On August 8th, 1986, Michael’s birthday, Chris Morton was found bludgeoned in her bed. Chris was 31 years old and had fallen asleep after putting their son Eric to bed. Michael was expecting intercourse with Chris, but she went to bed. Michael stated that his wife woke him up in the middle of the night and told him they could tomorrow. The next morning Michael continued with his normal routine and went to work. As Michael came home from work, he saw multiple flashing cop cars surrounding his house. Chris Morton’s body was removed from the house for further investigation. Shortly after receiving the autopsy results, Michael Morton was convicted. He is only one of the many who are wrongfully convicted every day. It’s vital all evidence is acknowledged to eliminate wrongful convictions. When the autopsy results came back, the doctors reported eight blows to the head. After examining the stomach, they determined the time of death was 1:15 AM. This led them to believe Michael was guilty because he had said he was home all night. If her death was at 1:15 AM, then why didn’t Michael notice the body in the morning? Michael stated, “Tell the truth and you have nothing to fear …show more content…
Raley also came across a crucial piece of evidence which wasn’t examined during his trial, a bandana which as found behind the house near the woods. The blood on the bandana was Chris’s blood and possibly another person’s. For the first time in years, Michael had a chance to get out. If the Innocence Project could just figure out who else’s blood was on the bandana. The DNA results from the bandana came back, Mark Alan Norwood’s blood was intermixed with Chris’s blood. Mark Norwood lived within blocks of a second murder almost identical to Chris’s, but no one was convicted. Mark Norwood began to look suspicious due to moving around a lot from house to
Even when Michael’s new defense team, through the innocence project, found a crime that was eerily similar to the method of murder and subsequent events to the one that Michael was convicted of, the new prosecutor in Williamson County fought hard to keep DNA testing from taking place, even stating that they objected to the testing now because the defense hadn’t requested it before (Morton, 2014). There was further evidence of ineffectiveness in that the coroner who’d changed his estimated time of death between the autopsy and trial, had come under scrutiny for his findings in this case, as well as several others, with claims of gross errors “including one case where he came to the conclusion that a man who’d been stabbed in the back had committed suicide” (Morton, 2014). This was only one of the many injustices that were committed against Michael Morton throughout his trial. In August of 2006, the defense was finally granted permission to perform DNA testing on the items that had been taken from his wife’s body (Morton, 2014). Although this testing did not reveal any information about the guilty party, it did at least give Michael the knowledge that Chris was not sexually violated before or after her death (Morton,
Yakima County prosecutors were praised by McMurtrie for agreeing to the testing of the DNA found on the mask left at the crime scene before the new law passed in 2005, preservation of DNA (Bristol). After a fact-finding hearing
Steven Avery in 1985, 41 year old Steven Avery was accused of sexual assault and served 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t do and later was convicted of murder but whether he committed the murder is a mystery. Steven Avery is currently serving life in prison for killing photographer Teresa Halbach. He was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. There have been many clues leading to Steven Avery committing this murder although many people believe he is still innocent and someone set him up. In this paper I will show how the police department made a mistake and where he is today.
Charged with the rape and murder of Gail Miller, a nursing assistant, David Milgaard was sentenced to life imprisonment on May 30, 1969 – he was only sixteen. Milgaard with his friends Ron Wilson and Nichol John were driving to Vancouver to Albert Cadrain’s house – another one of Milgaard’s friends. Police built a strong case against Milgaard for the murder of Gail’s murder based on several witnesses. Milgaard was convicted for murder due to the evidence and given statements by his friends. Milgaard’s friends first gave their statements and became Milgaard’s alibis but after multiple interrogations changed their statements and one of his friends went as far as saying they even saw Milgaard stab a woman.
Mary Therese McCormick September 15, 2017 Innocence Project Research Paper Timothy Cole Timothy Cole served 22 of his 25-year sentence before his death in 1999 while in prison for a crime he did not commit. Newly developed DNA evidence proved his innocence and exonerated Cole almost a decade later. Another man was identified as the perpetrator and sent to prison. On March 24, 1985, Michele Jean Murray, a 20-year-old Texas Tech student, was parking her car in a vacant church parking lot across from her dormitory when an African-American man approached her and asked for her help start his car with jumper cables.
According to Kaufman, "the whole interview process was inappropriately calculated to persuade Ken and Janet Jessop that their earlier times were wrong and to modify those times”. The interview was 150 minutes long and no formal statement was received from them, nor did the officers have any detailed notes to provide. “(One of the investigating officers) admitted that they told the Jessops that their times were wrong," the judge said. The end result was the changing of times by the Jessops. The officers recorded their new arrival time as 4:35 p.m. That opened a window of opportunity for Morin to abduct Christine and commit the crimes.
On the morning of September 9th, 1993, around 2 a.m. Christopher Simmons and his friends Charles Benjamin and John Tessmer (who he convinced to do it because he said that they could get away with it because they are minors) met together and headed to the victim's house but Tessmer left before the other two could carry out their sinister deed. While Simmons and his accomplice may have gotten away with it, one day later a fisherman recovered the deceased victims’ body in the river and her husband came home from an overnight trip the same day to find that his bedroom was a wreck and his wife was missing. The next day, after learning about his (Simmons) involvement, arrested him at his highschool and read him his miranda rights. 17 year old Christopher
They were proven wrong by other witnesses and new information was found. This is a reason for Curtis to be paid in restitution because he was charged for something that had false evidence and he should have never been convicted because of the false information said in court.
According to the Supreme Court, in 1993, Christopher Simmons went into Shirley Crook’s home with in mind to steal and harm her. Simmons was 17 years old at the time of this crime. According to the report, Simmons had spoken to his friends of the plan to kill the family, thinking he could get away with it because of his age. According to the report, Simmons was arrested the next day, he and his friends.
The media can be aggravating, they are constantly in someone’s business. But sometimes the media can have a positive impact on situations. In the cases of Greg Kelley and Walter McMillian the media actually had a positive impact on the results. The cases were very similar, botched investigations, little to no evidence, falsely accused, and a rally of support. When these cases were looking bleak the media stepped in and boosted the cases to the public.
Near Misses and Wrongful Convictions Erroneous convictions are a terrible injustice to those convicted and have the potential to deteriorate the public’s trust in the criminal justice system. An in-depth study was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and discussed by Dr. Jon Gould and John R. Firman during the presentation, “Wrongful Convictions: The Latest Scientific Research and Implications for Law Enforcement”. This study attempts to discover why some cases arrive into the system are near misses—this is an innocent person cleared or acquitted of all charges based on factual evidence—and other cases arrive into the system a different way become wrongful convictions, which these people are also factually innocent, it was just
The Ethics of Fred Zain Fred Zain was a forensic lab technician that worked for both the states of West Virginia and Texas. A man who did a job he was severely under qualified for, for ten years, and who was thought to be a start asset in his line of work. Fred Zain had testified in countless cases, presenting himself well and appeared to know his trade so well that no one in the courtroom questioned the lab results obtained by Zain. It is very well known that his actions in court are viewed as unethical by today’s standards. In his time of employment, Fred Zain acquired a lengthy rap sheet of tampering and falsifying evidence, false convictions.
Just Mercy is a memoir that amasses and distinguishes the legal accounts of an activist lawyer’s [Bryan Stevenson] struggle against legal injustice. Stevenson was born into a low-income family living in a racially segregated community in Delaware. He made it to Harvard Law School after successfully graduating from Eastern College that is present day Eastern University. In his legal practice, Bryan Stevenson started representing poor clients in Georgia and later in Alabama, where he became a co-founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Unfortunately, there are many similar situations to Justine Moritz’ that happen in our time today. An example of this is Kevin Fox’ daughter’s murder case. The distraught father ended up falsely confessing to murdering his 3-year-old daughter. It was stated in the article that he was rejected of his rights to be represented by a lawyer. In addition, he was threatened and mentally tortured during his interrogation.
Justin Morton was then put in observation at SYL Apps youth center and has now been transferred to an adult facility. Debbie Levrack “ If he can kill at 14, he can kill at 20 -- and he can kill at 40. What's to say he's not going to do it again?" [1]