Michael Goodwin was convicted of the 1988 killing of racing legend Mickey Thompson and his wife.
Mickey Thompson received death treats by phone. The prosecution claimed they were from Michael Goodwin. But they weren’t. They were from the Cali Cartel. Mickey was laundering money for them with his stadium race events.
In 2011, Bulos (Paul) Zumot was convicted of the first-degree murder of his girlfriend Jennifer Schipsi, and of setting fire to their shared cottage in Palo Alto, California on October 15, 2009. Paul was arrested two days later, but not charged until July 22, 2010, about nine months later.
At trial, the prosecution claimed that Paul’s testimony was not to be believed. The National Center for audio and video forensics assisted with Paul’s appeal. In September 2020, a Federal judge overturned the conviction. A retrial is scheduled for November 2021.
Paul had an alibi – that he was at his café when the cottage was set on fire,
John Eckland, who rented the cottage to Paul and Jennifer and lived in another house on the property, passed the cottage at 6:25 and 6:35 and did not see Paul’s car at either time. Eckland testified that “everything looked fine” when he passed at 6:35 p.m.
Another witness passed the cottage at 6:25 on the way to Eckland’s house for dinner and testified that nothing was amiss. The shades in the cottage were drawn when both individuals passed. At 6:39 p.m., a witness called 911 after he observed smoke pouring out of the cottage. When no one answered the door at the cottage, the witness knocked on Eckland’s door. Firefighters found Jennifer’s body on the bed with a red melted gas container lying near her.
Thus, there is clear evidence that the fire was started sometime between 6:35 and 6:40pm. The cottage is 1.2 miles from café.
Café employee Ahmed Alaghabash, who was interviewed by police at the time of the murder, testified that Paul called before he arrived at the café, asking Jehad to make a tea and hookah for him. He testified that Paul arrived at the café sometime between 6:30 and 6:40 p.m., about ten minutes before the fire truck went by the café. Paul went outside when he heard the fire truck and then returned inside for his tea and hookah.
There was video evidence showing Paul entering the cafe at 6.47pm.
What was never pointed out to the jury, is that the video also showed Paul inside the café before he entered at 6.47pm.
After trial, the State conceded that the video surveillance showed Paul inside the café before 6:47:38, at both 6:45 and at 6:47:12.13, having argued at trial that Paul first entered the café later, on the basis of the video evidence, meaning he would have had time to start the fire at the cottage and drive to the café.
Thus the video actually contradicted the prosecution case, rather than supporting it, and supported the testimony of Paul and Ahmed Alaghabash, rather than contradicting it as the prosecution claimed!
The relationship between Paul and Jennifer was unstable. There were text messages in which Paul called Jennifer a “cancer” and told her that he needed to get her out of his life “at any price”, however in other texts, Paul told Jennifer that he loved her and begged for her forgiveness. Paul had pleaded guilty to making harassing phone calls ( including calls fabricated by Jennifer, see below ), and attended a DV class shortly before the fire started.
This history of conflict made Paul an obvious suspect.
The evening before the murder, they had fallen out and then made up ( in fact the prosecution theory at the preliminary was that Paul had strangled Jennifer on returning home, however it’s clear they made up, as there was a video on her phone showing them having sex early in the morning ).
What was crucial, to Paul’s credibility, and also to Jennifer’s credibility, were number-withheld threatening phone calls, which Paul denied making. After trial, Roy, a close friend of Jennifer, admitted that Jennifer had asked him to make these calls to portray Paul as abusive to police.
You might wonder why Jennifer’s credibility was an issue, given she was dead and could not testify. The answer is that all kinds of hearsay statements Jennifer had made were heard by the jury, even though she could not testify. Thus there was no way to know if the statements were made-up or true, no way in which she could be even asked if the statements were true, or cross-examined. Thus evidence that Jennifer was making false accusations to police about Paul is crucial.
There was also evidence that Jennifer was abusive as well as manipulative. On the day when she made up the threat call, Paul left her, went to the office and told her he no longer wanted to be with her. Jennifer went to the office, kicked and broke the door, and hit him with keys, gashing his face, and then called police. Paul did admit to verbal retaliation, and even spitting at Jennifer after he found her making out with her boss, but there was no evidence he was physically abusive.
Susie Schlopp – was a totally non-credible witness for multiple reasons. Her testimony conflicted with both other evidence and her own testimony. For example:
Q. Okay. So you waited three months till you saw a
picture in the paper of somebody who had been arrested, and
then all of a sudden, you remembered you had this vivid
memory; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, the — then why did you tell the officer if he
was — “If I told you he was driving a sports car that day,
then it must not be him”?
and
Q. So you’ve got a fraction of a second to see the
person as they’re driving very fast. Did you know the street?
A Correct.
Q Okay. And then three months later, you see a
picture in the paper and the light bulb goes off, it must be
the same person; is that correct?
According to the appeal ruling overturning the conviction “Scholpp had initially told police that she saw nothing unusual on the night of the fire, but said that she came forward three months later after recognizing Zumot’s picture in the newspaper. Cell phone evidence at 6:16 p.m., four minutes before Scholpp testified to seeing Zumot near the cottage, showed that he was four miles away from the cottage”.
Has to be one of the worst witnesses ever.
Rosie the dog – alerted, but scientific tests showed no trace of gasoline on Paul’s clothes.
Deputy Sheriff Joseph Martinez, Paul’s friend, was interviewed soon after the murder, then again much later on November 6. In this second interview, Joseph said that very early in the morning ( 5am to 7am ) Paul called him a second time, and made statements apparently inconsistent with what Paul told him the day before, and what Paul told police. Joseph claimed Paul said that he visited the cottage after the DV class. However when he testified as follows:
Q. Did that strike you as different from what he had told you the day before?
A. Later on, it did. At the time, I wasn’t really focused on that part of the conversation.
Given that Joseph “wasn’t really focused on that part of the conversation”, and didn’t notice any discrepancy with what Paul told him the day before even when interviewed by police, it’s likely he did not properly understand what Paul said to him. He also was quite vague about even the time of the call, suggesting his memory was not good several weeks later, when he first told police about the second call.
Paul did go back to the cottage but that was earlier in the day after he stopped at the police station to get the documents for another case. Apparently Joseph didn’t understand this was earlier in the day.
There was also extensive mobile phone testimony that was totally discredited ( and I will say no more about this ).
Paul had no trace of gasoline on his clothing, making it very unlikely he could have set the fire. He also had no scratches or signs he was involved in a struggle, unlikely if he strangled Jennifer. The prosecution suggested his motive was that Jennifer was demanding money, however her threats were not credible, and her demands were based on a false claim Paul damaged her vehicle.
To summarise, Paul has a very strong alibi supported by both witness and video. The prosecution have no case at all, other than Paul being a suspect due to his unstable relationship with Jennifer, and a witness who likely misunderstood or mis-remembered what Paul said in an early morning phone call.
Appeal ruling
Appeal brief
Eric Anderson was wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit! His conviction was due to “Outrageous Government Misconduct” that goes beyond Prosecution Misconduct! He has been sitting on San Quentin’s Death row for the past 15 years! He is still on a waiting list just to be appointed a State Habeas Appeal lawyer.
The Prosecution (through crime stoppers) paid the first witness, a female $10,000, which $9000, came from the victim’s family, before Preliminary Hearings. Then after this reward was paid, this same witness not only changed her story 7 times, but also failed the polygraph exam, beyond that there’s the evidence given to show she was lying. We believe once it became clear she was lying, it was too late for the Prosecutor to say “oops, we made a mistake”, and explain to the victim’s family they gave away $9000 of their money to a liar, and on top of that, hamper any case going forward on the others. They doubled-down on her lies and it is why they gave a self admitted guilty co-defendant a Plea Deal, even after knowing this second witness was lying. The prosecutor had multiple sources of evidence to know he was lying!
The prosecutor also lied in closing arguments, to the Jury the facts of a second witness Plea Deal, and claimed he was free to say “Martians came down and did it, and he would still get his deal-when the facts were he was locked into his statement he gave in his “Free Talk”.
The Prosecutor’s Investigator got on the stand to lie about evidence that doesn’t exist. Two weeks later a Stipulation was forced to recant, but the purpose and importance of this Stipulation-clearly was missed by the Jury.
The same Prosecutor’s Investigators also show the first witness a “Photo line up” which all 6 photos were of Eric Anderson and had his parole information on them. Then she claims to identify Eric by his prison issued glasses, which were replaced 2 years beforehand. There were other issues with her claim of identifying Eric as well.
The victim before dying gave his description of the shooter: Salt and pepper hair, with a full beard. Age about 45! No mention of glasses. Eric wears glasses and was in his 20’s, with dark brown hair!
The Prosecution’s Investigator changes witness’s statement reports and when these same witnesses testified, this isn’t what they said, they were pressed into agreeing what was written on a report and when at least 4 witnesses didn’t agree, the Prosecutor Impeached his own witnesses, in order to get in false statements found in these reports.
Eric Anderson’s cell phone records alone prove both of the State’s main witnesses perjured themselves, and that whole stories about what Eric did was false, because it shows he was somewhere else, in a different city, then where they claimed he was.
[ Case description taken from this petition: https://www.change.org/p/gavin-newsom-eric-anderson-needs-your-help-to-fight-against-his-wrongful-conviction-and-win-his-freedom ]
Juan Corona was framed by Edward Wayne Edwards and John Gotti for the murders of 25 migrant farm workers found buried in shallow graves in peach orchards along the Feather River in Sutter County, California, in 1971. ( Two trials ) Juan died in prison, March 2019.
Robert Pape and Cristin Smith were sentenced to life without parole in the 2006 triple murders of Jon Hayward, his girlfriend, Vicki Friedli, and her 18-year-old daughter, Rebecca “Becky” Friedli, in Pinyon Pines, California.
The victims were found murdered at their Alpine Drive home just north of Highway 74. Hayward and Vicki Friedli died of gunshots to the abdomen and head, respectively. Their bodies were discovered inside their burning home. Becky Friedli’s charred body lay outside in a wheelbarrow and her cause of death was never determined.
Robert was told certain aspects of the crime scene by Javier Garcia, such as the wheelbarrow and the bodies being too burned to identify. Javier testified that he did not know this information until a few days after the murders.
Post-trial discovery has revealed a tape of a Denny’s employee stating that Javier called her the next morning, stating the facts about the wheelbarrow and the burned bodies.
Martha Sierra accused David Diaz of attempting to kill her boyfriend, Remberto Preciado, in the Lincoln Heights area of L.A., in front of her. According to police, Preciado was asked what neighborhood he was from during a fight over gang rivalries, and subsequently shot in the leg.
At the hospital, Sierra, then 18, was asked for information about the suspect. Detectives showed her photos of registered gang members in Lincoln Heights. She pointed to a young man, skinny with a shaved head, bushy eyebrows, and the start of a moustache. It was David Diaz.
In court, the defense presented evidence that showed Diaz was at the cinema with his family at the time of the shooting. But the jury was swayed by Sierra’s identification of Diaz as the shooter.
Nineteen years later, Sierra admits that she chose Diaz at random due to police pressure. “They told me I couldn’t go home until I identified the criminal. I told them: ‘OK, it’s this guy,’ but I didn’t know who he was,” she told Univision News.
“David Diaz was not the shooter,” said Sierra, now 39. “I feel bad because he should not be there,” she added.
Sierra says the true culprit does not even look like Diaz, but she did not see him among the pictures police showed her. “Everything happened so quickly but I remember that he was tall, with light skin, and skinny.” According to Diaz and his lawyers, the true culprit died in a gunfight.
The victim of the shooting, Remberto Preciado, declared that the accused was not the man who shot him in the leg.
“He is innocent,” Preciado wrote in a letter sent to Univision from Salinas Valley state prison, where he is serving a sentence for an unrelated incident. “In the trial, I testified that David Diaz was not the shooter. He is a victim of injustice of the Los Angeles’ courts,” he wrote.
“Nineteen years of his life have been stolen from him,” he added.
Jacob Silva was convicted of the murder of Renee Ramos, whose bruised and beaten body was found June 5, 2000, beneath a pile of insulation at the site of a Home Depot under construction in Manteca, San Joaquin County, California.
Jacob Silva and Renee Ramos were boyfriend and girlfriend. Both 18 years old and living pretty much on the streets, sleeping in cars, parks or friend’s homes.
A 14-year-old when questioned by police, said he witnessed the victim’s rape and murder, but subsequently admitted the story was entirely made up. The prosecution case was that this happened five days earlier. There was no evidence to substantiate boy’s original claim, and forensic examiner John Cooper testified that the victim had only been dead for 1 to 3 days, and it was actually closer to one day than three, contradicting the story.
According to prosecutors, there were as many as five people present at the alleged crime.
Nevertheless, despite the complete lack of evidence to support the prosecution case other than the boy’s original story, and the conflict with the time of death according to Cooper, Jacob Silva was convicted of murder, and another man Ty Lopes was convicted of rape and murder.
Bobby Montague was wrongly convicted of a 1999 murder based on informant testimony and a false confession. Bobby, age 18, was with his girlfriend at the time of the crime.
According to an appeal ruling, the defense argued that “the trial court erroneously admitted his confession in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, refused to instruct the jury it could request read back of testimony, admitted anonymous handwritten rap lyrics and a photograph album found in appellant’s room. He also argues the prosecutor’s late disclosures of a witness’s background as a police informant violated appellant’s constitutional and statutory discovery rights”, however the appeal was denied.
Ryan Mickey was railroaded by the system for doing CPR wrong on a sick child that had a brain injury from the child’s Father Nicholas Bradley. This Coward beat up his pregnant wife and put her in the hospital for 3 weeks, Causing a subdural haematoma in his unborn child and received only a 4 year sentence. Ryan got together with the child’s mom a while later. Because this brain injury was so severe, it had reopened 16 months later with no warning. The symptoms were flu like and a nurse practitioner misdiagnosed this child with a severe flu. A few days later she went into respiratory distress and Ryan called 911 and began CPR… Because he did what anyone else with any kind of morals and a heart would’ve done, he lost his freedom & life from lying, crooked cops and DA…
Instead of doing the right thing and letting him go, they offered Ryan a deal to cover their own asses, which Ryan refused to sign.
He is a hero sitting in prison for helping someone! Ryan has already lost 11 years of his life due to this terrible injustice!! The Innocence Project is working on bringing him home right now.
Website : http://www.ryanmickeyisinnocent.com/
James Joseph Olague, Ernesto Duran Arellano and Oscar Hurtado Cervantes were wrongly convicted in the shooting death of of Robert Stepper and Eric Folsom, and attempted murder of Vicki Folsom and Jessica Valdez on Halloween 2002.
All three defendants testified at trial and denied any involvement. The police pressured alleged accomplices to make false confessions consistent with the prosecution theory.
According to defense attorney Rod Beede, the jury deliberated for 30 days during the guilt phase of this trial. At one point, he said, they were split 8-4 for acquittal.
From the same article “Was Oscar Cervantes Wrongfully Convicted of Being the Shooter in 2002 Halloween Homicide?”
Quote
There was an individual named Rudy Gonzalez, who the defense believed was either involved or knew who was involved in the shooting. However, the judge denied them the ability to call Mr. Gonzalez to the stand to put forward an alternate theory of the crime.
“Much more substantially than that,” Mr. Beede continued, “when eyewitness identification was a big issue – but there was a lot of debate as to whether calling a memory expert, an eyewitness identification expert, was something that a court should permit.”
They filed a motion to do that, retaining one of the most prominent eyewitness experts in the country to come and testify that the identification was false. The judge denied the motion to put this expert on the stand.
Mr. Beede noted that “subsequent to that, the Supreme Court has held that failure to put an eyewitness identification expert on the stand is ineffective assistance of counsel.” But they didn’t get that opportunity because the judge denied the motion.
Christina Marie Marten was barely 18 years old at the time and made a statement incriminating these defendants. She went to trial before the three main defendants went to trial. “She was offered a plea bargain, accessory after the fact, which basically was a time-served sentence if she would testify at Oscar’s trial to which she testified to a grand jury. When it came time for her to do that, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.”
Because of that she went to trial separately and was convicted and is now doing a life sentence without parole for a story she recanted.
“The eyewitness identification in this case was completely fabricated,” he said. “The two girls that were the survivors of these shootings had been shown Oscar’s picture at least a half dozen times.”
“But the most outrageous thing that happened in the case, of all the outrageous things that happened in the case, was that Nate Easlon, purported to be an eyewitness to the shooting – he was arrested down in Solano County and they made a deal with him to testify.”
“Nate Easlon wrote a letter to my co-counsel and I, and said he not only fabricated the entire story but that his attorney and Jim Walker, who was trying the case with Jeff Reisig, had told him to fabricate. Had gone down to Solano County, met with him, told him that he was going to get a life sentence or worse if he didn’t come through.”
End Quote
On May 11, 1995, Jermaine was accused of shooting and killing Ernesto Flores, a prominent member of the Mesa Locos gang. Jermaine consistently maintained that he did not shoot and kill Ernesto. Despite passing a polygraph examination prior to trial and despite the exceedingly unreliable eyewitnesses who claimed that they saw him shoot Flores, he was convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The trial judge gave him a sentence of 29 years-to-life.
Jermaine’s claims of innocence fell on deaf ears until an unlikely ally appeared. It all started in 2001 when an Oceanside Police Department homicide detective inadvertently stumbled upon evidence that Jermaine was, in fact, not the shooter in the Flores murder. At the time, the detective was working on an unrelated homicide. During the course of her investigation, she came into contact with several people who said that Jermaine was locked up for a crime he did not do. In 2005, she began looking further into Jermaine’s case. Her supervising Lieutenant told her to leave the matter alone and shot down her pleas to reinvestigate Jermaine’s case. Undeterred and convinced of Jermaine’s innocence, the detective went directly to the original prosecutor and investigating officers in the hopes that someone would do the right thing. Unfortunately, the original prosecutor and investigating officers were defensive and nothing ever came of these efforts.
Still undeterred and in an effort to set the record straight and do the right thing, the detective dedicated the next several years to uncovering the truth about the murder. She interviewed several witnesses who told her who the real shooter was. Further, the critical eyewitnesses against Jermaine admitted they lied at his trial. In 2008, the detective presented the case to the California Innocence Project, shortly before her retirement. Since that time, both she and the California Innocence Project have jointly investigated Jermaine’s case and uncovered further evidence of innocence. Jermaine will soon be presenting his case to the courts.
Source: California Innocence Project
Nicholas Newbold was wrongfully convicted of crimes committed by his ex-fiancé. She abused their two month old little girl, resulting in her death. Under California’s aiding and abetting law, Nubi was basically found guilty by association. He’s serving 30 years in prison and she is walking free! His only crime was choosing a cold hearted, selfish woman to fall in love with.
Source: http://www.freenubi.com/
Joseph Nissensohn was convicted in 2013 of the 1981 murders of Tammy Jarschke, 13, and Tanya Jones, 14, along with the 1989 murder of a South Lake Tahoe girl, 15-year-old Kathy Graves.
On Sept. 9, 1981, a team of woodcutters found Tanya’s decomposed body tied with electrical wire to a tree about a mile off Tassajara Road on Chews Ridge, Monterey County, California. Sheriff’s deputies combing the area for evidence found Tammy’s remains nearby.
Nine years later, Nissensohn’s estranged wife, Cheryl Rose, showed up in a Florida battered women’s shelter. She told police her husband had killed a woman in Tacoma, Wash. She agreed to testify in exchange for immunity. The next year, Nissensohn was convicted of killing Sally Jo Tsaggaris, 46, during drug-fueled, bondage-style sex in a van.
Rose testified that she believed Nissensohn was responsible for many earlier murders, including two in Oklahoma and one in Nevada. She described the disappearance of Kathy Graves in South Lake Tahoe three months after the Tacoma murder.
Rose also told investigators about a killing that matched details of the Chews Ridge slayings. Nissensohn was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the Tacoma murder, but in 2008, after serving 15 years, he was about to be let out with credits for good behavior.
Monterey and South Lake Tahoe’s El Dorado County filed charges and combined all three murders to be tried at the same time. Authorities found Jessie Prieto, Nissensohn’s best friend. Prieto agreed to cooperate and said he and his friend were with Tammy and Tanya on June 25, 1981, and that Nissensohn told him he wanted to take the girls to Chews Ridge and rape them. But Prieto died before the case ever made it to trial. Cheryl Rose, who was in poor health, was barely able to testify in a 2010 preliminary hearing, and died five months later. However, prosecutor Dale Gomes was able to submit Rose’s testimony transcript as evidence at trial. A jailhouse informant informant testified that Nissensohn confessed to killing Tammy and Tanya.
—
Just before Nissensohn was sentenced in 1991, he contacted police, and told them in an interview that he did not kill Sally Jo Tsaggaris or Kathy Graves, claiming that his wife, Cheryl Rose, killed them, and he just hid the body of Tsaggaris. The long interview, which was taped, was played for the jury. Nissensohn told two offices that he was a scapegoat for Rose, who had killed Sally. He only helped get rid of the body, he said. The first murder trial was a conspiracy against him, he said, involving Rose, who testified in exchange for immunity, and his defense counsel, who offered no defense and simply rested their case without so much as calling a witness. Because he was about to be sentenced and likely extradited to California for the murder of Graves, he wanted to strike a deal himself. Nissensohn said on the tape that he met Rose in a motel and of their wild life of drugs and sex, with Rose bringing home “beautiful women” to “party” with and play “sexual games,” while he brought in drugs. One day, he came back from getting drugs to find Tsaggaris stabbed to death, but didn’t go to the police. Instead, he helped get rid of the body. “I know Cheryl did it,” Nissensohn said on the tape. “I came back to that van and that girl was dead. Cheryl did it. I had nothing to worry about … I sat there and heard it for a day and a half after my lawyer stuck it to me by going, ‘Defense rests.’ Guilty of second-degree murder. And all I did was help get rid of the body. Guilty of second-degree murder. I didn’t do it.
The defense called a witness who testified that her ex-husband killed Tammy and Tanya.
The defense called Brian Jarvis of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office to the stand. Jarvis, now retired, was part of interviews with Rose, which were played via audio and shown on video. Though the interviews from 1990 were nearly unintelligible, the jury was provided a transcript, and Jarvis was questioned after each segment.
The defense asked questions concerning answers Rose had given, showing she changed answers over time. Between the 1990 interviews and a 2007 interview, she changed her story of the last time she saw Kathy Graves, a South Lake Tahoe teenager Nissensohn is accused of killing. First, she said she saw the girl leaving to hitchhike to find a job; then, she last saw the girl as Nissensohn led her into the hills of the forest, after they had stopped their van. Nissensohn allegedly wanted sex, and when denied by the girl, killed her.
She also changed her story of what Nissensohn had carried into the woods. Originally, she said it was a quilt. Then, she changed her story to a bag of sex toys that also had a kitchen knife — what she said Nissensohn used to kill Graves and Tsaggaris.
Hooman Ashkan Panah was convicted in 1995 of sexually assaulting and murdering an 8-year-old girl, and sentenced to death.
The victim was found in a suitcase in Hooman’s closet, in his apartment which was shared by Hooman, his mother and a guest, Ahmed Seihoon, who was the last person to see the victim before she went missing.
The conviction was based on pathology and serological evidence, however this evidence was false, being inconsistent with DNA evidence which was collected but not presented at trial, in fact his attorney has claimed that the DNA proves Hooman to be innocent.
An independent pathologist has stated that the victim likely died much later than Hooman was present at the apartment, meaning he could not have committed the crime.
Multiple searches of the apartment were conducted by the police, which failed to discover the body, suggesting that it was brought into the apartment after Hooman was arrested.
The guest, Ahmed Seihoon, had the opportunity both to commit the crime and return the body to the apartment in a suitcase. In addition, according to Hooman’s mother, he lied to police to give the impression he had an alibi.
The latest brief, filed in March 2016, is available from http://freehooman.com/.
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Ray Meyers was told to plead guilty to a child molestation case in Riverside County CA, by a court appointed attorney.
He is innocent, doc report came back with no physical evidence.
He is a cancer patient or was, almost paralyzed due to his extensive treatment. He had a stem cell transplant years ago but because of his on going medical issues, he is in a state prison hospital in Stockton.
He was helping out a friend of his who was homeless and living in a van with his two kids, my friend offered to help him out by opening up his home and offered to watch the two kids while the parents went/looked for work.
This is how he was repaid by being accused of molesting the little girl!
Scared and not having any money due to his disability, he listened to the lawyer because the lawyer told him if he plead guilty he would get a lesser sentence, this did not happen even though they had no evidence he is wasting away in prison and supporters are afraid he will die there without the proper care he needs.
He is coming up for his first parole, his sentence is 80 to life.
Kenneth Clair was convicted of the 1984 murder of a baby sitter in Santa Ana, Orange County, California, and sentenced to death.
A child witness who did not testify initially stated that the murdererer was white, but then changed his story., but in an affidavit filed in Aug. 2004, the now-grown Jerrod Hessling, testified that he changed his description at the behest of his mother’s boyfriend, who was a member of a white motorcycle club.
There was no physical evidence tying Clair to the killing, he was convicted mostly on the strength of a taped conversation between him and ex-girlfriend Pauline Flores. In the recording, Flores repeatedly tries to get Clair to admit he killed Rodgers.
However in 2011, DNA tests revealed DNA from an unknown male.
Source : http://www.ocregister.com/articles/clair-83013-dna-rodgers.html
In January 2016, it was revealed that in March 2015, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals secretly overturned Clair’s death sentence and sealed the records.
Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/clair-699237-court-evidence.html
Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for 30 years and is set to be the next person executed by the state. Cooper was convicted of murdering a mother, father, and two 10-year-old children in a crime that horrified prosecutors in 1983. However, the execution is drawing some criticism, as five federal judges say that Kevin Cooper may be innocent and that evidence suggests that the man may not have committed the terrible murder. Despite an unprecedented 103-page dissent letter signed by five federal judges in the Kevin Cooper appeal case, noting that “the State of California may be about to execute an innocent man,” the lethal injection is still scheduled to take place unless Governor Jerry Brown intervenes.
Source: Inquisitor.com Jan 31, 2016
Discussion | Proposal Post | Page at SaveInnocents | Website | Petition
Kevin Michael Black was convicted in 2002 of the sexual abuse of his step-daughter (D), and of molesting two of her friends (F1) and (F2).
Key to the case is a babysitter (BS) with a long record of molesting children.
The defense case is that D (age 9 when she made the false accusation) was under the influence of BS, who had likely molested her, and coached her to accuse Kevin.
According to D, BS used to baby sit her after school. BS would take her to school and pick her up almost every day. BS loved her and was very nice to her. He would buy her a lot of presents and candy. He would get swimsuits and other outfits and would have her try them on.
D was not a credible witness. D’s mother (M) testified that, when she was living with a previous boyfriend (BF), D accused BF of molesting her, recanted, and then later accused him again. It was hard for M to know if D was telling the truth about BF because nothing had come of D’s earlier accusation against BS. M did not report the accusation against BF to the police. D had previously made other accusations against individuals.
At trial, D testified that BS had never touched her in a bad way. She said she told the police officer that BS had never molested her and she repeatedly told M that BS had never molested her. BS had merely washed her while she was in the shower when she was very
little.
According to an appeal ruling the evidence showed that BS molested L. about 27 years before trial when she was about 7 years old, C. about 21 years before trial when she was about 8 years old, M some 20 years before trial when she was about 9 years old, T. about 6 years before trial when she was about 3 years old, and BF’s son about 1 month before.
Moreover at trial F1 and F2 testified that Kevin did not do anything, and they could not even identify him.
Given all this, it is truly hard to see how the jury could have concluded guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, nevertheless Kevin was found guilty.
On appeal, the defense pointed to new information in police records showing that BS had recently molested another girl of D’s age (JW), a friend of D, that he was sexually interested in D, and that he admitted molesting JW.
However the appeal court ruled that it would only have emphasized the fact that BS molested many children; it would not have established that BS molested D.
Also of note is that the lead detective was a lifelong friend of BS. This detective unsucessfully threatened a jailhouse inmate to attempt to persuade him to testify against Kevin.
In addition the defense attorney was incompetent and suicidal and shot himself. His own psychiatrist testified to this.
Finally during her CART interview JW stated that BS told her to ‘blame the step-dad’ if anyone ever found out. This is on tape.
Kevin has now been in prison for nearly 15 years.
Supporting Documents
Darrell Lomax was in the backseat of a car that was pulled over for an illegal lane change. When two handguns were found in the car, Lomax suddenly found himself subjected to a curbside gunshot residue test, which took two hours. He passed—no evidence was found that he’d recently fired a gun. During the course of the traffic stop, several patrol cars brought to the scene witnesses of two earlier crimes, asking if Lomax was involved. None of the witnesses implicated him in either incident. Along with the driver and other passenger of the vehicle, Lomax was still arrested and charged in connection with two armed robberies, one of which ended in the fatal shooting of Nasser Akbar.
Lomax was held from September 1, 1994, until March 13, 1995. On that morning, all charges against Lomax were dropped, but the case against him proceeded anyway, even though the prosecution did not formally refile the complaint or rearrest Lomax. This was technically a violation of the penal code, but Lomax wasn’t informed that the charges had briefly been dropped until years later. In the meantime, he was found guilty, based largely on the testimony of Angela Toler, the other passenger in the vehicle Lomax had been riding in. Toler recieved a lighter sentence in return for her testimoney.
No physical evidence connects Lomax to the murder of Nasser Akbar. No gunshot residue was found on him at the time and his fingerprints were not on either gun. A surviving witness to the robbery stated that there were two assailants: a woman, and a man with dreadlocks, which Lomax did not have. Another witness cleared Lomax in the initial field identification, but later changed his story to match Toler’s. In return, the authorities dropped $1,600 in unpaid parking tickets and a charge for possession of an unregistered handgun against the witness (the official explanation was that authorities were eager to prevent the witness from going to prison, where his life might have been in danger). Prior to the trial, the witness never gave any descriptions that matched Lomax.
Darrell Lomax has been on death row since 1995.
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