Summary Of Thomas Clayton's Court Case

In the courtroom here on Tuesday, the current district attorney, Johnson Britt (no relation to the original prosecutor), citing his obligation to “seek justice,” not simply gain convictions, said he would not try to prosecute the men again because the state “does not have a case.” Mr. McCollum was 19 and Mr. Brown was 15 when they were picked up by the police in Red Springs, a town of fewer than 4,000 people in the southern part of the state, on the night of Sept. 28, 1983. The officers were investigating the murder of Sabrina Buie, 11, who had been raped and suffocated with her underwear crammed down her throat, her body left in a soybean field. No physical evidence tied Mr. McCollum or Mr. Brown, both African-American, as was the victim, to the crime. But a local teenager cast suspicion on Mr. McCollum, who with his half brother had recently moved from New Jersey and was considered an

Step into the shoes of Cameron Todd Willingham. He was one of the 59 accused criminals sentenced to death by the United States judicial system in 2004. Thought to have murdered his three children by arson in the family home, Willingham was put on death row on January 8, 1992. However, he was different from the other convicts. Willingham was actually innocent.

On October 8,1934 Hauptmann is indicted for murder and his trial began in January 3,1935. The case used circumstanul evidance. A wood expert confirmed the markings on the wood board that was used in the kidnap ladder matched those of Hauptmann’s tools in his garage. A important piece of evidence was that Hauptmann not being able to provide an alibi on the night of the kidnapping. Experts testifed that Hauptmann wrote the ransom notes his handwriting samples matched.

Fulminante (1991), Oreste Fulminante had been convicted of the murder of his step-daughter, Jeneane Hunt. Prior to his murder conviction, he had been arrested and incarcerated for another crime, not related to the murder of his step-daughter. While incarcerated, Fulminante befriended another inmate, Anthony Sarivola, who was also an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Upon direction from Sarivola’s FBI contact, Sarivola worked to see if he could find out more information regarding the allegations that Fulminante had killed his step-daughter. Sarivola later had a conversation with Fulminante regarding the rough treatment he had been receiving from other inmates and offered to protect him if he would tell him the truth about the murder of his step-daughter, Jeneane.

Mello, highlighted on one particular case that led to his decision to no longer work directly in the American System of capital punishment, the case of “Crazy Joe” Spaziano. “Mr. Spaziano was the co-founder of the Outlaws Motorcycle Brotherhood group for the Orlando chapter. In addition to be wrongly convicted of a crime he did not commit and serving twenty years on death row, he was almost executed. Mello invested thirteen long years, totaling twenty six judges just to prove Mr. Spazinao’s innocence.

His sentence is changed from manslaughter and he has now been sentenced to 18-20 years in prison for manslaughter, followed by four to five years in prison for illegal possession of a firearm. (Ryan, 2013) During a trial, the evidence is again presented to a court of law or a jury. Being sentenced to Capital Punishment is very unlikely to happen for Burke, as the state of Massachusetts has abolished Capital Punishment and only uses it in very severe cases where the suspect is tried federally (McCarthy, 2014) instead of regionally, like the Boston Bomber Case. Burke most likely got this sentence, because he pleaded guilty, possibly after enough evidence was gathered to prove his guilt and thereby “has taken responsibility for shooting the victim, resulting in his death, over what appears to have been a dispute about money” (Boston.com, 2013) Burke is most likely to receive this sentence, because it is exactly the crime he committed. He committed manslaughter which was proven by the messages on the phone and apparently other evidence that has been found.

In the case of Commonwealth v. John E. DuPont (1996), the defendant John DuPont was convicted in February 1997 of guilty, but mentally ill, with a verdict of third-degree murder. DuPont and his defense team had tried repeatedly to persuade the jury that he was legally insane. The definition of legally insane includes that the defendant did not know the nature of the act he or she committed or did not know it to be wrong. After weeks of testimony the jury determined that DuPont was mentally ill, but was legally sane. Meaning the jury felt that beyond a reasonable doubt the DuPont was guilty of murder, although mentally ill, at the commission of the crime.

In contrast, Eramo immediately took action in Jackie’s case and arranged meetings with the victim and the Charlottesville Police Department to make the rapist accountable for their actions. In result, Jackie did not want to cooperate with law enforcement in describing the rape or give any names of the men involved – which concluded to no official police report. ISSUE Eramo had to prove that the defendant’s, the Rolling Stone and Erdely’s information in the article was actual malice. COURT’S DECISION AND REASONING Two years after the article was published and two weeks in trial, a federal jury of ten decided that Erdely did commit actual malice and unfairly portrayed Eramo’s reputation. Originally, Eramo requested for $7.5 million in damages, however the jury’s decision ordered Erdely to pay $2 million in damages to Eramo.

I am confident that Adnan has 100% undeniably been wrongfully convicted of first degree murder. First off, lets start off with Adnan’s alibi and what he was doing after school at the time of Hae’s murder. In the beginning of the time Adnan spent in jail, Adnan received letters from a girl called Aisah McClain. Let me just say first that Aisah and Adnan weren 't best friends or played important roles in each other’s lives, at all. Aisah McClain had nothing to benefit from writing these letters to Adnan.

I am 21 and for as long as I can remember I have heard many stories about innocent people being accused of and being punished for crimes they did not commit. On Monday, March 20th of this year, I met Anthony Ray Hinton and learned about his story. Arrested on suspicion of two capital murders at age 29. He was convicted and sentenced to death despite having a reliable alibi and passing a polygraph test. It was only after repeated efforts by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) team that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction based on his attorney’s deficient representation and he was eventually exonerated after 30 years in solitary confinement on Friday, April 3rd, 2015.