Jerome Kowalski

On May 1, 2008 Richard and Brenda Kowalski were found dead at their Livingston County home in rural Michigan. Both had been shot. In the 911 call, their adult son named his uncle, Jerome Kowalski, as a suspect.

Jerome was addicted to alcohol, and after being questioned by police began to think it was possible he committed the crime but didn’t remember. When he was told the murder weapon was a 0.38 gun rather than the 9mm gun he owned, he realised he couldn’t have done it.

Lead detective Sean Furlong  started accusing Jerome’s sons of committing the murders. Jerome denied it. Furlong then threatened to bring them in for questioning.

Jerome claimed he didn’t want his sons to go through what he was going through, so he finally gave police a signed confession.

At trial, forensic pathologist Werner Spitz testified the time of death was in the middle of the night, when Jerome was working security at a military base.

Jerome’s attorneys expected to get the confession thrown out, but this was denied by Livingston County District Court Judge Theresa Brennan, who also refused to allow an expert on false confessions to testify, calling the expert witness “unreliable and irrelevant.”

However, Brennan was having an affair with the lead detective, failed to recuse herself and lied about the affair. She has now been removed from office by the Michigan Supreme Court, and pleaded guilty to a charge of perjury ( other charges were dropped ).

Jerome’s attorneys have requested a false confession expert be allowed to testify at the new trial, scheduled to take place in January. Shiawassee County Circuit Court Judge Matthew Stewart will rule on the motions on December 17, 2019. The retrial is set for January 20, 2020.

Excellent 3-part documentary ( with transcripts ) here: https://truecrimedaily.com/2017/06/07/judge-detective-love-affair-could-derail-double-murder-conviction/

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Vanessa Cameron

Vanessa Cameron was convicted of murder of her son’s father in 2012. She was sentenced to 70 years. There was no physical evidence. Just a false confession from Vanessa and the testimony of the co-defendant Lakisha Brown. The alleged shooter was acquitted of murder. The real shooter plead guilty and received 25 years. The real shooter is Vanessa’s older sister Susan Sutton. All facts of the case can be read on www.freevanessa.com.

Featured case #152 | Proposal Post

 

Joseph Buffey

In 2002, Innocence Project client Joseph Buffey pleaded guilty to the rape and robbery of an elderly woman in Harrison County, West Virginia.

Six weeks prior to the final plea hearing, the state crime lab completed DNA testing that excluded Buffey as the perpetrator—but prosecutors never gave the report to either Buffey or his lawyer.

In 2012 when lawyers won the right to retest the DNA found inside the victim, the results produced a match, but it wasn’t Buffey’s. It belonged to a man named Adam Bowers who was 16 at the time of the attack and lived a few blocks from the victim.Bowers was found guilty in May of 2013 but, instead of releasing Buffey, prosecutors argued that Bowers and Buffey both committed the crime, despite the victims’s testimony that she was attacked by only one man.

Buffey  was told he would likely receive a 15-year sentence, but if he didn’t confess he could get 300 years. When the sentence was handed down, it was a crushing blow: 70 to 110 years in a tiny prison cell.

Buffey confessed that he “broke into this old lady’s house” after nine hours of interrogations without food. Within minutes he took it back but it was too late. “You really want to know the truth?” the 19-year-old can be heard saying on tape. “I didn’t do it. I made up a story (because you were) breathing down my neck, telling me I did it.”

Starting on October 11th, 2016, a team of West Virginia and Innocence Project lawyers will be in court with Buffey, backed by science and the facts of the case, to fight for the verdict he deserves: not guilty.

Sources: Jan 2016 news report | Innocence Project

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