.”

Prosecutors said some witnesses do not recall the circumstances of of their trial testimony before, and there are witnesses who have changed their testimony from what they initially told law enforcement.

Marshall said the investigation into the murder of Dennis Harris will continue, and as part of the plea agreement, Larry Smith will be interviewed further by investigators.

“One of the things that was important to [Harris' mother] is that Mr. Smith be released to be able to cooperate with law enforcement,” Marshall said.

“Mr. Smith’s lawyers have had an investigator working on this case for several years. They have information that otherwise law enforcement did not have available to them previously that they have been willing to provide and are obligated to provide.”

Larry Smith said he is ready to move forward with life after serving 17 years and 5 months in prison, much of it on death row.

“I’m just glad it’s over and I’m ready to go home,” he said.

Smith’s mother said she is ready to fix her son a home-cooked meal for the first time in nearly two decades.

“I’m on top of the world, I thank God for this, for his freedom,” Smith’s mother said.

“It’s been miserable. I can’t say the words of what I’ve been through. It’s been so depressing.

“I knew all these years my son was innocent. Something he did not do.”

Miller said her relationship with the victim’s mother has helped her through it.


“We’ve been good friends through all these years, she’s been wonderful support,” Miller said about Diane Maier.

“She knows that my son was innocent. She never had no doubts. From day one she knew he was innocent.”
[...]

http://whnt.com/2012/04/06/marshall-...ow/?hpt=ju_bn4

Larry Smith leaves the Marshall County Courthouse in handcuffs for the last time, as he prepares for his discharge

Larry Smith walks out of the Marshall County Jail

[CbabyRKO]

I absolutely adore Craig Watkins the Dallas DA who basically spent his first term in office clearing wrongfully convicted prisoners. He caught a lot of flack at first becoz no one wants to believe that an innocent man could be found guilty of a crime he didn't commit, but it happens.

[Whisper]

Conn. Abolishes Death Penalty

CNN) -- Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy has signed a bill into law that abolishes the death penalty, making his state the 17th in the nation to abandon capital punishment.
The law is effective immediately, though prospective in nature, meaning that it would not apply to those already sentenced to death. It replaces the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of release [...]

http://www.wtae.com/news/30955037/de...#ixzz1t52uB2eo