A man was held in prison for three months while wrongly accused of child rape because police refused to carry out a DNA test after reportedly saying it was a waste of public money.
[name withheld] is planning to sue police in Oklahoma for wrongful arrest and detention after he finally managed to persuade a court to carry out the test which proved his innocence.
The 24-year-old, from Sapulpa, near Tulsa, was arrested on April 6 last year after reporting an attack on the four-year-old daughter of this then-girlfriend.
He denied the charges, but investigators refused to believe his defense.
A lie detector test had shown him to be deceptive and, damningly, the victim had even identified him as the attacker after more than an hour of interrogation. - Lie detectors are junk science!
He was only released on July 3 when the DNA test matched that of a [name withheld #2], a convicted felon who lived in the same mobile home site as Mr [name withheld].
Mr [name withheld] said he was depressed while in jail, stopped eating and dropped to 130lbs from 190lbs.
[name withheld #2] was eventually arrested and charged with burglary, rape and lewd molestation and being held on a $750,000 bond awaiting a trial date.
Mr [name withheld]'s lawyer, Don Smolen, told Tulsa World: 'From day one he's begging them to do a DNA test. They said they weren't going to do that because it was a waste of taxpayers' dollars.
'Why wouldn't you do a DNA test? Even if it was him, why not do a test and confirm it? Why take three months?'
He has sent notice to the Creek County Sheriff's Office alleging wrongful arrest and detention as a result of police negligence.
The sheriff's office has three months to respond or face a potential civil rights lawsuit.
Video Description: Kirk Bloodsworth was the first person to be exonerated and released from death row by DNA evidence. In this film, Kirk describes his experience of being convicted for a crime he did not commit, being on death row and how the discovery of DNA testing led to his release. He also describes the limitations and roadblocks involved in using DNA to exonerate people on death row.
A New York police officer who brutally sodomized and inflicted oral sex upon a schoolteacher at gunpoint has not been convicted of rape, despite DNA evidence and witness testimonies about the violent attack.
New York’s state law excludes nonconsensual oral and anal sex from the definition of “rape”, calling them “sexual assault” instead, the New York Daily News reports.
“New York lags behind such liberal bastions as South Dakota and Tennessee in how we define rape,” said Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas, who last year introduced a bill that expanded the definition of “rape”, which failed to get passed. “New York should be at the forefront to protect crime victims.”
Lydia Cuomo, the 25-year-old schoolteacher who was victimized on the first day of her new job at a Bronx charter school, was sexually assaulted by off-duty police officer Michael Pena on Aug. 19, 2011. The cop asked her for directions to the subway at about 6:15 am, while she was waiting to be picked up by her principal.
But the NYPD officer suddenly pointed his 9-mm handgun at the woman’s face, threatening to kill her and violate her in every way imaginable. The officer let her live, but not without sexually assaulting her first.
And the evidence was there: doctors found Pena’s DNA on the victim’s undergarments, a witness testified to seeing the man penetrate the woman, and even NYPD officers admitted that Pena sexually assaulted Cuomo.
“I feel like essentially I had a silver platter of a rape case. I had witnesses, I had DNA, I had my own testimony, I had two cops,” Cuomo said, speaking publicly for the first time in an interview with the Daily News.
Pena was found guilty of committing a criminal sex act and predatory sexual assault, but fell short of being convicted of rape in Cuomo’s case – even though he was convicted of rape in several other cases involving different women.
“Anal’s not rape?” Cuomo said. “On what planet do you live? It never occurred to us that that’s not rape.”
The young woman is now going public with her case to try to change the New York statute limiting the definition of rape. States like Tennessee and South Dakota define forced sodomy and oral sex as rape, while New York has repeatedly failed to change its statute.
“I applaud Lydia Cuomo for speaking out and lending her support for the ‘Rape is Rape’ bill. Her courage in coming forward to shed light on this important issue is truly inspiring,” Simotas said in a statement. Although the bill was rejected by the Assembly in 2012, Simotas and Cuoma both hope to eventually get it passed.
Meanwhile, Cuomo has returned to work at the Bronx elementary school, but continues to deal with the trauma from the attack.
“My life has been shattered – my sense of security, my sense of safety, any and all independence,” she said.
Even though Cuomo’s offender has been sentenced to 10 years to life in addition to 75 years to life for two other rape charges that he pled guilty to, she believes it is wrong for the court to refuse to acknowledge that she too was raped. While Pena will likely spend most or all of his life behind bars, Cuomo hopes to change the definition of rape to incorporate other types of sexual assault.
This is just nothing but grandstanding, in our opinion. If he really wanted to help put a dent in crime, he'd get the DNA of ALL ex-felons and even all citizens, from birth. Then if a crime is committed where DNA is available, they can test it, then find the person.
02/04/2013
By John S. Adams
HELENA — Attorney General Tim Fox urged members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to move a bill aimed at cracking down on sexual and violent offenders who move to Montana from other states.
Fox, along with representatives from the state crime lab and law enforcement and local prosecutor groups, testified in favor of the measure, which would require sexual or violent offenders who move to Montana to submit a DNA sample to a state DNA database.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Cliff Larsen, D-Missoula, said current laws contain a “loophole” that leaves crimes unsolved.
“When a sexual or violent offender from another state is released from supervision, that offender is able to move to Montana and register as a sexual or violent offender, but that offender does not have to provide a DNA sample to be entered into the state database,” Larsen said. “This loophole affects public safety in that only by having these DNA profiles in the Montana state DNA database can many heinous unsolved cases be solved and can future crimes be prevented.”
Montana is one of four states that doesn’t require such sampling.
Fox said without the new legislation in place, law enforcement officers may be unable to solve many of the cold cases that are in the Montana state DNA database.
Fox said DNA sampling has lead to arrests in convictions in other states. He cited an example from Wyoming, in which authorities solved a 1990 rape case after a registered violent offender submitted a DNA sample to Wyoming’s state DNA database.
Fox said the victim was sleeping with her young child in bed at home when she was assaulted and raped at knife point. Investigators developed a DNA profile of the perpetrator based on biological evidence from the crime. The perpetrator was imprisoned in another state for an offense which, at the time, did not require a DNA sample be submitted for database storage. When the perpetrator was released from prison, he moved back to Wyoming, where he was required to submit a DNA sample when he registered as a sexual offender. When authorities entered the DNA profile into the database, it connected him to the 1990 rape case.
“This common-sense change not only gets Montana up to speed with most other states, but may lead law enforcement and prosecutors to criminals who should be in prison for unsolved crimes and prevent them from committing future harm against our children or other members of society,” Fox said.
No opponents testified against the measure Monday. The bill is expected to clear the committee later this week.
CBS News' 60 Minutes last night had a disturbing story on the subject of false confessions, honing in on police interrogation of juveniles in Chicago, which the story called the nation's false confession capital. In a bizarre twist, a Chicago prosecutor insisted she believed in the guilt of exonerated defendants even after DNA had cleared them and implicated a convicted rapist. She suggested the rapist who's DNA was discovered (who is now deceased) coincidentally wandered by an open field after the fact and had sex with the corpse of a 14 year old, AFTER the boys who'd confessed had committed the deed. The courts disagreed, though, based on a close analysis of the recorded confessions, and released them with an accompanying finding of actual innocence.
The story reminded me Grits failed to link to a recent story from the Texas Tribune about proposed legislation by state Sen. Rodney Ellis to require police to record custodial interrogations, which was one of the recommendations of the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions that the Texas Lege failed to act on last session. Critics of the bill rely on several highly questionable claims, but once you get past red herrings about cost and logistics, it comes down to these two: Criminals might "get off" if unrecorded confessions are suppressed and jurors would not understand often-aggressive interrogation techniques that may lead to an eventual confession.
I would like to see the study, but the reporter doesn't provide any link to it, so we can only assume what she is saying is true, and I don't like to take anyone's word for it. I can only assume this is the study (PDF) that they are referring to.
A new national report on the number of people falsely convicted of a serious crime reveals a baffling statistic about the Bay Area -- 10 people have been exonerated in Santa Clara County since 1989, while none have in Alameda County.
Does that mean Alameda County, with a higher crime rate, has never thrown the wrong person in prison, or at least hasn't admitted it?
Probably not, according to the report released Sunday by the National Registry of Exonerations. The authors, who teach at Midwestern law schools, say the registry is a work in progress, and they're asking the public to report any unlisted exonerations via an interactive database.
"One of the reasons we set up this registry is to beat the bushes for cases," said Samuel Gross, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and editor of the registry.
Even so, the study already has found that since 2000, exonerations have averaged 52 a year nationwide -- one a week.
The study defines an exoneration as when a defendant who was convicted of a crime was later relieved of all legal consequences of that conviction through a decision by a prosecutor, a governor or a court after new evidence of innocence was discovered.
David Angel, director of the conviction integrity unit of the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, said it's useful to look at the big picture the registry has begun to outline.
So far, the registry lists more than 885 cases since 1989, when the first exoneration using DNA evidence occurred. DNA helped resolve 40 percent of the cases in the study.
At least 1,170 other convicted defendants were cleared in 13 "group exonerations" after scandals in Los Angeles and elsewhere revealed police had deliberately framed innocent people, mostly for drug and gun crimes.
"This study confirms that the overwhelming number of convictions are accurate and just -- but they are not always," Angel said of the study, which notes that 2.3 million people are in prison in the United States. "We all know there are problems with the system, so if you want to improve it, you need good information."
To boost the reliability of eyewitness identifications -- a major cause of wrongful convictions -- every police department in Santa Clara County recently started videotaping or recording most witnesses as they pick out a suspect from photos or a live lineup.
Gross said he believes more exonerations have come to light in Santa Clara County than in Alameda County and the rest of the Bay Area for two main reasons: the presence of the Northern California Innocence Project (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) at Santa Clara University's law school and a vigilant press that has exposed overzealous prosecution and misconduct.
San Mateo, Contra Costa and Monterey counties each had one case. Twenty have turned up so far in Los Angeles County. Kern County, with 20 exonerations, is a special case, Gross said. From 1984 through 1986, at least 30 defendants were convicted of child sex abuse and related charges and sentenced to long prison terms in a series of interrelated cases. In most of these exonerations, the children who had testified that they had been abused recanted their stories.
Several factors contributed to false convictions in homicides, rapes, robberies and other crimes, including perjury or false accusation (51 percent), mistaken eyewitness identification (43 percent), official misconduct (42 percent), false or misleading forensic evidence (24 percent) and false confession (16 percent).
The numbers add up to more than 100 percent because multiple factors are frequently involved.
Defense lawyers also were clearly at fault in at least 104 cases, the study found. But the authors believe many more of the exonerated defendants would not have been convicted in the first place if their lawyers had done good work.
Gerald Uelmen, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said the report shows little progress has been made since he was executive director of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, which examined ways to guard against wrongful convictions.
"The bottom line is we are not doing much better in protecting the innocent," he said, "despite all the evidence uncovered in the past 10 years of wrongful convictions."
Why wait until a crime is committed before getting DNA? It should be taken from birth, IMO.
01/23/2012
By CYRUS R. VANCE Jr.
We have a tool that can prevent hundreds of murders, rapes and robberies each year at minimal cost to taxpayers. But we’re not using it in a majority of cases because a state law restricts its use.
DNA evidence solves crimes. Since 1996, when New York State’s DNA databank opened with strong support from my predecessor, Robert M. Morgenthau, the bank’s DNA samples have been linked to more than 3,500 sexual assaults, 860 murders, 1,100 robberies and 3,400 burglaries. Thousands of criminal convictions have resulted. Today, however, we are hamstrung by a law that does not authorize the collection of DNA following convictions of certain misdemeanors. This has meant that we can’t use DNA technology in more than half of our cases. By expanding the collection of DNA to include those convicted of all crimes in New York State’s penal law, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has called for, we will be better able to identify the guilty, exonerate the innocent, bring justice to crime victims and prevent additional crimes from occurring. - Once again, more disinformation. Just because you have DNA on file, doesn't mean it will prevent anything. It may deter many, but won't prevent crime.
In 2006, lawmakers decided to include some but not all misdemeanors in the DNA databank. Opponents questioned why someone convicted of a low-level misdemeanor — petty larceny, for example — should be required to provide a DNA sample. The answer can be found in the results of that decision: samples collected from people convicted of petty larceny have been linked to roughly 48 murders and 220 sexual assaults. Clearly, the 2006 expansion of the DNA program — which passed with only six dissenting votes in the State Assembly — confirmed that collecting samples from offenders convicted of minor crimes helps solve and prevent more serious crimes. - And just think of all the crimes that could be solved if it was mandatory that everyone, from birth, give a sample of their DNA, and those who are now adults, must go down to the local police station and submit a sample.
Whom does DNA bring to justice, and how does it prevent future crimes? The case of [name withheld] is instructive. Following his conviction in 2010 for robbing and assaulting a 74-year-old Manhattan man suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Mr. [name withheld] was required to submit a DNA sample, which typically is obtained by swabbing the inside of a person’s cheek. Three days later, that $30 test produced a match linking Mr. [name withheld] to a brutal 2004 assault and attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl in the stairwell of her Manhattan apartment building.
Mr. [name withheld] had been convicted multiple times in Manhattan courts for misdemeanor offenses that did not require providing a DNA sample. Had he been required to provided such a sample after his first misdemeanor conviction, the 2004 case would have been solved earlier and the 2010 attack prevented. - And if he had been forced to give a sample from birth, less crimes would've been committed because he's probably be in prison.
Crucially, DNA evidence does more than put criminals away; it also exonerates the innocent. One of my top goals as district attorney has been to avoid wrongful convictions. Having a tool like an all-crimes DNA databank at our disposal would go a long way toward helping us achieve that all-important goal of avoiding wrongful convictions.
Despite the truly remarkable benefits of DNA testing, some skeptics have questioned whether it is sufficiently regulated and reliable. This concern is understandable but unfounded. The collection of DNA is highly regulated in the eight state-of-the-art, accredited state labs that conduct criminal forensic analysis. Strict safeguards control the handling of DNA testing and results, including the storage of information by barcode (bar codes can be read) and not name, with criminal penalties for those who violate these rules. When testing leads to a match in the databank, samples are retested at least once and often twice. To date in New York, we have never had a “false positive,” or the misidentification of DNA from one person as the DNA of another. - I personally don't think DNA is this accurate, false positives have been known to occur.
Collecting DNA from all those convicted of all crimes has received overwhelming bipartisan support from across the state, including from crime victims, their advocates, exonerated defendants, the state and city bar associations, and the state’s district attorneys, police chiefs and sheriffs. But its passage has been stymied because other criminal justice legislation that does not enjoy such broad support has been tacked on to it. Let’s not repeat that mistake this year. - So, will these same advocates also be willing to submit their DNA as well, so if they ever commit a crime, they can be brought to justice quicker?
No law enforcement tool is perfect, and, as with a fingerprint, a DNA match at a crime scene is an investigative tool, not proof positive of guilt. But DNA is by far the most reliable evidence we have today — more than eyewitness accounts, testimony and even confessions. And importantly, as we try to make our justice system more fair, DNA is truly color blind. - Many innocent people are in prison because of eyewitness accounts, testimony and confessions.
Why not just collect DNA from everyone from birth, and those who do not have DNA on file, be sent a notice in the mail to visit the local police station to submit a DNA sample? If it saves crime, and people are not hiding anything, then they should be all for it, right?
01/11/2012
ALBANY — The addition of petit larceny to a list of crimes requiring DNA samples from convicted offenders has helped solve 51 murders, 222 sexual assaults, 117 robberies and 407 burglaries over the past 5 1/2 years, New York authorities say.
Now the Cuomo administration wants to expand the statewide DNA databank to include all misdemeanor convictions under the penal code, plus all felony convictions under other statutes such as traffic and business laws. That would mean DNA samples for DWI convictions and securities fraud, for example.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week called for putting New York "on the cutting edge of criminal justice" by becoming the first state to collect DNA on all crimes under the state's penal laws, noting that since 1996 the database provided leads to 2,700 convictions while helping free 27 people who were wrongly accused. - Why are the innocent in prison in the first place? You are suppose to convict someone on evidence "beyond the shadow of doubt," and not just based on personal opinions. If we did that, and also, if found innocent, rewarded the innocent large cash settlements, then less innocent people would be thrown in prison.
"We are missing an important opportunity to prevent needless suffering of crime victims," the governor said. "We are also failing to use the most powerful tool we have to exonerate the innocent."
The databank currently has genetic profiles from more than 386,000 criminals convicted of penal law felonies and 36 misdemeanors, plus samples from nearly 38,000 crime scenes. It links to the FBI's national system with more than 10 million offender profiles and some 400,000 samples of crime scene material.
Legislation to expand the databank passed both houses of the Legislature last year, but it died when lawmakers failed to reconcile the differences.
The expansion would not apply to the lowest-level violations like simple trespassing, loitering, disorderly conduct or privately possessing a single marijuana cigarette.
The Assembly bill had added provisions that would have required better access to DNA evidence for defense lawyers; prohibited other DNA identification indexes; increased the penalty for tampering or misusing DNA samples; and required police to get written consent before collecting a voluntary sample from someone for an investigation. It would require a state commission to review and report on confidentiality safeguards.
"Last year, when the bills crossed, we didn't have the governor's attention because of other matters like the $10 billion deficit," said Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, the bill's sponsor. "I hope that this year we will have the governor's attention and help in passing the bill. But I'd like to see it done the right way."
The Brooklyn Democrat is the Codes Committee chairman. He said, "There's very little in any DNA legislation to protect the innocent substantively because people wrongly convicted don't have equal access to the DNA like the prosecution does."
He said the bill would protect the public. "If somebody is wrongfully convicted, you don't have the real perpetrator, the real person behind bars," he said.
The database began in 1996 with the genetic material from convicted killers and sex predators. It has been expanded three times, in 2006 adding all remaining penal law felonies and three dozen misdemeanors.
Sen. Stephen Saland, a Poughkeepsie Republican and chairman of the Senate Codes Committee, introduced a bill to expand DNA testing to those convicted of any felony and any penal law misdemeanor, which he plans to re-introduce shortly. He said he doesn't want to embrace any ancillary issues but hasn't yet seen the details of Cuomo's proposal.
"DNA is a sword that cuts both ways," he said, helping both to prosecute criminals and exonerate the innocent.
The state District Attorneys Association and the victim assistance organization Safe Horizon say Cuomo's proposal would help convict the guilty and prevent future crimes.
But Robert Perry, legislative director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said unanswered questions remain regarding testing accuracy and sample contamination, the potential for fraud and abuse by authorities of supposedly incontrovertible evidence and the "fundamental fairness" of providing the accused with equal access to DNA information to try to establish innocence.
"In light of the scale of the increase in the number of samples that will be collected and archived in the databank, there must be an equally robust enhancement of oversight and quality assurance procedures," Perry said.
He noted the 2006 article by University of California law professor William Thompson recounting testing errors documented at DNA labs in that state and in Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, mainly because of inadvertent human errors from cross-contamination or sample mix-ups. Thompson wrote that defense lawyers should fight relentlessly for full disclosure of underlying laboratory records for DNA evidence and for court appointment of an independent expert to review them.
According to the New York Division of Criminal Justice Services, they have never had an incident where their DNA databank was compromised. All profiles are done at the state police laboratory, about 3,000 a month with a capacity for about 10,000, while eight other labs regionally help process crime scene samples.
While Cuomo administration officials were reluctant this week to talk about settling legislative differences, they said statistics make a compelling argument and show how frequently offenders convicted of currently non-DNA qualifying offenses are later charged with violent felonies.
DNA testing helped to free 27-year-old [name withheld] from prison in late December after he was wrongly convicted of rape.
“[name withheld]served seven and a half years of a 14-year sentence for a crime he was innocent of,” said Katie Puzauskas, an attorney and co-director of the Arizona Justice Project at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law. “Without DNA testing, we never would have been able to prove this.”
Nationally, 268 defendants have been exonerated with DNA evidence.
Puzauskas said that DNA evidence can often “make or break cases.”
Applicants, who are inmates in the state’s prisons, write to the Arizona Justice Project, known by the acronym AJP, and are then asked to fill out a DNA questionnaire. The questionnaire determines whether DNA testing will support their cases. If an applicant is accepted, the AJP will obtain DNA samples and send them to either a public or private lab in Arizona.
“The labs we use have to be accredited, meaning they follow the federal government’s standards,” Puzauskas said. She said that above all, the DNA must have been preserved properly in order to send it in for testing.
According to Todd Griffith, superintendent of the Arizona Crime Lab of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, most of the DNA evidence in criminal cases has been obtained recently, but with the AJP cases some of the samples are decades old. If the sample has not been stored properly, in a cold and dry environment, then testing is not possible.
“Since DNA started playing an active role in criminal cases, there have been significant advancements in technology,” Puzauskas said. “Now, you can test DNA the size of a needle head, whereas 10 years ago the sample needed to be as large as a quarter. This helps a lot with our cases.”
According to Puzauskas, sexual assault cases work the best with DNA testing because there usually is only one perpetrator and doctors typically use a rape kit on victims following the assault.
The most common type of DNA testing for a sexual assault cases in the AJP is called Y-STR — the kind that eventually freed [name withheld]. It tests samples that are on the male-specific Y chromosome. Since there is no female evidence in the Y-STR, the male component is easily detected.
The Y-STR testing is very reliable, Puzauskas said. The DNA test left no doubt that [name withheld] had not committed the crime.
Puzauskas said DNA can help solve crimes, but it is also instrumental in preventing wrongful convictions.
“If we start to use it more, it will be incredibly influential in preventing wrongful convictions,” she said.
Every day innocent people needlessly become victims of violent crimes. Most of these are committed by repeat offenders. By passing state legislation that enables law enforcement to collect DNA from felony arrestees, at the same time as fingerprints, your state can catch criminals sooner. That means you can prevent most of these crimes, save more lives, and provide more protection to the innocent.
So if they had the DNA of every single human being on file, how would that "prevent" crime or "protect" anybody? It won't. Just the usual disinformation to eradicate your rights, under the guise of safety. It might help arrest someone after the fact, but it won't prevent anything. And as usual, they attach a child's name to it, knowing the sheeple will pass it without questioning it. See the video below, and just listen to all the BS!!!!!!
Recently we were on hand for a conference call when John Walsh and his wife Reve went to the White House on July 27, 2006. On this day President Bush signed into law The Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act. The event was bittersweet for the Walsh family as it took place exactly 25 years to the day that their son Adam was abducted and murdered. The bill includes the following provisions: - It has NEVER been proven that Adam was sexually abused, nor who killed him. But they laid the blame on Ottis Toole. And it was also suspected that Jeffrey Dahmer killed Adam. So this law was originally passed on false accusations. I believe it was originally intended for child abusers, which is not necessarily sexual abuse, but could be parental abuse, emotional, physical, sexual, etc. Now it's mainly a way to punish sex offenders only, even those who had nothing to do with children. You do not see the others mentioned on the registry, why not?
Establish a comprehensive federal DNA database of material collected from convicted molesters, and procedures for the routine DNA collection and comparison to the database when someone has been convicted of such an offense. (Whomever wrote this, you'd think this was for child molesters only, but it's not. Also, what about people who physical or emotionally harm children, or even adults?)
Provide federal funding for states to track pedophiles using global positioning devices. (Again, this law was originally about child abuse, kidnapping, etc, but here they say pedophiles and not all sex offenders are pedophiles!)
Allow victims of child abuse to sue their molesters. (Does this include all child abuse, or just sexual abuse?)
As the face and driving force behind the hugely popular and effective TV show America's Most Wanted, John Walsh and his family are living proof that something devastating doesn't only create victims. - One side note, also keep in mind that John Walsh himself admitted he was a sex addict. So why isn't he on the registry? He said he got help and was "cured!" Should we know where he lives and works?
John Walsh: First let me say thank you all for your patience. I'm right here at the White House; we're actually shooting components of this Saturday night's show around the bill signing today. As I think many of you know, this is the 25th anniversary of the kidnapping of our six-year-old son, Adam, from the mall in Hollywood, Florida, so it's kind of a bittersweet day for us. My wife, Reve, will be here; and our 24-year-old daughter, Megan; and our 21-year-old son, Callahan; and our 11-year-old son, Hayden. They, of course, never met Adam, but Adam is a big part of their lives, so it's a very special day for us. - And don't they have child neglect laws about this? If someone left their child in a hot car, they would probably be charged with some crime. Why did she leave her young child alone in the store in the first place?
We're very, very honored that Congress, so many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle deemed this an important piece of legislation and named it the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act. That's a real honor. But lots of other parents worked on this bill; Mark Lunsford from Florida; I walked the halls last week with Elizabeth Smart and her father Ed; and I know Marc Klauss, Polly Klauss' father, has worked on this; and many, many other parents, so many parents will be here today, and survivors. - Yeah, you need a controversial bill passed? Name it after some child or person. That in of itself, should be illegal.
I really believe that this may be the most important piece of child protection legislation passed in the last 25 years. I've been here for several bill signings, but this one is a really tough piece of legislation, it has teeth in it, it has oversight, it has about $1.2 billion worth of money, which we still have to go back to Congress and get, but that's the budget. It will really change the way we deal with convicted rapists of our women and molesters of our children. - And to this day, the money is still not there. And what about abuse of women, or non-sexual abuse of children, and also men? Why is this bill all about sex when it has never been proven sex had anything to do with Adam's killing? Ottis Toole was a sick serial killer, so was Jeffrey Dahmer.
It will mandate the creation of a national sex offender registry kept up-to-date in every one of the 50 states. Every state, whether the state has a good registry, a bad registry, or no registry, will now be mandated to have this federal template and there will be an exchange between the registries. - And to this day, states are not implementing it, because it's unconstitutional, draconian, and cruel and unusual punishment, plus they stand to lose more money to implement it, if they do not take the 10% Bryne Grant incentive (aka bribe). To this date, only about three states have "significantly" implemented it.
In the bill there is a federal component, money to hire and train 500 new U.S. marshals, who will then be assigned to fugitive task force all over the country and they will go after these convicted sex offenders who are in non-compliance with their parole or probation. The Justice Department estimates that there are at least 100,000 convicted sex offenders who have disappeared through the cracks, who are at large right now and non-compliance with their sex offender probation, parole, or registry requirements. So these are 100,000 guys that are out there right now. - This 100,000 "goldilock" number has never been proven either, it's an assumption. Nowadays, since he has not received the money for the law, he's changed this to "100,000 Level 3, most dangerous" offenders to SCARE people into acting. Again, not based on facts.
It also mandates the collection of DNA from every convicted sex offender, which I believe will solve thousands of old crimes, cold cases, rapes and molestations. When we passed this bill on a state level in Florida, the DNA bill, several years ago, in the first six months 88 crimes were solved and 11 people over the course of a year were freed from jail that were innocent. So the DNA component will solve lots of crimes and get innocent people out of jail. - Hell, why not collect DNA from every human being? If it will help solve one crime, isn't it worth it? And if they actually used the DNA, it would also SET FREE many who have been falsely railroaded by DA's, prosecutors, lawyers, judges, police, etc. Really, 88 people freed. If it wasn't mandatory DNA be collected, then was the cases actually solved by this mandate, or are you just making it up?
It also mandates more federal prosecutors, particularly to prosecute Internet crimes, distribution of child pornography over the Internet, and for pedophiles who try to lure children over the Internet. It allocates 35 more FBI agents; five of those will be assigned to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to help in cybercrimes and to catch these guys. - And the laws will also create a ton of businesses who use fear to make millions.
It also, for the first time in the history of this country, mandates a national child abuse registry and background checks of people who want to become foster parents. Years ago I profiled a guy who was a foster parent and was using young boys in child pornography, so now to be a foster parent you will have to have a background check and prove you are not a convicted sex offender. - Well, that is not true. If it was indeed a child abuse registry, then we'd have parents who abuse their children through neglect (like your wife), emotional or physical, etc. But it's not, it's mostly a registry for those who have committed a sex crime. But, more and more, new crimes are being added, which is documented on this blog. Some non-sexual crimes are being placed on the registry, and also, more and more registries are popping up as well. Hell, pretty soon, we'll have one big ALL SINNERS registry, which I am 100% for. If it's okay for one group of people, then it's good enough for everyone. And what about convicted murderers or drug users/dealers? Are they going to be able to adopt a child?
So there are lots of really powerful, good components to this legislation (most of it unconstitutional). It was a long battle. Congressman Mark Foley (Yeah, he's a good example, see here and here) from Florida wrote it about 2.5 years ago, when we were talking about sex offenders in Florida. James Sensenbrenner (He's also part of other laws eradicating rights, like the Patriot Act and Real ID Act), the Chairman of the House Judiciary, got it passed three times, the last time being yesterday. And the Senate, on the Senate side, Bill Frist (Controversies) was a champion of the bill; Senator Oren Hatch (Controversies) introduced it to the Senate, along with Senator Joe Biden from Delaware, the democratic senator who became a champion of the bill. Senator Kennedy worked on it. Senator Leahy worked on it. Arlen Specter, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary, was a very strong advocate for the bill. Diane Feinstein. There are a lot of people who worked hard to perfect and fine tune this bill to make it as tough as it is. I really think it's a true bipartisan piece of legislation. Finally, after almost 2.5 years it is passed and I really think it will impact the way that this country's criminal justice system deals with sex offenders. - Again, proving it's all about punishing sex offenders, not child abusers.
Many small town sheriffs, many small town police agencies have said that they do not have the resources to go after sex offenders like the guy who allegedly killed the 19-year-old coed at Clemson University in South Carolina. He was a registered sex offender in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida, bragged about the fact that no one looked for him, he jumped the registry, violated his parole and probation, went to South Carolina and admitted killing that beautiful girl and said he may have killed other women, but he definitely raped women in other states because he said there was nobody looking for him (Are you just adding on crimes to fear monger?). So this will be a great resource for small agencies, the FBI, the marshals, and the ICE, the Immigration Customs Enforcement group from Homeland Security will all be part of this bill going out to hunt these guys down on a national level. Again, we are so honored that they named it after beautiful little Adam. - I'm sure you are. But again, it was never proven Adam was sexually abused.
In the years that you've been doing the show, has there ever been a situation when you've been say out in public and thought that you saw somebody that you had just profiled on the show?
John Walsh: Thank you for the compliments, David. That has never happened to me. We shoot the show all over the world, all over the country; we've done shows from the Persian Gulf, Ground Zero, Oklahoma bombing, etc., do them on the streets, and I've never, ever run into someone who was on the show.
Although one time I was told that when I was in Baltimore profiling a murderer and I was doing stand-ups there, that some of the people in the crowd had recognized him in the back of the crowd and that he disappeared and he was caught the next day. So I guess that's the closest that any fugitives have ever really gotten to me and I've never run into one.
It's probably not good for most people to take the law into their own hands. But if you did run into somebody like that, would you call the authorities or would you feel tempted, because of your passion for the job, to try and apprehend him, do a citizen's arrest?
John Walsh: No, I'm not a vigilante (I beg to differ); I don't believe in vigilantism (I beg to differ! You are making a law to punish sex offenders, not child abusers, which is based on assumptions, not facts, and the vengeance is obvious, even from your own book). I would certainly call law enforcement immediately. That's why America's Most Wanted has worked so well over the years. We are now up to 898 arrests of wanted fugitives, so close to 900. I believe people can make a difference and have the courage to make that call. But I always tell people don't do something stupid, don't put yourself in a very tenuous position to be hurt. Have authorities call the person. That's what I would do; I would call authorities right away. I'm not a cop and it's too dangerous to try to take down fugitives yourself.
My other question is in the tragedy that happened in your life that in some ways kind of kicked off this whole thing, I guess my question is is this in some ways kind of keeping Adam alive for you, in terms? Do you ever kind of sort of feel like he's right behind your shoulder, saying, "Thanks, Dad" or anything?
John Walsh: I absolutely do. Certainly Adam is the inspiration for almost everything my wife and I have done in the last 25 years. I was a pretty successful partner in a company that built deluxe hotels; we were building a $26 million hotel on Paradise Island when Adam was kidnapped. Certainly his murder changed our lives forever. - Yeah, and instead of going for a murderer registry, you went on assumptions of child abuse and sexual abuse, which has never been proven. Speaking of which, why don't we have a murderer registry?
My wife always puts it very succinctly, she says, "I cannot understand how anyone could hurt a child, let alone brutally and heinously murder a child like Adam was murdered." And so many of the parents there today are survivors of the murders of their children. But Reve always said we wanted to make sure Adam didn't die in vain. Many times I'll be out on the road and we're in the middle of the night in a dangerous place, seeing some very bad things and very depressing things, and Adam, I always believe that he's there as the inspiration, saying, "Dad, go get them. I'm proud of you." And I hope he is proud of me because I hope I will see him in the next life. - So, you believe in an afterlife. What about God? Jesus? Do you think Jesus would pose disinformation to get people to do something? I don't think so. Which is basically what you did, IMO.
Another case that I'm thinking of that happened last decade that you're well familiar with was the Jimmy Ryce case as well. Those cases just really, I think, changed the way we looked at protecting our children. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the world in 1981 versus the world now in terms of the things that parents didn't do then because they didn't even think about doing then, the things that parents do or should do now because it's a much different world?
John Walsh: You're absolutely right; it is a very much different world. Reve and I look back at how naïve we were in 1981 (And why were you not charged with child neglect? Which would put you on the same registry? As people in congress have said, "we can always use a good tragedy for our benefit," or something like that.). Reve was right three aisles away from Adam and was a great and still is a great mother - we've had three children since Adam was murdered - and a very protective mother, and it happened in an instant. The Ryces will be here today, Don and Claudine Rice; as will be Mark Lunsford (Whose own son molested a child and received 10 days in jail and is NOT on the registry, why not?).
Look at all the terrible cases that have happened in my home state of Florida (Florida, IMO, is corrupt as hell). Look at all the support we've gotten from all the good people in Florida, but look at the cases. Most of the time it was a serious repeat offender: Carlie Bruscia, that guy had 17 convictions; John Couey that murdered Jessica Lunsford, 22 arrests. He was in violation of his sex offender probation and parole. He should have never been out on the streets. At least he should have been monitored, certainly specifically with an ankle bracelet.
So I always tell people that it isn't 1981, it's not 1950, it's not All in the Family/Father Knows Best, it's a difficult, difficult time. Now we have the Internet. We always talk about people telling their children, "Be careful when you're waiting for the school bus or walking home. Don't get near a car if it approaches." Now unfortunately the predators are in our living rooms, talking to our children over the Internet. - Studies show that 90% or more of all sexual crimes occur in the victims own home, not some stranger. Stranger kidnappings are rare.
We've all seen the recent Datelines and we've been doing at America's Most Wanted for years; these guys are absolute experts at convincing children that they're another sympathetic 12-year-old or 13-year-old child. They try and lure that child to the mall or somewhere where they think they can get that child, and that child never knows they're talking to a 30-year-old man or a 40-year-old pedophile who's out there to hurt them. - Come on, kids are very trusting in nature, it doesn't take an "expert" to lure a kid a way. See here or here.
So times have changed. The Internet is a great thing, but Interpol and the FBI say that child pornography over the Internet alone has become a $4 billion business. So it is a very different world than I grew up within, it's a very different world than it was in 1980, but I think people are aware and I really think this bill today is going to send a loud message. It only deals with convicted sex offenders, only the level one, the most violent ones, but it sends a message "You messed up one time, you hurt a woman, you hurt a child, but we have the right now to punish you. We have the right to know where you are. We have the right for that soccer mom to check a Web site and know if there's a convicted serious sex offender in their neighborhood." I think today's going to be a loud voice for a lot of victims that will be in the Rose Garden with my wife and I. - So in the above highlighted statement, he proves once again, the law is about punishing sex offenders, not child abusers, and it's not just for "serious" sex offenders, it's for ALL, even non-sexual crimes! And it doesn't account for all the other "crimes" that can land you on the registry. Kidnapping, urinating in public, two teens having sex, etc.
One of the other things that has changed in 25 years is that the police and law enforcement agencies are also much more better equipped to deal with this, aren't they?
John Walsh: Absolutely, but the real problem is, and I've seen it firsthand on America's Most Wanted, this is a country of 50 little countries called states, and there are 17,000 police agencies in the United States and 27 federal agencies and they still don't exchange information, they don't have the resources. Many times you'll have a case where it's just a one-man sheriff department, maybe a local chief of police with two people in his department; they don't have the resources to go after these sex offenders. This is what this bill will do. - What about going after all other criminals? Like murderers, gang members, drug dealers/users, thieves, DUI offenders, etc? Why not a registry for all other criminals?
There are going to be pilot programs in every state, teaching cops about cybercrime, about how to put cybercrime units together, how to track sex offenders. This bill is really a boon for law enforcement because it will give resources that teach cops who are more than willing to say, "We don't have the training. We don't have the manpower or womanpower and we really want to help catch these guys." So this is one really big component of this bill.
With the advent of DNA evidence and other things that help crack cold cases, I know what you've said before, but do you have any hope that they will ever find the person who killed Adam?
John Walsh: I never give up hope. I always talk about how my wife and I have never gotten justice. A lot of people think that Ottis Toole, who died in a Florida prison for some horrible crimes, he died of cirrhosis and AIDS in prison, was never charged. The sad thing is that they found a piece of bloody carpet in his car years ago when he was a suspect, and there was no DNA, and unfortunately the Hollywood police over the years misplaced that carpet, which is a real tragedy, because the FBI lab said to me, "Mr. Walsh, if you could give us that carpet, even now, in one day we would tell you whether Adam was in that car or not and whether that man, who is the main suspect, murdered Adam." - You can get and analyize DNA in one day? I don't think so. If that is true, then why does DNA evidence take so long these days?
So I'm a great believer in DNA; I've often called it the fingerprint of the 21st century. This mandatory taking of the DNA of these sex offenders I think is going to get justice for thousands of victims. I can't imagine how terrible it would be to be in prison, convicted of sexual molestation or rape, and be innocent, and it will free the innocent. So this bill has a huge DNA component. - If you believe it so much, why not submit your DNA and take the DNA of every single human being on the planet? If it's so great and will help solve crimes, why not?
I wondered what you thought of the book Lost and Found and if you had any parts of it that spoke to you, aside from the profile of yourself and Reve?
John Walsh: I think that book, Lost and Found, it's a passionate statement about the victims, it's a photographic journey, and it's something I think all parents should probably take a look at. It bothers me when people say, "It can't happen to me," and you look in that book and say, "It's happened across all socioeconomic lines." It happens in the ghetto. It happens in Beverly Hills. It happened in the middle of a beautiful home in Salt Lake City.
The Smarts are in there, and today the Smarts will be in the Rose Garden and so will so many other parents of missing and murdered children. Elizabeth, of course, is a happy ending. But there will be a lot of other parents today who helped me work on this bill. It will be kind of a bittersweet day for Reve and I, and we all say the same thing that people in the media never seem to get, we all say, "We don't want to be here. We didn't choose to be here, but we're here because we want to honor our children and fight back."
The book is a great book. Today is going to be a bittersweet day, but it's a great day I think for children out there who may not be victimized because of this bill. - This bill doesn't prevent any crime, nor protect anybody. You need to get off Fantasy Island!
What is the best way for people to get a copy of this book? I think it might only be available through the Missing Children's.
John Walsh: They can certainly call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 1-800-THE-LOST. It's a toll-free number and they have a wonderful Web site, www.missingkids.com. I would even ask for it in book stores, but you can certainly call toll-free, 1-800-THE-LOST.
Right, it does not seem to be, for some reason, available in book stores.
John Walsh: It should be.
You did bring up an internet component. The pedophiles are using it, the predators are using the Internet, and I think if parents would learn the language that their kids are using that they would have a leg up on protecting their children.
John Walsh: Absolutely. You're 100% right. I always tell parents don't let kids take that computer into their bedroom, put it in the family room or living room and monitor there. There's all kind of software. Cox Broadcasting has a wonderful Web site, www.coxtakecharge.com, that teaches parents all the lingo. I even asked my son, "You're on a Web site here, what's that POS mean?" and he says, "Dad, it means 'parent over my shoulder,' we tip each other off." You're right, they have their own lingo. You should have the right to know, even if you're not computer savvy. - You do have the right, it's called parenting. Also, the above site is no longer there, but you can go here.
There are safeguards and there are software to block certain sites, there's software to check what chat rooms your kids are in. Tell your kids to never give out information. Use an anonymous name in that personal profile so that that person can't track you. It may be a 50-year-old pedophile that you think you're talking to a 12-year-old kid. - And now, the President and others are trying to make everyone have online ID's, a reversal of what John says above.
John, the DNA component in the bill is very impressive. Of course, it was introduced here in Florida a year ago, I believe. What do you feel, beyond just the sex offenders and the pedophiles and predators, I think this will have a component in solving other crimes; don't you?
John Walsh: Absolutely. The DNA may solve lots of other crimes, not only sex offences and sexual molestations (But if the bill is about sex crimes, then are you saying you will also be collecting DNA from all other criminals? Or is this another mistake?). DNA has broken many other cases where DNA is a component. This isn't just targeted towards sex offenders; it's targeted toward child pornographers. Interpol says that child pornography is a $4 billion, run in many components by the Russian mob, some members of the Romanian mob, people in Amsterdam. So this bill is going to have some international implications too. - So, are you going to go to these countries and make them all register as well?
Now, John, on the America's Most Wanted program will you be doing any profile on the latest problems we're having here in Florida on human trafficking?
John Walsh: We do; we're going to do a special show this Saturday night around the passage of this bill. We'll be profiling several wanted pedophiles (Yeah, more BS to make it look like all sex offenders are pedophiles! And people wonder where the pedophile hysteria came from?) and we have always been involved in trying to stop human trafficking. So this week will be a very special show on America's Most Wanted this Saturday night.
Thank you very much and congratulations.
John Walsh: Thank you. Unfortunately, the Secret Service is here, telling me that I have to go out to the Rose Garden. I'm sorry for those of you who couldn't ask questions. It has been an incredibly busy day, but a really wonderful, productive day. I thank all of you for your wonderful comments. We're still battling. We're still fighting. So I have to go. God bless you. Thank you.
How exactly does collecting kids DNA protect them or prevent crime again? It doesn't, it's only an after the fact Big Brother scenario. I am sure they are collecting this in some registry somewhere, and eventually they will want your DNA as well, to be "safe," and "for your safety!" Read the user comments here (It seems a lot of people don't like Mr. Walsh much, except those in government), and here. He "claims" it will "safeguard" your children. How exactly?
Why not take blood at birth, then they'd have everyone's DNA on file. So then, when a crime is committed, they can go directly to the person and arrest them. If it's good enough for some criminals, then it's good enough for everyone else, IMO.
Yep, attach a child's name to a bill and everyone will pass it, regardless of what rights it tramples on. This bill is named "Katie's Law," after another child. You know, the "for the children politics?"
Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill that the U.S. House of Representatives approved on Tuesday.
By a 357 to 32 vote, the House approved legislation that will pay state governments to require DNA samples, which could mean drawing blood with a needle, from adults "arrested for" certain serious crimes. Not one Democrat voted against the database measure, which would hand out about $75 million to states that agree to make such testing mandatory.
"We should allow law enforcement to use all the technology available to them... to reduce expensive and unjust false convictions, bring closure to victims by solving cold cases, better identify criminals, and keep those who commit violent crime from walking the streets," said Rep. Harry Teague (Contact), the New Mexico Democrat who sponsored the bill.
But civil libertarians say DNA samples should be required only from people who have been convicted of crimes -- and argue that, if there is probable cause to believe that someone is involved in a crime, a judge can sign a warrant allowing a blood or cheek sample to be forcibly extracted.
"It's wrong to treat someone as guilty before they're convicted," says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute. "It inverts the concept of innocent until proven guilty."
"Suspension of the rules is supposed to be for praising the winner of the NCAA championship or renaming Post Offices," Harper says. "Things like collecting Americans' DNA are supposed to be fully debated in Congress."
In a surprise move, as the U.S. Congress was expanding the FBI's DNA database, the UK's new coalition government was pledging sharp curbs on its own databases.
Created in the mid-1990s, the UK National DNA Database originally was supposed to store data on convicted criminals, but grew to include records on over 5 million Britons including many who were only arrested on suspicion of a crime.
UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg promised once-in-a-century privacy reforms in a speech on Wednesday: "We won't hold your Internet and email records when there is just no reason to do so. CCTV will be properly regulated, as will the DNA database, with restrictions on the storage of innocent people's DNA. Britain must not be a country where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question."
Background
The United States has followed a similar pattern: first, DNA was collected from convicted criminals, and then the practice was expanded to sweep in Americans arrested on suspicion of a crime.
A 2000 federal law called the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act required that DNA samples be taken from anyone convicted of or on probation for certain serious crimes. This was challenged in court on Fourth and Fifth Amendment grounds, but a federal appeals court upheld (PDF) the DNA collection requirement as constitutional.
A second bill that President Bush signed in January 2006 said any federal police agency could "collect DNA samples from individuals who are arrested." Anyone who fails to cooperate is, under federal law, guilty of an additional crime.
In addition, federal law and subsequent regulations from the Department of Justice authorize any means "reasonably necessary to detain, restrain, and collect a DNA sample from an individual who refuses to cooperate in the collection of the sample." The cheek swab or blood tests can be outsourced to "private entities."
A May 2009 ruling from a federal judge in California was the first decision to say that police can forcibly take DNA samples from Americans who have been arrested but not convicted of a crime. U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Hollows said the requirement of DNA-sampling felony arrestees did not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable searches and seizures" -- but noted that he took no position on whether or not DNA sampling for misdemeanor offenses was reasonable and constitutional.
But that law applied only to federal agencies, and the bill approved this week would provide a strong incentive for state and local governments to follow suit.
If states follow suit, it's difficult to overstate how many more DNA samples would flood into the FBI's Convicted Offender DNA Index System (CODIS) database. Federal agencies arrested about 133,000 people in 2004, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute under a Justice Department grant.
But local and state governments arrested nearly 14 million Americans that year, not counting traffic offenses, according to FBI data.
Rep. Teague's proposal would extend DNA sampling and testing to anyone arrested on suspicion of burglary or attempted burglary, aggravated assault, murder or attempted murder, manslaughter, sex acts that can be punished by imprisonment for over one year, and sex offenses against minors. The attorney general would be required to report to Congress which states have and have not signed up for the DNA database.
The legislation would allow states to receive 15 percent "bonuses" from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. The program gave out $165 million in local funding and $318 million in state funding for fiscal year 2009, not counting stimulus grants.
"We're strongly opposed to expanding collection," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. He suggested the U.S. should follow the lead of the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled two years ago that holding DNA samples from people arrested but not convicted of a crime violates their privacy rights.
As long as you have lawyers and DA's who base their careers on how many convictions they get, then this will always occur. They want convictions and could care less about real evidence. If the evidence is not there, then you must acquit, well, that's how it used to be!
‘There can no longer be any doubt that an innocent person has been executed. The question now turns to how we can stop it from happening again,’ Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck says
An exhaustive new investigative report shows that Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004, was innocent. The report comes three years after the Innocence Project released analysis from some of the nation’s leading forensic experts who found that the central evidence against Willingham was not valid. The Innocence Project also obtained public records showing that Texas officials ignored this evidence in the days leading up to Willingham’s execution.
Willingham was convicted of arson murder in 1992 and was executed in February 2004. His three young children died at a fire in the family’s Corsicana, Texas, home. At Willingham’s trial, forensic experts testified that evidence showed the fire was intentionally set. A jailhouse informant also testified against Willingham, and other circumstantial evidence was used against him.
A 16,000-word report in the September 7 issue of the New Yorker deconstructs every facet of the case, finding that none of the evidence against Willingham was valid. Prior to the New Yorker’s investigative report, by David Grann, the forensic science had been debunked as completely erroneous (including in a 2004 investigative report in the Chicago Tribune), but the other evidence was never examined closely.
“The New Yorker’s investigation lays out this case in its totality and leads to the inescapable conclusion that Willingham was innocent. There can no longer be any doubt that an innocent person has been executed,” said Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck. “The question now turns to how we can stop it from happening again.”
“As long as our system of justice makes mistakes – including the ultimate mistake – we cannot continue executing people,” Scheck said. “This case also highlights serious problems with forensic science in this country. The vast majority of forensic scientists are honest, capable, hard-working professionals, but we aren’t giving them the tools they need to do the job. Congress needs to create a National Institute of Forensic Science that can spark research to determine the accuracy of forensic disciplines and set standards for how our system of justice uses science.”
In May 2006, the Innocence Project (which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law) formally submitted the Willingham case to the Texas Forensic Science Commission, along with information about another arson case and a request that the panel order a review of arson convictions across the state. In the other arson case, Ernest Willis was convicted of an unrelated arson murder and sentenced to death in 1987, and he served 17 years in prison before he was exonerated. The May 2006 filing included a 48-page report from an independent five-member panel of some of the nation’s leading arson investigators, who reviewed more than 1,000 pages of evidence, testimony and official documents in the two cases.
In the report, the arson experts – with a combined 138 years of experience in the field – say that neither of the fires which Willingham and Willis were convicted of setting were arson. The expert report notes that the evidence and forensic analysis in the Willingham and Willis cases “were the same,” and that “each and every one” of the forensic interpretations that state experts made in both men’s trials have been proven scientifically invalid.
In 2007, the Texas Forensic Science Commission announced that it had accepted the Innocence Project’s complaint and would launch an investigation. The commission contracted with Craig Beyler, a widely respected arson expert, to conduct an independent review of the evidence. Last week, Beyler filed his report with the commission, finding that the forensic analysis in Willingham’s case was wrong. The commission announced that it is reviewing Beyler’s report and will review other evidence before issuing its conclusion next year.
“The Forensic Science Commission is still looking at this case and the broader issue of arson convictions statewide. Members of the commission are clearly taking this very seriously, carefully and thoughtfully, and they should have the space to do their work,” Scheck said. “The Forensic Science Commission is not going to determine whether an innocent man was executed. The New Yorker has already done that. The commission will determine what went wrong with the forensic analysis, how widespread the problem is and how we can be sure similar analysis is more reliable in the future.”
Further tests to see how far they can push the envelope of eradicating peoples rights. A constitutional amendment? Hell, why not just shred the constitution and be done with it? Oh yeah, little by little so the sheeple get accustom to it.
02/17/2010
By Marshall Griffin
JEFFERSON CITY - The Missouri Senate has given first-round approval to a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow laws requiring DNA collections from criminals to be applied retrospectively. - And ex post facto laws are unconstitutional, forbidden by the constitution, but it's apparent those who took an oath of office to defend the constitution, meant to take an oath to destroy it, which they are doing very well.
The Missouri Constitution forbids retrospective laws that mandate new restrictions or requirements based on past actions. The prohibition contributed to a recent State Supreme Court ruling that invalidated some sex offender restrictions.
The resolution's sponsor, State Senator Matt Bartle (Contact) (R, Lee's Summit), says an exception needs to be allowed for collecting DNA samples from criminals. - So how many other "exceptions" are we going to make in the future as well? You took an oath to defend the constitution, which you clearly are not doing!
"The practical effect (of the status quo) may very well be that people who've committed rapes and murders that we were able to solve by virtue of the fact that we had a DNA profiling system in place would walk free," Bartle said.
"I don't think there's any limit in the future what legislatures could add to the DNA profiling laws...and so my concern is, what if five years from now a legislature comes in and (says), 'We're going to require you to give DNA in order to get a conceal and carry permit?'" Justus said. - Exactly, when they get a way with it now, you can bet they will push the envelope more and more!
The resolution passed on a voice vote. It needs one more vote by the full Senate before moving over to the Missouri House.
"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." - Abraham Lincoln
and his wife Reve went to the White House on July 27, 2006. On this day 
signed into law The 
, it's a passionate statement about the victims, it's a photographic journey, and it's something I think all parents should probably take a look at. It bothers me when people say, "It can't happen to me," and you look in that book and say, "It's happened across all socioeconomic lines." It happens in the ghetto. It happens in Beverly Hills. It happened in the middle of a beautiful home in Salt Lake City.
