An $8,000 settlement was reached in a false imprisonment claim against the State of Washington.

Duane A. Cooper had been sentenced to a 60 month sentence for a class C felony on April 4, 1996. On May 14, 2002, Cooper was arrested and placed into custody for violation of his ...

Recent revelations of shoddy blood analysis at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) crime lab led to an investigation that uncovered at least 190 cases of serious blood work errors in criminal cases. Those cases included three death penalty convictions that resulted in executions, four other capital punishment cases where the prisoners remain on death row, and 40 cases that never went to trial.

The most common error was a failure of lab personnel to note in their reports the fact that a subsequent, more accurate test had shown that blood was not found after a less-accurate preliminary test indicated the presence of blood. Other errors included failing to mention inconclusive or negative results in repeated tests, making entries that contradicted the actual test findings, and claiming that no follow-up testing was done when it had been. The fact that such errors always favored the prosecution indicates they were intentional, not random mistakes or oversights.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper commissioned former FBI special agents Chris Swecker and Michael Wolf to conduct a comprehensive audit of SBI blood analysis cases between 1987 and 2003. Their investigation of 15,000 crime lab files, released in August 2010, revealed the ...

Earlier this year PLN reported on the phenomenon of suspects who falsely confess to crimes they did not commit. [See: PLN, April 2011, p.18]. As false confessions occur in wrongful conviction cases with disturbing regularity, this article revisits and expounds on this important topic and the tragic consequences that can ...

The State Bar of Texas has filed a lawsuit against Lubbock attorney Kevin Glasheen, alleging that he grossly overcharged clients in violation of the Bar’s Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct.

Glasheen, who represents over a dozen exonerated former prisoners, charged them about $5 million in combined attorney fees. He gave around $1.5 million to Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel of the Innocence Project of Texas, and kept $3.5 million for his law firm.
Glasheen is accused of having told his clients to forgo pursuing lawsuits and instead use the state’s compensation system. He then charged them 25% of the compensation money, which they could have obtained without legal representation.

In fact, an exoneree need only fill out a simple one-page form to request compensation, which doesn’t require an attorney. Some exonerated former prisoners, frustrated with waiting, filled out their own compensation forms and then were billed by Glasheen for 25% of the compensation they received nonetheless.

Glasheen sent Steven C. Phillips, an exoneree who spent 25 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted, a bill for $1 million. Yet according to Phillips, Glasheen never filed a single motion in court on his behalf. Phillips and another of Glasheen’s former clients, exoneree ...

On March 31, 2011, a man who had been falsely convicted of burglary, rape and sexual abuse accepted a $1 million settlement after being exonerated by DNA evidence.
Donald Wayne Good filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil rights suit in federal court against the City of Irving, Texas and ...

A Michigan federal jury awarded a former prisoner $1.27 million in a malicious prosecution lawsuit. After she was robbed at gunpoint, Tevya Urquhart was arrested, found guilty and sentenced to prison. After her successful appeal, Urquhart filed suit against the city of Detroit, as well as the officers involved in ...

By Matt Clarke

On April 12,2011, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion upholding the $2.5 million jury award and $250-per-hour attorney-fees award to two women who were wrongly convicted of felonies.

Kimberly Sykes and Tevya Grace Urquhart were wrongly convicted of larceny by conversion and false report ...

The Superior Court of California, Alameda County, entered a $26,203.80 judgment in a false imprisonment claim. Jorge Gallegos was a prisoner in the California Department of Corrections (CDOC) serving a 12 year sentence that began on September 14, 1995. In August of 2002, an agent of the CDOC informed his ...

A $26,500 settlement was reached in a wrongful imprisonment suit filed against the Washington State Department of Corrections (WDOC).

In November 1997, Benjiman Abolafya was convicted of third degree rape and sentenced to 60 months in WDOC custody. After receiving the applicable good-time credit, his earned release date was August ...

A $50,000 settlement was reached in an unlawful imprisonment suit filed against the Washington State Department of Corrections (WDOC).

On March 31, 1992, Jeffrey Westfall pled guilty to one count attempted second-degree rape and two counts of residential burglary and was sentenced to 128 months. At the time of sentencing ...