Post Gazette


I have said before - if you "look good" for a capital crime and you don't have $50,000 to hire an attorney - you are going down. Here is part of the story and I will bullet the points that anger me and should you as well:

1) The guy spent 20 years in jail because prosecutors failed to do their job correctly.

2) Please notice that the DA's office FOUGHT the DNA testing and routinely do so. The DA associatation has made a point to fight these because it undoes prosecutions! Outragous!

3) Because he refused to admit to a crime he did NOT committ, he received more punishment. Isn't that a sweet system? He gets wrongly convicted and sent to jail and then is told that he must admit to the crime to get out sooner! GREAT SYSTEM
4) They checked with the woman who was raped before releasing him! WHO CARES WHAT SHE THINKS?!?!?!? Why should she be given ANY consideration?!?!? The guy is the victim as well! Because of the incompetince of the cops/DA this guy lost some of the best years of his life - meanwhile the REAL rapist has been possibly terrorizing many more women !

The system is NOT about truth - it is about process and procedure and it needs overhauled.

rh

AND MONEY! Let's not forget the grease that lubricates and justifies the entire political system.

Case in point. The publically paid Prosecutor collected his paycheck, received favorable publicity convicting this innocent guy which furthered his public career, and fought to discredit the scientific process which ultimately proved his case was bogus. Just one more example of public employees wasting taxpayer money, with NO ACCOUNTABILITY for mistakes. Do we see a pattern here?

We can only wonder how many hundreds of thousands of tax dollars the public will give this released citizen for his lost years. You can bet none this cash is not coming out of the Prosecutor's personal pocket. He will likely get a pay raise and re-elected for being so aggressive ... if he's not already enjoying his publically paid retirement with free medical benefits.

the law school that helped that defendant does FREE work. it was started by Barry Scheck, Esq of the OJ ERA.

WISH WE HAD A Law and Order forum:
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PICKED THIS UP ONLINE.
GOVERNOR RENDELL SIGNS EXECUTION WARRANT
 
 
HARRISBURG:  Gov. Edward G. Rendell today signed a warrant for the execution by lethal injection of Antyane Robinson, a Fort Washington, Maryland, man who was convicted of a slaying in Cumberland County.
 
Robinson's execution is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 29.
 
In March 1997, Robinson was convicted and sentenced to die for shooting his former girlfriend's boyfriend, 23-year-old Rashawn Bass, in Carlisle. Robinson was formally sentenced to death on April 1, 1997. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed Robinson's conviction and death sentence in an opinion dated Nov.24, 1998.
 
On March 15,1999, a warrant was issued scheduling Robinson's execution for May 12, 1999. On April 20, 1999, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court stayed the execution pending resolution of Robinson's petition for writ of certiorari by the U. S. Supreme Court. On Jan. 10, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Robinson's writ and the stay was lifted.
 
A second warrant was issued on Feb.7, 2000, scheduling Robinson's execution for March 28, 2000.
 
On March 10, 2000, Robinson filed a Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) petition, and the trial court issued a stay on the same day pending resolution of PCRA proceedings. The trial court denied Robinson's PCRA petition on April 22, 2002 and Robinson appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. On June 22, 2005, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the denial of Post-Conviction Relief, thereby lifting the stay.
 
Robinson, 36, is an inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Greene. Rendell has now signed 41 death warrants.
Content Last Modified on 8/2/2005 10:07:50 AM

Moon was a 25-year-old college student at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1988 when he was convicted of rape and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Last December, after 16 years behind bars, he was released following conclusive DNA testing that proved his innocence. A few days later, Jennifer Millstone '05 received a gift from Moon--an angel pin that he'd made in prison--to thank her for helping to set him free.
"When I heard he was exonerated, it was one of the happiest days of my life," said Millstone, who worked on Moon's case as an intern at the Innocence Project in New York City last summer. Now a new group on campus will make it easier for other students to help inmates like Moon. This spring 2Ls Benjamin Maxymuk, Dana Mulhauser and Alexander Abdo launched the Harvard Project on Wrongful Convictions.
Moon is one of 158 individuals nationwide whose convictions have been overturned through DNA evidence since 1989, says Maxymuk, who was inspired to launch the project after a campus visit last year by Barry Scheck, the criminal defense attorney best known for his DNA work for the O.J. Simpson legal defense team. Scheck, along with attorney Peter Neufeld, has been pioneering the use of DNA evidence since 1988. Together, they established the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York City in 1992, as a nonprofit legal clinic focused on cases where post-conviction DNA testing might yield conclusive proof of innocence. The clinic has since helped to exonerate dozens of wrongfully convicted individuals and sparked the creation of more than 30 Innocence Projects based in law firms and law schools across the country.
"[Wrongful conviction] is not a new issue," said Maxymuk. "The difference now is DNA. Before, people didn't want to believe that eyewitness testimony isn't always reliable. But it turns out, it's one of the least reliable types of evidence. People have started to listen and look at reforms because DNA is nearly irrefutable. People can't turn away from it."
Moon's exoneration was the second one Millstone had helped to bring about through her summer internship, and the experience left her wanting to do more.
Last fall she arranged to work 10 hours a week for the New England Innocence Project in Boston, whose network of attorneys in several local law firms has been directly involved in the exonerations of five New England men since its founding in 2000.
After 16 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, Brandon Moon is released. He is accompanied by his attorney and by Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck.
Millstone is one of several law students from local schools who have worked with NEIP on the dozens of requests for post-conviction case reviews that come in every year. She was able to get two of her professors in criminal law courses to grant clinical credits for her time at NEIP. More than 40 students have joined the HLS project, and 11 have had training for case review work, according to Jennifer Chunias, who taught the First Year Lawyering course at HLS and has served as project director at the NEIP since 2003.

NY TIMES.COM
DNA Tests Come to Prisoner's Defense
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and TERRY AGUAYO
Testimony by eight assault victims sent Luis Diaz to prison for life in 1980. Now DNA evidence that was not available 25 years ago might set him free.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/national....html?th&emc=th
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