A man whose conviction was overturned after spending 10 years in prison has settled his wrongful conviction suit against the State of New York for $2 million.

Michael Clancy, 25, was working as an apprentice elevator mechanic when he was arrested for the March 30, 1997 murder of John Buono. ...

by Matt Clarke

In March 2012, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a $659,300 jury award in favor of two men who were arrested for public intoxication in New Orleans two days before Hurricane Katrina struck, and were then incarcerated for a month – sometimes under deplorable living conditions.

Robie J. Waganfeald and Paul W. Kunkel, Jr. were driving from Houston to Toledo when they stopped in New Orleans on August 26, 2005. They visited the French Quarter for about four hours and were arrested for public intoxication. Both men claimed they were not drunk, but that Kunkel fell down when his bad knee gave way as he stepped off a curb and Waganfeald was trying to help him regain his footing. Regardless of their guilt or innocence, what ensued was a nightmare by any standards.

The men were taken to the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) where they were stripped of their wallets and cellphones, booked and given access to the jail’s landline phones. The problem was that Hurricane Katrina was about two days from making landfall. This pending disaster resulted in so many people using their phones that the circuits overloaded, and the phones in OPP and other ...

by Matt Clarke

In a 7-0 opinion with two judges not participating, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held on February 15, 2012 that a former prisoner who claimed exculpatory evidence was withheld in his case, and who raised a free-standing claim of actual innocence based on the recantation of the prosecution’s primary eyewitness and deficient forensics evidence, had proven that he was actually innocent.

Richard Ray Miles, Jr. was convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1995, and sentenced to forty years in prison. During the trial an eyewitness identified him as the person who shot and killed one victim and wounded another, and a forensic expert testified that he had gunshot residue on his hands when arrested about 25 minutes after the shooting at a Dallas gas station. The fact that Miles’ clothing did not match that of the shooter, and that he was left-handed while the shooter was right-handed, did not deter the prosecution. Miles filed an appeal alleging tainted identification by the eyewitness. His initial state habeas action was based on the withholding of a police report which identified other people as the potential shooter. Both were denied.

Centurion Ministries, a non-profit organization that works on ...

by Matt Clarke

On May 18, 2012, the Supreme Court of Texas held that a former prisoner whose murder conviction was reversed due to ineffective assistance of counsel after he proved that he was likely actually innocent was entitled to compensation.

Billy Frederick Allen was convicted of a double homicide in 1984 and sentenced to 99 years. At his trial, a police officer, who was present with one of the fatally-wounded victims and two emergency medical technicians (EMTs), testified that the victim had identified the shooter as “Billy Allen.” Allen, who knew the victim, did not discover until many years after his conviction that the EMTs had heard a middle name, and one of them recalled it was “Wayne,” not Frederick. There was in fact a “Billy Wayne Allen” living in the area at the time of the murders; he was known as a violent drug dealer and had ties to the victim.

Based on this newly-discovered evidence, Allen filed multiple pro se petitions for a writ of habeas corpus without success, even when the trial court determined that his conviction should be reversed because it no longer had confidence in the verdict. Finally, Allen filed a habeas petition with ...

In 1971, during a time of racial unrest in Wilmington, North Carolina, shortly after schools were integrated and amid protests and race-based violence, a white-owned business, Mike’s Grocery, was firebombed. Responding firefighters claimed they were targeted by gunfire from unknown shooters at a nearby church.

Ten people were arrested, including Rev. Benjamin L. Chavis, Jr., a civil rights activist, and Connie Tindall, Marvin Patrick, Wayne Moore, Reginald Epps, Jerry Jacobs, James McKoy, Willie Earl Vereen, William Wright, Jr. and Ann Shepard. All except Shepard were black.

Following an initial mistrial they were convicted of arson and conspiracy in 1972 in connection with the firebombing, and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 15 to 34 years. The evidence against them included testimony from several witnesses, one of whom later recanted while another said he received a minibike in exchange for his testimony.

In 1978, then-Governor Jim Hunt reduced the sentences of the ten defendants, who became known as the Wilmington 10; two years later their convictions were overturned by the Fourth Circuit, which found that prosecutors had suppressed evidence in the case. See: Chavis v. State of North Carolina, 637 F.2d 213 (4th Cir. 1980). The Wilmington 10 were not retried. ...

Pentagon investigators are looking into allegations that an analyst at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory (USACIL) botched hundreds of DNA tests, casting doubt about lab results in hundreds of prosecutions. An accused soldier who was forced to resign over allegations of sexual misconduct that were allegedly verified by USACIL is just one case where the lab’s questionable findings have adversely affected military careers.

Army Staff Sgt. Kirk Holcombe, 31, a decorated veteran who served in Iraq, was forced to take a discharge under less than honorable conditions, which barred him from receiving veterans’ medical benefits. According to his attorney, Duane Kees, “I think USACIL intentionally withholds, I don’t want to say their bad laundry, but their bad paperwork ... [they know] exactly what’s going to happen when they turn it over. It automatically calls into question their findings.”

After returning home from Iraq, Holcombe was stationed at Fort Knox in Kentucky in 2010 when an 11-year-old friend of his stepdaughter said that he tried to unzip her shorts while she was sleeping – a charge that Holcombe denied. While child protective services noted inconsistencies in the girl’s story and held the allegation was unsubstantiated, USACIL claimed it found DNA ...

by Matt Clarke

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Christopher B. Epps, the Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC), was entitled to qualified immunity after a prisoner was held beyond the date he was supposed to be released.

Will Terrance Porter, a former Mississippi state prisoner, was convicted of breaking into a car and sentenced to five years. The trial court suspended four years of the sentence and ordered that he serve one year in an Intensive Supervision Program (ISP) run by the MDOC, which included house arrest.

While under house arrest Porter was arrested on suspicion of a misdemeanor. As a result, an ISP officer issued a Rule Violation Report and Porter was taken to an MDOC facility, where a disciplinary hearing officer determined he had violated the terms of his ISP. The MDOC’s records department decided that, since Porter’s ISP had been revoked, he was not entitled to have the last four years of his sentence suspended. After appealing the disciplinary action through the MDOC’s three-step grievance procedure, Porter filed a motion for post-conviction relief in state court.

The court found the MDOC had no authority to reinstate a suspended sentence, and ordered Porter, ...

A Missouri federal district court has entered a consent decree in a class-action lawsuit that prohibits county officials from holding people detained for more than 27 hours, excluding weekends and holidays, on a civil body attachment or other civil process related to child support unless they have seen a judge ...

In August 2011, a trio of Arkansas state prisoners, widely known as the West Memphis Three, walked out of prison after serving more than 18 years for a brutal triple homicide they did not commit. They were not exonerated, however, and are still seeking justice.

In May 1993 the bodies of three 8-year-old Cub Scouts, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch, were found in a drainage ditch near West Memphis, Arkansas. They had been stripped naked, bound and murdered. Three local teenagers, Michael Wayne “Damien” Echols, 18, Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, and Jessie L. Misskelley, Jr., 17, were arrested for the crime. Echols was considered a suspect because he wore black clothing, liked heavy metal music and had an interest in the occult.

Misskelley, who had a low I.Q., allegedly confessed to participating in the murders and implicated Baldwin and Echols. However, his “confession” was obtained during an almost 12-hour-long police interrogation that included leading and coaching by detectives, and contained obvious inconsistencies. He later recanted and refused to testify against his co-defendants.

Prosecutors alleged the murders were part of a Satantic ritual and claimed that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were part of a Satanic cult. Despite a dearth ...

by Matt Clarke

A succession of laws, cumulating in the most generous compensation package for wrongly convicted prisoners in the nation, has left Texas exonerees stuck at different levels of compensation depending on when they were proven innocent. Consequently, some earlier exonerees now claim they should receive compensation at the current higher rate.

Initially, Texas had no compensation law for wrongly convicted prisoners, and the only way for exonerees to recover damages for the time they spent in prison was to file a lawsuit. Even then, Texas juries rarely granted meaningful compensation. Between 1985 and 2001 only two exonerees were successful, receiving a combined total of $50,970.

Starting in 1992, Texas exonerees could apply for compensation of up to $25,000 for pain and suffering, with their total damages capped at $250,000 – provided they had pleaded not guilty and received a full pardon from the governor.

In 2001 the compensation was raised to $25,000 per year of wrongful incarceration with a cap of $500,000. The compensation amount was increased again in 2007 to $50,000 per year ($100,000 per year if on death row), with no cap. And in 2009 Texas lawmakers changed the compensation statute to $80,000 per year of ...