Innocence Cases
New:
One Murder, Two Victims: The Wrongful Conviction
of Ryan Ferguson by Jane Alexander
(7/22/07).
In a case rife with DNA and other
physical evidence, not one shred of evidence linked 17-year-old Ryan
Ferguson to the murder of Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune sports writer
Kent Heitholt in 2001. Ferguson's conviction in 2005 proved only how far the
police and prosecution would go to close Columbia's only unsolved murder.
Firefighters Case
Part I and Part II by
J.J. Maloney.
Five innocent people were convicted in February 1997 in the deaths of six Kansas City
firefighters in 1988. These two stories run a total length of 20,000 words, and won
the Missouri Bar Association's annual ''Excellence in Legal Journalism''
award. On Oct. 30, 1998, the 8th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals denied the appeal in the Kansas City Firefighters case. Read the full opinion here and our
analysis of the opinion. On
Oct. 4, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari in the case.
The
Shame of Lorain, Ohio by Lona Manning. (updated 03/03/07)
The ritual abuse hysteria that swept across the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s
resulted in hundreds of innocent people being wrongfully convicted of committing
a bizarre concoction of sexual acts on preschoolers. Most of those convicted
were eventually freed from prison on appeal, but some innocent people remain
behind bars. One of the most blatant cases of wrongful conviction occurred in
Lorain, Ohio. There a politically ambitious prosecutor's office coaxed and
manipulated a few Head Start preschoolers into testifying that they had been
sexually abused repeatedly over a six-month period by their bus driver and some
stranger -- two people who never even knew each other, but who are now serving
life prison terms for crimes that never occurred in the first place.
The
Forgotten Innocent Man by Lona Manning.
(Updated 10/16/06)
The courtroom testimony of twin 8-year-old boys – a concoction of fantasy and
fear – led to a life sentence for Robert Halsey in 1993. In 2004 the National
Center for Reason and Justice took up his case, but all of its appeals have been
denied and the Massachusetts Supreme Court has denied Halsey's Application for
Further Appellate Review. Now in his 70s and in failing health, the former bus
driver will most likely die in prison, a victim of the child sexual-abuse
hysteria that put him there.
Nightmare
at the Day Care: The Wee Care Case by Lona Manning.
(updated 01/14/07)
The Wee Care case
that sentenced Kelly Michaels to prison for 47 years was typical of the
child-abuse hysteria that gripped the United States in the 1980s. At the peak of
the frenzy of the great day-care witch hunt, it was the day-care workers, not
the preschoolers, who were at risk. As the preschoolers, urged on by overzealous
social workers, child therapists and prosecutors, told their incredible stories
of sexual abuse and satanic rituals in courtrooms across the United States,
scores of innocent people were sent off to prison. Some are still there.
Updated:
To Live And Die In Belton U.S.A.,
by J.J. Maloney, is the story of Jeffrey Gardner,
a young man sentenced to prison for shooting an abusive husband who was
threatening his wife with a knife. After the printing of
this story, the Missouri Court of Appeals,
Western District, on March 2, 1999, overturned the conviction of Gardner -- who
was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the shooting. Gardner was a boarder in the couple's
home at the time of the shooting. On Dec. 7, 1999, the Missouri Supreme Court
did overturn the appellate court opinion. Gardner is serving his sentence at the
state penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo. Click here to read the Missouri
Supreme Court decision. Additional update 12/19/2007.
The
Original "Dream Team" by Doris Lane.
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the most star-crossed political foes in U.S.
history, joined together in 1800 to defend a man accused – and all but
convicted in the court of public opinion – of the murder of his fiancée.
The Lynching of Leo Frank by Denise
Noe.
(03/14/05)
Virulent
anti-Semitism led directly to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and
lynching of the innocent, but Jewish, Leo Frank. Police and prosecutors
fabricated evidence to win a death by hanging verdict. When the governor of
Georgia commuted Frank's sentence to life in prison, a resurgent Klan mob
stormed the prison and re-imposed the original sentence.
