In September of this year, the Virginia Supreme Court agreed to review the decision of the Virginia Court of Appeals in the case of Aleck Carpitcher, a man who was wrongfully convicted in 1999 of sexually assaulting a then nine-year-old girl. Mr. Carpitcher is currently serving 38 years of a 73-year sentence. The nine-year-old, who was the daughter of Mr. Carpitcher’s girlfriend, was the only witness against Mr. Carpitcher. She recanted her testimony nine months after he was convicted, but Mr. Carpticher could not present the evidence because of Virginia’s 21-day rule, which provided that convicted defendants had only 21 days from the date of sentencing to ask to re-open cases based on new evidence of innocence. Mr. Carpitcher became able to present the evidence when the Virginia General Assembly passed the Writ of Actual Innocence legislation in 2004. Earlier this year, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Carpitcher was not entitled to relief under that statute because, although the alleged victim had recanted her testimony and was clearly a non-credible witness, Mr. Carpitcher had not succeeded in proving that she was being truthful at the time of the recantation rather than at the time of the original testimony. In other words, because the Court had no idea whether Mr. Carpitcher had committed the crime or not, it decided to let the conviction stand. The Virginia Supreme Court has granted certiorari and will review the Court of Appeals’ decision this year.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Cases, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.