Group items tagged

A girl of seven at the centre of a custody battle was coached by her mum to make fake claims that her father was a paedophile. Former jockey Victoria Haigh, 41, also launched a public campaign against her wholly innocent ex-partner [name withheld], a senior High Court judge said yesterday. After a series of private hearings, Sir Nicholas Wall decided to make his judgment public yesterday because "scandalous allegations" were put in the public domain "via email and the internet".

A teenage girl whose false rape allegation led to an innocent man being beaten up and another man sent to jail was let off by police with just an £80 fixed penalty notice. Jess Cooper was handed the penalty - usually given for minor traffic infringement

Investigators will lie, grill for hours on end and withhold exonerating evidence - in effect do anything - to extract a confession from a suspect they have pegged for a crime, a 1994 parolee seeking a retrial to clear his name in the 1963 kidnap-murder of a Saitama Prefecture girl said Thursday in Tokyo. Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, Kazuo Ishikawa, who appeared with his lawyer, Taketoshi Nakayama, pointed to discrepancies in the kanji used in an apparent ransom demand for ¥200,000 and an earlier document he wrote and also alleged that the state looked to him as a usual suspect because of his roots in Japan's former outcast class known as the "burakumin." He continues to claim he is innocent.

This Fathers Day, the Innocence Project pays tribute to the Diaz family, whose father, Luis Diaz was wrongfully imprisoned for 25 years. His three children fought for their father's release and helped him adjust after he finally came home at the age of 69. Luis became a suspect after a rape victim saw him at a gas station and thought that he resembled her attacker. Luis and Caridad Diaz were Cuban immigrants, and Luis had found work as a fry cook in Coral Gables, Florida, before his arrest threw the family into turmoil. His son Jose speaks of the night that his father was arrested, his father's trial and the years of prison visits that the family endured:

When a San Jose man charged with murdering a Monte Sereno millionaire was suddenly freed last month, prosecutors acknowledged he had an airtight alibi - he was drunk and unconscious at a hospital when the victim was killed in his mansion miles away. But a mystery remained: How did the DNA of 26-year-old Lukis Anderson - who was so drunk his blood alcohol content was five times the legal limit - end up on the fingernails of slaying victim Raveesh "Ravi" Kumra? Santa Clara County prosecutors answered that question Wednesday, saying the same two paramedics who had treated Anderson for intoxication at a downtown San Jose liquor store in November had responded to Kumra's home just hours later.

Uriah Courtney could not hold back the tears. After spending eight years in state prison for something he did not do, he was a free man. "When I got out, I felt I could fly," he said. Courtney, along with his mother, father and sister, spoke about his ordeal in front of a throng of cameras at the California Western School of Law, whose students along with the California Innocence Project worked to exonerate him. "I can't believe this day is here," said Courtney's mother, Mary Gambino. Courtney was convicted for the rape and assault of a 16-year-old girl in Lemon Grove in 2004. Eyewitnesses placed his truck or a truck that looked like his at the scene. That plus eyewitness testimony sealed his conviction. New DNA testing, however, pointed to a man who closely resembled Courtney. All charges against Courtney were dropped and his record expunged. When asked about the victim who identified him as the attacker, Courtney said he hoped by now she recognized that he was not the attacker but if not, he hopes one day she will. "I hold no grudge and I'm heartbroken over what happened to her," Courtney said.

It was a frighteningly close call for Charles Tubbins. The 23-year-old Buffalo man was already charged with murder and indicted by a grand jury for a crime he did not commit. All that was required for a wholesale miscarriage of justice was for the plea negotiations to begin, presenting Tubbins with the horrifying options of standing trial or admitting to a crime he didn't commit in hopes of a lesser sentence. It didn't come to that because DNA evidence found at the crime scene exonerated Tubbins and implicated another man, Ahkeem R. Huffman. To his credit, Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita moved quickly to dismiss the charges, but the case raises the same issues that have led to lengthy prison sentences for other innocent people in Erie County - issues of which law enforcement and the State Legislature are fully aware, but haven't seen fit to address. Tubbins was ensnared by the same human error that put Anthony Capozzi in prison for rapes he did not commit: witness misidentification. Eyewitness testimony was the only evidence against Tubbins, who, his lawyer noted, has no prior criminal convictions, no history of violence, no prior felony or misdemeanor.

A woman who repeatedly accused her ex-boyfriends of raping her was today jailed after escaping justice for nearly a decade. Leanne Black made false rape claims against five different men over a period of eight years, but escaped justice until now. The 32-year-old used the rape allegations to get revenge on her partners after arguing with them - but a judge accused her of harming genuine rape victims with her lies. Black was sentenced to two years in prison at Newport Crown Court after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice. In one case, she told police that her ex had drugged and raped her, and in another she claimed that a boyfriend had kidnapped her before violently abusing her. The innocent men could have faced up to five years in jail if they had been found guilty of raping her.

A Galway man who pleaded guilty to raping his niece has been allowed to change his plea after the complainant admitted she had been lying. The girl, who is now aged 18, told gardaí that her mother made her file a complaint when she was about ten years old claiming her uncle had abused her. The 41-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had maintained his innocence until the trial but pleaded guilty on the day because he said he was "completely terrified" of going to prison. He believed a guilty plea offered the best chance of avoiding a jail sentence. He had pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to rape and serious sexual assault at a house in Galway city on a date between 1 September 2004 and 28 February 2005.

Frank Lee Smith died of cancer on death row, just months before DNA exonerated him of raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl in Fort Lauderdale. Now, more than 13 years later, his family's civil lawsuit against the Broward Sheriff's Office and two detectives accused of framing him has finally been settled. Smith's death made him a national symbol because it was the first case in the U.S. that scientifically proved an innocent man had died in prison for a crime he didn't commit. But the financial settlement reached with the Sheriff's Office - on behalf of the agency and retired detectives Richard Scheff and Philip Amabile - is much less than the millions awarded in Broward's other notorious wrongful conviction cases. The civil suit was recently settled for just $340,000 - including attorney fees and legal costs, lawyers Michael Wrubel and James Green told the Sun Sentinel. They filed the lawsuit on behalf of Smith's closest surviving relative, his half-sister Virginia Smith, of Sunrise.

Charges against a Galway man who pleaded guilty to raping his niece have been withdrawn after the girl later admitted she was lying. The girl, who is now aged 18, told gardaí that her mother made her file a complaint to gardaí and social services when she was about ten years old, claiming her uncle had abused her. The 41-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had maintained his innocence until the trial but pleaded guilty on the day because he said he was "completely terrified" of going to prison. He believed a guilty plea offered the best chance of avoiding a jail sentence. He had pleaded guilty to rape and serious sexual assault, including penetrating the girl's anus with his penis, at a house in Galway city between September 1st, 2004 and February 28th, 2005.

North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation and its insurers have agreed to pay $12.475 million to two innocent men who spent a total of 31 years behind bars. The state agreed to pay $7.85 million to settle the state lawsuit filed by Floyd Brown, a mentally disabled man locked up for 14 years in a psychiatric hospital based on what his lawyers said was a false confession created out of whole cloth by an SBI agent. Brown has also reached a separate settlement with Anson County, whose sheriff's deputies helped investigate the case. A federal judge has sealed the Anson County settlement; North Carolina law requires that all such court settlements be public records.

Video Description: Karen Newirth, a staff attorney from the Innocence Project who focuses on eyewitness identification explains that although witness identification seems to be the gold standard for prosecution, 75% of 300 exonerations the Project...

"For six years, one month and 12 days, Jerry Paul Tippins had remained in jail accused of one of the worst things imaginable. But Thursday his longtime proclamations of innocence echoed loudly through a Jacksonville courtroom when he was found not guilty of sexually abusing his 2-year-old daughter."

One of the primary concerns in the orthodox Jewish community when discussing the issue of reporting sex abuse to the authorities is that inevitably there will be false accusations that will ruin the lives of innocent people. It is very scary to think that someone can be named as an abuser and before any evidence is presented the accused can be found guilty in the court of public opinion. In a community where the main currency is reputation and communal standing false accusations can have drastic consequences. This is a good reason not to judge people before the facts are known and also a good argument against placing too much stock in reputation. Changing our approach on these issues would go a long way to making our communities safer places.

"An innocent man spent 12 hours in custody after being falsely accused of sexually assaulting a young mum. Joanna Robertson also cost police 69 man hours - at least £1,380 - investigating the complaint that the man had stalked her and forcefully touched her, Dundee Sheriff Court heard. Robertson, 25, of Leith Walk, pleaded guilty to a charge of wasting police time on July 6 last year. After admitting she had made up the sex attack, Sheriff Richard McFarlane deferred sentence for reports and granted her bail. The court heard Robertson went to police HQ in Dundee and claimed she had been stalked through the city centre before being pushed against a wall and attacked."

Police say a city couple spent weeks carrying out an elaborate plot to frame a man for crimes he didn't commit - until they were undone by their ringing cellphones. Michael Dale Timmons, 39, and Teresa Sandra Knapp, 46, of Henrietta Street, reported to police the man had raped Knapp and broken into their home, among other crimes, city police Detective William Olson said.

"A new report out this week from NBC estimates 2,000 people have been sent to prison over the past twenty years, for crimes they didn't commit. That's exactly what happened to a local man, who served four years before finally being freed, and able to come home to Panama City. Johnathon Montgomery finds simple joy in taking a walk his mom, Mishia. His quiet life was taken away in an instant back in 2007. "I was working a double at Flapjacks" says Montgomery, as he remembers the day everything changed. "I came home to my mom's house, we were living on Missouri Avenue at that point, and I got a knock on the door. Lynn Haven police arrested me, said they had a warrant out for my arrest." The police told him he was wanted for a crime in Virginia, which took Montgomery by surprise. "I didn't know what was going on." says Montgomery. "Virginia? I hadn't lived in Virginia for years!" Montgomery was arrested for rape. He thought it must be a mix up, or a case of mistaken identity. He went to Virginia to clear his name. "That's when it all fell apart," he says."

Rachel Ashworth Original ArticleAnd yet another reason the online hit-list should be offline and used by police only, and extortion / mugshot websites should be taken offline and the people in charge arrested.10/07/2013By TOM GARDNER A mother-t...