by Derek Gilna
Shawnnon Hale, 24, wrongful accused of felony rape and jailed for 61 days, was released from custody in Denver, Colorado in early 2015 when the police crime lab acknowledged it had mislabeled a DNA sample that incorrectly identified him as the perpetrator. As a result of his arrest and incarceration, Hale filed a federal civil rights suit accusing crime lab technicians Eric Duvall and Brian Pirot of “objectively unreasonable” actions.
The complaint claimed that “Defendants Duvall and Pirot engaged in their respective actions and inaction with reckless disregard and/or gross negligence,” which resulted in Hale’s “unreasonable seizure ... causing him to suffer a loss of freedom, loss of income, reputational damage and mental and emotional distress.”
Hale had steadfastly maintained his innocence both before and after his arrest for sexually assaulting a woman who had been at a party he attended in July 2014, stating he never had contact with her. “No, that’s not possible,” he said. Denver police officers had recovered a cigarette butt that allegedly contained his DNA, but it was discovered after his arrest that the DNA sample had been misidentified by the crime lab.
“The Denver Police Department is in the process of ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Derrick Deacon spent more than 24 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. After having his conviction thrown out by an appeals court and being found not guilty in a subsequent retrial, Deacon, 61, sued the City of New York for malicious prosecution.
On November 1, 2016, the New York Daily News reported that he had accepted $6 million to settle his claims.
Deacon was charged with and convicted of the April 1, 1989 shooting death of 16-year-old Anthony Wynn in a Brooklyn apartment hallway. The conviction was obtained on the basis of an eyewitness, Abdullah Pickering, who fingered Deacon – reportedly a drug user – in order to collect $1,000 from a Crime Stoppers hotline. Deacon insisted that he was not near the scene of the crime and proclaimed his innocence. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life.
The case began to unravel in 2001, when a federal informant, Trevor Brown, told the FBI that minutes after Wynn was murdered, a gang member named Pablo confessed the crime to him. According to Brown, Wynn was killed by Pablo during a botched robbery attempt.
It took eight years, but in 2009, ...
by Joe Watson
Anna Michelle Young, who was wrongfully arrested and incarcerated two days after Christmas in 2003 in Hancock County, Ind., agreed to settle her suit against Sheriff Nicholas Gulling, et al, in August 2008 for unspecified damages.
The Hancock Superior Court allegedly ordered the clerk of the court to mistakenly issue a warrant for Young’s arrest on Dec. 19, 2003, for failure to appear. The warrant was served eight days later by a sheriff’s deputy who arrested Young and processed her into the Hancock County jail.
Young allegedly explained to the deputy and other jail employees that her arrest was improper, but the jail took no action to verify Young’s claims. Once she was taken before Hancock County’s superior court, the court purportedly acknowledged that she had been mistakenly arrested and detained, and it ordered Young to be immediately released.
On Dec. 21, 2005, Michael J. Tosick, attorney for Young, filed suit against Gulling, as well as two jail employees. The case was removed to U.S. District Court, and Young sought relief pursuant to 42 U.S.C.S. §§ 1983, 1988, including the recovery of her own costs and attorney’s fees, as well as damages. The parties agreed to settle ...
by Joe Watson
Matthew Ditzhazy, who was acquitted of charges that he murdered his girlfriend’s 19-month-old son, reached a $750,000 settlement agreement in July 2008 with the city of Lincoln Park, Mich., near Detroit, where he spent a year and a half in jail.
Three adults were in the house ...
by Matt Clarke
Brian Edward Franklin was a Fort Worth, Texas police officer for more than a decade before he was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child and sentenced to life in prison in 1995. On April 6, 2016, the highest criminal court in Texas reversed his conviction, saying the state’s case against him relied on perjured testimony. The testimony in question was that of the alleged victim. The court noted that her perjury had caused other witnesses to give false testimony as well, depriving Franklin of due process.
The reversal allowed the state to prosecute Franklin again using the same indictment. However, there was no DNA or other forensic evidence to support the allegations of sexual assault. And since Franklin’s conviction was reversed based on perjured testimony – upon which the prosecution’s case rested – it would be extraordinarily difficult for prosecutors to win a conviction at a second trial.
On May 4, 2016, two days after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued its mandate reversing the case, Franklin appeared before state District Judge Wayne Salvant for a bond hearing. The bond was set at $10,000 and Franklin was released the next day.
In state habeas ...
by Christopher Zoukis
According to Bryan Cox, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “claims of U.S. citizenship of individuals encountered by ICE officers, agents, and attorneys are immediately and carefully investigated and analyzed.” However, the United States has a long history of mistakenly deporting its own citizens; since 2003, more than 20,000 U.S. citizens have been detained or deported by immigration officials. [See: PLN, March 2013, p.40].
Consider the case of Andres Robles Gonzalez, who was deported to Mexico at age 19 despite the fact that he was an American citizen. For over three years he tried to convince authorities of his citizenship. Eventually, the evidence to support his claim was found in an unusual place: the U.S. government’s own records.
Armed with that information, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued Gonzalez a certificate of citizenship. Problem solved? Not quite. Despite acknowledging his citizenship and issuing the certificate, USCIS could not provide that evidence to Gonzalez because he had already been deported.
Jonathan Crawford, the New Orleans-based field director for USCIS, nicely summed up this Catch-22 when he told Gonzalez, “Your N-600 Application for a Certificate of Citizenship was approved on June 15, 20011 [sic]. ...
On April 2, 2015, the New York State Court of Claims awarded a former prisoner $90,000 for being incarcerated and subjected to parole after the expiration of his sentence.
The New York Department of Corrections and Community Services failed to credit Alvin Torres with the proper amount of jail time ...
Leonard Robinson was arrested by Chicago police for battery. That charge was eventually dropped, but while he was held in jail for two days, then charged with killing his girlfriend's three-year-old son forty-one months earlier. He remained in jail another three years until a jury found him not guilty of murder. He filed suit in state court alleging police had no probable cause to arrest him for murder and no scientific evidence or witness testimony linked him to the child's death.
Without any written or recorded proof of the matter, Detective Vincent Humphrey, who is not a homicide detective and never worked on the child's case, claimed Robinson confessed the murder to him. Robinson claimed Humphrey falsely claimed there was a confession and had inappropriate communications with his wife multiple times which he failed to log. He said Humphrey kept Robinson in jail on the bogus charge so he could hit on Robinson's wife.
During the criminal trial, the judge barred evidence regarding the alleged confession and questioned Humphrey's veracity, concluding that no such confession was ever made.
At the first civil trial, the jury hung. At a second trial which concluded on May 1, 2015, Robinson was awarded $300,000 ...
On December 2, 2014, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a district court jury verdict which awarded $13 million to a man who spent 12 years in prison for a murder conviction later overturned for malicious prosecution and Sixth Amendment violations. The verdict came just a little over one year after the Sixth Circuit reversed the man's conviction when it granted his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
David Ayers was convicted in 1999 for the murder of a Cleveland woman, Dorothy Brown. After initially focusing their attention on another suspect, police turned their investigation to Ayers after he appeared to fail a voice stress test, which was administered after police received false information from a witness implicating Ayers in the crime.
After Ayers was arrested, two Cleveland police detectives used a jailhouse informant to elicit information from Ayers about the woman's death. When the informant did not provide enough details about the crime, the detectives sent him back into Ayers' pod to further question him. The trial court later denied Ayers' motion to suppress the informant's testimony on the basis that police had illegally used the informant as their agent in violation of Ayers' Sixth Amendment ...
False rape accusations exist, and they are a serious problem.
By Cathy Young, Slate
In the emotionally charged conversation about rape, few topics are more fraught than that of false allegations. Consider some responses to the news that singer-songwriter Conor Oberst had been falsely accused of sexual assault. Last December a woman writing in the comments section of the website xoJane, going by the name Joanie Faircloth, claimed Oberst raped her when she was a teenager. The charge spread across the Internet; Oberst denied it and brought a libel suit against Faircloth when she refused to retract the story. In July she completely recanted, admitting that she had made it all up to get attention. Yet instead of showing sympathy for the ordeal of the musician—one known for being supportive of feminist issues—some chided him for taking legal action to defend himself against a false, career-damaging charge. In the Daily Dot, pop culture critic Chris Ostendorf decried the lawsuit, arguing that it could intimidate real victims of rape and that it promoted the idea of men as victims of false accusations—even though that’s exactly what Oberst was. After Oberst dropped the suit, Bustle’s Caroline Pate praised his decision and referred to the saga ...
