I was contacted this morning by Barry Bradford, a teacher at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, about the work that he and his students have been doing in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, to posthumously exonerate Clyde Kennard of crimes for which he […]

According to the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Van Patten v. Deppisch, 04-1276 (Jan. 24), “No”. This is a case where the lawyer literally “phoned it in”, appearing at a client’s sentencing for reckless homicide via speakerphone. The defendant was given a maximum 25 year sentence by a Wisconsin state […]

With all the reporting going on about exonerations of innocent people, legislatures are finally starting to ask the question: why? The answers are many and varied: poor quality control in crime labs (see other stories on this site), inappropriate reliance on faulty eye-witness identification, and — let’s face it — overworked police who desire nothing […]

As I’ve reported often, it’s scandalous how poorly most American crime “labs” are operated. Part of the problem is simply the low priority accorded funding for these labs, and the high credibility given them by folks who simply don’t know any better about the underlying “science”.
In 2004, Congress passed the Justice for All Act, in […]