Entries tagged with “Police Misconduct”
Issues
Mar 01, 2024
Death-Sentenced Philadelphia Prisoner Daniel Gwynn Exonerated After Nearly 30 Years
On February 27, 2024, Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott approved a motion from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to dismiss first-degree murder, arson, and aggravated assault charges against 54-year-old death-sentenced prisoner Daniel Gwynn. Mr. Gwynn is the 197th person exonerated after being sentenced to death since 1973, according to DPIC’s Innocence Database. “Today is mostly for us a day of tremendous relief and sadness, a guy like him, an innocent soul spent that…
Issues
Jan 11, 2023
Illinois Commutations Twenty Years Ago Marked Turning Point in Death-Penalty Abolition
January 11, 2023 marks the twentieth anniversary of former Illinois Governor George Ryan’s decision to grant clemency to every death row prisoner in Illinois, the largest blanket clemency in the modern era of the death penalty. It was a watershed moment in both Illinois’ criminal justice history and in the ongoing national conversation about the death penalty. In a 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Ryan explained what led him to make the decision to commute 167 death sentences, even…
Issues
Dec 01, 2022
Utah Court Grants New Trial to Death-Row Prisoner Convicted in 1985 by False Testimony Coerced by Police
A Utah judge has granted a new trial to death-row prisoner Douglas Carter, finding that prosecutors knowingly withheld from the defense evidence that police coerced false testimony from two key witnesses, coached them to lie, provided them “thousands of dollars in financial benefits” to implicate Carter, and threatened them with deportation and loss of their son if they did not cooperate. Carter, who is black, was charged with murdering a white woman, Eva Oleson, who was the aunt of the Provo…
Issues
Sep 19, 2022
Texas Prosecutors Drop Death Penalty Against African American Man Held Eight Years Without Trial in Death of White Police Officer During Botched No-Knock Raid
Bell County prosecutors have dropped their efforts to impose the death penalty on Marvin Guy (pictured), an African American man who has been held eight years without trial in connection with the death of a white police officer during a botched no-knock raid in Killeen, Texas in May 2014. In the pre-dawn hours of May 9, 2022, a SWAT team from the Killeen Police Department ignited a flash grenade and broke a window attempting, unannounced, to enter Guy’s residence to serve a warrant to search…
Issues
Aug 11, 2022
Former Illinois Death-Row Prisoner Marilyn Mulero, Framed by Disgraced Chicago Detective, Exonerated After 29 Years
An Illinois woman who was sentenced to death without a trial as a result of a false confession coerced by a disgraced Chicago detective has been exonerated after 29 years. Marilyn Mulero (pictured at a news conference following her exoneration) was exonerated on August 9, 2022 when a Cook County judge granted motions filed by State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to dismiss all charges against her and six others who were framed for murder by former Chicago detective Reynaldo Guevara. Mulero is the 190th…
Issues
Sep 13, 2021
Death-Row Exoneree Curtis Flowers Sues Mississippi Prosecutor Who Prosecuted Him Six Times
Former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured), who was exonerated in 2020, is suing the officials whose misconduct led to his arrest and repeated wrongful conviction. Flowers was tried six times and spent 23 years wrongfully incarcerated for a quadruple murder in a white-owned furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. In a complaint filed September 3, 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Flowers alleges that his trial prosecutor, an…
Issues
Aug 16, 2021
NBC’s ‘Dateline’ Investigates the Wrongful Capital Conviction of Death-Row Exoneree Walter Ogrod
NBC’s true crime series, Dateline, featured an episode on August 13, 2021 on the wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration of former Philadelphia death-row prisoner Walter Ogrod (pictured). The episode, entitled “The Investigation,” is part of an NBC News series called “Justice for All” that reports on wrongful convictions and the U.S. criminal legal system. For the report, NBC News anchor Lester Holt interviewed Ogrod, the mother and stepfather of 4‑year-old victim Barbara Jean Horn…
Issues
Aug 06, 2021
DPIC Analysis: 13 Exonerated in 2020 From Convictions Obtained by Wrongful Threat or Pursuit of the Death Penalty
A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has found that law enforcement use or threat of capital prosecution against suspects or witnesses contributed to the wrongful convictions of 10% of the people exonerated in the United States and more than one-fifth of all murder exonerations in 2020. Reviewing data from the National Registry of Exonerations’ 2020 Annual Report, DPIC found that the death penalty was pursued or defendants or witnesses…
Jun 14, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of June 7, 2021
NEWS (6/9/21) — Nebraska: A panel of three judges has sentenced Aubrey Trail to death for the 2017 killing of Sydney Loofe. In a statement to the court before the panel pronounced sentence, Trail admitted to the killing but said that his co-defendant, Bailey Boswell, who faces capital sentencing hearing later this month, was not involved in the killing. Trail is the 12th person on Nebraska’s death row. Trail’s death sentence continues a trend in which new death sentences are disproportionally…
Issues
Jun 01, 2021
California Gov. Gavin Newsom Orders Investigation into Kevin Cooper Capital Murder Conviction
California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered an independent investigation into the case of Kevin Cooper, who has consistently maintained his innocence in the 1983 quadruple-murder for which he was sentenced to death. Newsom’s May 28, 2021 executive order appoints the law firm Morrison and Foerster, LLP as Special Counsel to the California Board of Parole Hearings and directs the firm to “conduct a full review of the trial and appellate records in [Cooper’s] case and of the facts underlying the…
May 20, 2021
NEWS BRIEF — Georgia Capital Defense Investigator Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Prison Officials After Videotape Clears Her of Felony Charges of Passing Illegal Contraband to Capital Defendant
A former mitigation investigator for the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against two Georgia Department of Corrections investigators and the warden of the state’s maximum security prison, after she was cleared of charges of passing illegal contraband during a meeting with a capitally charged defendant. Lawyers for Lily Engleman filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on May 10, 2021, four days after a…
Issues
May 17, 2021
North Carolina Jury Awards Death-Row Exonerees Henry McCollum and Leon Brown $75M for Their Wrongful Capital Convictions
In a case the late Justice Antonin Scalia touted as a justification for capital punishment, a North Carolina federal jury has awarded two intellectually disabled death-row exonerees $75 million for the police misconduct that sent them to death row. On May 14, 2021, half-brothers Henry McCollum (pictured, left) and Leon Brown (pictured, right) were each awarded $31 million, $1 million for each year they spent in prison, plus an additional $13 million in punitive damages. McCollum and Brown were…
Issues
Oct 08, 2020
Report Finds Rampant Government Misconduct in Death-Row Exonerations, Especially in Cases with Black Defendants
A new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has found that police or prosecutorial misconduct is rampant in death-row exoneration cases and occurs even more frequently when the wrongfully death-sentenced exoneree is Black. The report, Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent, released September 15, 2020, examined the factors contributing to 2,400 exonerations since 1989. It found that misconduct was present in more than half of all exonerations and nearly three-quarters of…
Issues
May 12, 2020
Ohio Death Row Exonerees Reach $18 Million Settlement with City of Cleveland
The city of Cleveland will pay a record $18 million dollars to settle a civil rights lawsuit by three former death-row prisoners who, as a result of police misconduct, spent more than a combined 80 years imprisoned for a murder they did not commit. Kwame Ajamu (pictured, left), his brother Wiley Bridgeman (pictured, center), and Rickey Jackson (pictured, right) were convicted in 1975 of the robbery and murder of Harold Franks based on the coerced false testimony of a 12-year-old boy, Eddie…
Issues
Apr 24, 2020
Federal Judge Orders Jury Trial on Claim that Kentucky Exoneree Who Was Threatened With Death Penalty Was Framed for Murder
A federal judge has ruled that a civil rights lawsuit against a detective who allegedly framed a Kentucky woman for a murder she was physically incapable of committing may proceed to a jury trial. On April 1, 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Claria Horn Boom denied a motion filed by former Kentucky State Police detective Todd Harwood to dismiss claims of malicious prosecution brought by Susan Jean King (pictured) in connection with the murder of Kyle Breeden in 1998. King alleges that Harwood…
Issues
Mar 13, 2020
News Brief — North Carolina Innocence Commission Orders Review of Murder Convictions of Teens Falsely Threatened With Death Penalty
NEWS (3/13/20): The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission voted 5 – 3 on March 13, 2020 to empanel a three-judge review committee to determine whether four men convicted as teens should be exonerated of the murder of NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather, Nathaniel Jones. A fifth teen convicted in the murder died before he could submit his case for review by the Commission. Nathaniel Cauthen and his younger brother, Rayshawn Banner were charged and convicted of first-degree murder and…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Feb 28, 2020
Alabama Set to Execute Nathaniel Woods Despite Claims of Innocence, Police Misconduct
Nathaniel Woods (pictured, left) did not shoot Alabama police officers Charles Bennett, Carlos “Curly” Owen, and Harley Chisholm III (pictured left to right, below). But because of alleged police misconduct, incompetent representation, and Alabama law allowing death verdicts based on non-unanimous jury votes, he faces execution on March 5, 2020 for their deaths. Prosecutors acknowledge that Woods’ co-defendant, Kerry Spencer, shot the officers in an incident in a drug house on June 17, 2004.
Issues
Jun 21, 2004
POSSIBLE INNOCENCE: Newspaper Explores Case of Pennsylvania Death Row Inmate
In an exclusive two-part series titled “Snitch Work,” Philadelphia’s City Paper explores the possible innocence of Pennsylvania death row inmate Walter Ogrod. Investigative writer Tom Lowenstein describes Ogrod’s first trial, which resulted in a mistrial when 11 of the 12 jurors voted for acquittal. In Ogrod’s second trial in 1996, the state employed a notorious jailhouse snitch, John Hall, to strengthen their case against Ogrod, who continued to maintain his innocence. Lowenstein’s “Snitch…