The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project will be holding a legal clinic at Matthews Memorial Baptist Church in Southeast Washington DC on Thursday November 12, 2009 at 6:30 PM. The clinic will feature speeches from two local men who were wrongfully convicted and then later released, Aaron Michael Howard and Leslie Vass. We will then be breaking into intake sessions where those interested in our help can tell us about their case or their loved ones and MAIP can begin the process of evaluating their case. What: Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project's first ever legal clinic When: Thursday November 12, 2009 at 6:30 PM…

MAIP Client David Wayne Boyce is serving two life sentences for the 1990 murder of his roommate, Timothy Kurt Askew, 35, at the Econo Lodge motel in Newport News, Virginia.  Police and prosecutors claimed that Mr. Boyce, a young man with no criminal history, stabbed Mr. Askew repeatedly, killing him and then robbing him.  There was no physical evidence or eyewitness testimony that linked Mr. Boyce to this crime.  Mr. Boyce has maintained his innocence since his initial arrest. Mr. Boyce was convicted largely based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant Herman Preston Elkins, a self-confessed mentally ill repeat…

For three years, undergraduate journalism students at the Medill Innocence Project uncovered overwhelming evidence indicating that a Chicago man who has been in prison for murder for 28 years is completely innocent of the crime.  Instead of focusing on Anthony McKinney’s innocence, the Cook County, IL. Prosecutor’s office has instead turned its attention on the student investigators, issuing subpoenas that include demands for the class syllabus and student grades. Nine different teams of investigators worked on McKinney’s case from 2003 to 2006.  At the end of their investigation, the students concluded that the then-18-year-old resident of the Harvey area of…

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After spending more than 11 harsh years in prison for a crime they did not commit, Joseph J. Dick, Jr., Derek E. Tice, and Danial J. Williams, became free men in early August thanks in large part to the legal work of two members of MAIP’s Board of Directors. On August 6, 2009, Governor Timothy M. Kaine of Virginia granted conditional pardons to the Navy veterans known as the “Norfolk Four” but fell short of granting them absolute pardons based on innocence. Gov. Kaine denied the clemency request of Eric C. Wilson, the fourth member of the group, who was…

Anthony Gray had spent seven years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit before finally being released in February 1999.  In 1991, 38-year-old Linda Mae Pellicano was found stabbed and raped in her Chesapeake Beach, MD home.  Anthony Gray was arrested, and authorities told him that two other men who had been arrested had implicated him, in order to make him confess.  Gray, who has a below-average IQ, did confess, and eventually pleaded guilty to first degree murder and first degree rape, believing that it would allow him to avoid the death penalty.  He was sentenced…

On November 7, 2002, Bernard Webster became the first person to be exonerated under a new Maryland DNA law, after spending twenty years in prison for a break-in and rape he did not commit. In July 1982, a 47-year-old schoolteacher came home to her Towson apartment in the middle of the afternoon.  She heard a rustling in her closet, and when she walked into her bedroom, a black man jumped out and attacked her.  The victim told the jury that the man put what he said was a gun to her back, covered her head with a bathrobe, forced her…

In 1987, Guy "Gordy" Marsh was released from prison after serving 14 years in prison for a murder he did not commit and was set up for by a detective. On June 28th, 1971, Charles Erdman was murdered inside a Glen Burnie, Maryland 7-Eleven on Crain Highway after attempting to stop a robbery that was in progress by two masked men. The main witness against Marsh at trial was Linda Packech, a heroin addict with a lengthy criminal record. She claimed to have seen Marsh come out of the 7-Eleven and raise his mask. Her testimony was the primary evidence…

Thanks in large part to the work of the Innocence Project of Texas, a Dallas man was pardoned by Texas Gov. Rick Perry Wednesday, nearly thirty years after he was wrongfully accused of of raping and killing his girlfriend. James Lee Woodard was originally released from prison in April 2008 after a DNA-retesting program run by the new Dallas District Attorney cleared him of the 1980 murder of  Beverly Ann Jones. He had spent 27 years behind bars for a crime he consistently denied doing. DNA testing was unavailable at the time of the crime. On Wednesday, the Governor officially…