“The police were sure it was (Cantu) because he had hurt a police officer. Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu, said the jury’s decision was the best they could do based on the information presented during the trial. Unreliable Witnesses? A bloody shank and a torn-up copy of the disciplinary report were found next to the officer’s body. IS THE MURDER OF AN INNOCENT MAN EXECUTED JUST TO MAKE E.V.M. Here are 8 people who were executed and innocent. The clemency lawyers found numerous inconsistencies in the state’s evidence, unearthed evidence that pointed to another suspect who fit the eyewitness descriptions of the murderer and had a car that matched descriptions of the murderer’s car, and discovered that Alley had been at home under police surveillance at the time Collins was raped and killed. Bower was convicted of the 1983 murder of four men in Grayson County, Texas. That included: false expert testimony linking Swearingen to the murder weapon, false testimony dismissing exculpatory blood evidence, false cell tower testimony, and false testimony concerning the time of death. Shortly before the execution, Mills also conceded that testimony by a crime lab serology expert dismissing exculpatory blood evidence had also been inaccurate. There is plenty of evidence that points toward Willingham being innocent. Missouri prosecutors tried Walter Barton five times for the brutal 1991 stabbing death of 81-year-old Gladys Kuehler. The police lieutenant who supervised the investigation of Spence, Marvin Horton, later concluded: “I do not think David Spence committed this crime.” Ramon Salinas, the homicide detective who actually conducted the investigation, said: “My opinion is that David Spence was innocent. Bush left office to become President. However, Ray had also argued that he was innocent and that the evidence against him was false and unreliable. Read: Tim Chitwood, In final appeals, Stocking Strangler attorneys say Ga. is about to execute innocent man, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, March 13, 2018. The records documented that Owden had been diagnosed with serious mental illness, psychosis, and schizophrenia; that he was suffering from hallucinations and delusions, and exhibited signs of bizarre speech and distortions of cognition; and that he had a propensity for lying. His case featured several hallmarks of wrongful conviction: official misconduct, coerced informant testimony, and racial discrimination. Having innocent people on Death Row, and probably executing them. Cameron Todd Willingham was just 23 when he was convicted of setting a fire that killed his three little girls - 2-year-old Amber and 1-year-old twins, Kameron and Karmon. Some eyewitnesses report that Willingham tried to save his children and was covered by soot. See “NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Report on Larry Griffin” Three days after Trotter’s disappearance, Swearingen was arrested for outstanding traffic warrants and was still in jail three weeks later, when Trotter’s body was discovered. The DNA Controversy”, “A Closer Look at Five Cases That Resulted in Executions of Texas Inmates”, “Questions of Innocence: Legal Roadblocks Thwart New Evidence on Appeal”, Texas Observer Exclusive: DNA Tests Undermine Evidence in Texas Execution, “Texas Man Executed on Disproved Forensics”. “The courts got it wrong in 2006 when they allowed Mr. Alley to be executed before testing the DNA,” Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck said. Cameron Todd Willingham (January 9, 1968 – February 17, 2004) was an American man who was convicted and executed for the murder of his three young children by arson at the family home in Corsicana, Texas, on December 23, 1991.Since Willingham's 2004 execution, significant controversy has arisen over the interpretation of the evidence that was used to convict him of arson and murder. In 2004, Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham, a poor, uneducated heavy-metal devotee, for killing his three daughters in a case of arson. Cameron Todd Willingham, the father of the kids, was quickly found guilty in the aftermath and was executed for the crime in 2004. Pruett had long maintained that he had been framed for the murder. Moreno said that he twice told police that Cantu was not his assailant, but that the authorities continued to pressure him to identify Cantu as the shooter after Cantu was involved in an unrelated wounding of a police officer. As his prison pen pal Elizabeth Gilbert told PBS, "They never established a motive. Read the U.S. Supreme Court petition for writ of certiorari in Ray v. Alabama. After Woods, who is Black, turned down the plea deal, prosecutors for the first time claimed that he had been the mastermind of a plan to kill the three white officers because he supposedly hated police. If we could go to trial on this case, if there was a forum where we could take this to trial, we would win hands down,” stated University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, who supervised the investigation into Griffin’s case. Nine Years After the Execution of Troy Davis, Innocent Black Men Are Still Being Sentenced to Death. When that expert examined the mold, he concluded that the markings could not have been made by Gary. In February 1998, Owden’s lawyers sought the appointment of a clinical neuropsychologist to evaluate him in preparation for potential mental health defenses to present in his own trial. Among the only other evidence presented by prosecutors during the the trial was testimony from jailhouse snitch Johnny E. Webb, a drug addict on psychiatric medication, who claimed Willingham had confessed to him in the county jail. However, critics have noted that Reed was formerly a judge who handled Cantu’s appeal and set his execution date, raising a conflict of interest in conducing an investigation of his guilt. She Still Wants to Know if He Did It, New York Times, May 1, 2019.Adam Tamburin, Family of executed Tennessee inmate calls for DNA tests in renewed hope to ‘find the truth’, Commercial Appeal, May 1, 2019Read the Petition for Post-Conviction DNA Analysis filed in In re: Sedley Alley and the Application for DNA Testing, Pardon, and Exoneration of Sedley Alley sent to Gov. Fire investigators determined that the fire was caused by arson and that Willingham used an accelerant to start the blaze. National Action Network head and MSNBC host the Rev. The evidence linking Swearingen to the murder also was scientifically suspect. No physical evidence linked Ray to the murder, and the only evidence that Harville had been raped and robbed came from a severely mentally ill man, Marcus Owden, who confessed to the crime and avoided the death penalty by implicating Ray. He was convicted primarily on the testimony of one witness, Bernadine Skillern, who said she saw the killer’s face for a few seconds through her car windshield, from a distance of 30-40 feet away. 10. Supporters were calling for Ivey to grant a reprieve. There is no way to tell how many of more than 1,500 peo­ple exe­cut­ed in the U.S. since 1976 may have been inno­cent. Over the course of the case, people began to change their testimonies about Willingham. Slowly, testimonies became more vicious with time. However, a 2015 analysis by crime scene analyst Lawrence Renner concluded that the bloodstains on Barton’s clothes were actually “transfer stains,” likely caused by contact with other bloodstains. O’Dell asked the state to conduct DNA tests on other pieces of evidence to demonstrate his innocence but was refused. Read “Did Texas Execute An Innocent Man?” by Lise Olsen, Houston Chronicle (2005) Prosecutors obtained the conviction, in part, by arguing that the ammunition provided a vital link between Bower and the killings because that type of ammunition was extremely rare. The evidence against him was circumstantial: calls made to the man selling the aircraft and Bower’s possession of the same type of ammunition that was used in the killings. “And the execution is going through on the basis of other forensic science that is borderline quackery — in fact it is quackery.”. Walter “Arkie” Barton is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri on Tuesday, May 19th. Sam D. Millsap, Jr., the Bexar County District Attorney who charged Cantu with capital murder, said he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on testimony from an eyewitness who identified a suspect only after police showed him Cantu’s photo three seperate times. New DNA blood evidence has thrown considerable doubt on the murder and rape conviction of O’Dell. Rodney Reed has been on death row in Texas for the last 21 years after he was convicted of the 1996 rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Read: “Junk Science? “If Mr. Alley were alive today, he would be entitled to DNA testing under the … statute. On May 1, 2019, after new evidence suggested another man may have committed the murder, the Innocence Project filed a petition in Shelby County Criminal Court on behalf of Alley’s estate renewing Alley’s request for DNA testing. At the trial, the prosecutor asserted that Willingham wanted to get rid of his children as motive for the crime. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 11, 2005). Owden was also the only person who placed Ray in Selma at the time of the murder. UPDATE: Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed issued a report in 2007 finding that Ruben Cantu was guilty of the crime for which Texas executed him in 1993.
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