Nearly three decades after he was convicted of brutal rape and murder that he did not commit, Donald Gates was freed Tuesday by a D.C. Superior Court Judge after DNA evidence proved that another man committed the crime.

Mr. Gates has always maintained his innocence.  Now, thanks to the hard work of Parisa Deghani-Tafti and others from the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, he finally has regained his freedom.  

Judge Fred Ugast’s ruling frees Gates, but it does not exonerate him.  Prosecutors requested additional testing to verify the results, and a separate hearing next week to make a final determination.
(more…)

Aaron Michael Howard, who was released from prison in 2008 after serving 18 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, joined community members at a church in Southeast Washington D.C. for the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project’s first ever legal clinic last week.  

Residents of the Southeast and Southwestern quadrants of the District of Columbia, as well as Prince George’s County, Maryland, attended the clinic at Matthews Memorial Baptist Church. Those in attendance learned more about MAIP’s work to correct wrongful convictions and had the opportunity to tell MAIP staff members and law students from the Innocence Project at Catholic University of America about their loved ones’ cases.

After the intake, Howard spoke to the crowd. He discussed his conviction, his time in prison, the work that his legal team did to prove his innocence, and his time since his release.  He then fielded questions from those in attendance.

The clinic was part of MAIP’s efforts to expand awareness of its work in the District of Columbia.  Because people convicted in Washington DC are sent around the country to facilities managed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it is more difficult for them to learn about and reach MAIP to investigate their wrongful convictions claims.

In the months leading up to the clinic, MAIP Board Member Gina Harps and Program Assistant Daniel Satin attended meetings of various Ward 7 and Ward 8 civic associations and meetings over the Advisory Neighborhood Council.  Harps and Satin plan on continuing their outreach and hope to have its next clinic in March.    

Click here to see more pictures of the event on MAIP’s Facebook page.

Thanks to the work of a legal team led by MAIP Board Member Barry Pollack, a New York man who spent seventeen years behind bars for a murder he did not commit was exonerated last week.

Despite the lack of any forensic evidence, Fernando Bermudez was convicted of the 1991 shooting of then sixteen-year-old Raymond Blount outside a New York City nightclub.  Blount was shot on the street shortly after punching another teenager, Efraim Lopez, in the Marc Ballroom near Manhattan’s Union Square.  Lopez testified at trial as a cooperating witness, implicating Bermudez as the shooter.

In the years after Bermudez was convicted, all five eyewitnesses against him, Lopez and four eyewitnesses who had testified at trial identifying Bermudez as the shooter, recanted their testimony.  Three of those witnesses reiterated that their trial testimony was inaccurate in a hearing this September.  Other eyewitnesses at that hearing also testified that Bermudez was not the person who shot Mr. Blount.  At the hearing, significant evidence was also presented implicating another individual, a drug dealer who was a friend of Lopez, as the murderer.
(more…)

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

Where: Matthews Memorial Baptist Church 2616 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd SE

Who: Anyone who wants to know more about MAIP or wants help with the case of someone they know. MAIP exonerees, Board members, staff members and law student volunteers will also be attending.

What to bring: Knowledge of the case to the best of your ability. If you have any legal docs we would be more than happy to take them.

Click here to see the information flier for MAIP's first Innocence Clinic

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 offender.  In 2004, Mr. Elkins called Mr. Boyce’s counsel and recanted his trial testimony against Mr. Boyce.  He claimed he was coerced by the Newport News Police prior to Mr. Boyce’s trial.  Also in 2004, DNA evidence positively excluded Mr. Boyce from the physical evidence found at the crime scene.

MAIP attorneys and investigators have been working on Mr. Boyce’s case with lawyers from Howrey LLP and Hunton & Williams LLP since 2005, when they filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in response to Mr. Elkins’ unsolicited phone call.  The petition has not yet been decided but is expected to move forward with the recent appointment of a new judge – Norfolk Circuit Court Judge John R. Doyle III.

In addition to asserting his innocence, Mr. Boyce’s team contends that the police and prosecutors violated the Constitution by withholding potentially crucial evidence from his counsel prior to trial, including: 1) Mr. Elkins’ history of mental illness and long-standing relationship with the police department, 2) a memo showing that another person had confessed to the crime, 3) reports that exclude Mr. Boyce’s fingerprints from those found at the crime scene, and 4) a photograph of Mr. Boyce taken the day of the murder that contradicts an alleged identification of the murderer.

Mr. Boyce’s team believes that this withheld evidence would have changed the outcome of Mr. Boyce’s trial.  Mr. Boyce’s attorneys are hopeful that the judge will find that the prosecution had a duty to turn over this evidence prior to trial, grant the petition for habeas corpus and order a new trial for Mr. Boyce after 19 years in prison.          

Click here to read a story in the Newport News Daily Press about the Boyce case.   

Click here to learn more about how "snitch" testimony can lead to wrongful convictions.

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 Chicago could not have been involved in the 1978 murder of security guard Donald Lundahl. Among their findings was a confession from a man who was present when his cousin shot and killed Lundahl, confirming that McKinney was not there.  In addition, the students were able to prove McKinney’s alibi and disprove the statements of two eyewitnesses who now claim they only identified McKinney after being beaten by police officers and could not have been present to see the crime occur.

David Protess, the Director of the Medill Innocence Project, directed the McKinney case to attorneys at the Center for Wrongful Convictions.  Protess’ students have conducted investigations that have led to eleven exonerations and both MAIP Executive Director Shawn Armbrust and Program Assistant Daniel Satin previously worked for the Medill Innocence Project (though not on the McKinney case.)

In November, the Center for Wrongful Conviction attorneys filed a request for a new trial based on the evidence the students had uncovered.  In June, the prosecutors subpoenaed students’ investigative memos, internal e-mails and notes from witness interviews, along with their grades and class syllabi.  

Barry Scheck, Co-director of the Innocence Project, said he has never seen prosecutors demand student grades from any of the other members in the nearly two decade history of the Innocence Network

“Every time the government starts attacking the messenger as opposed to the message, it can have a chilling effect,” Scheck said.

Attorneys from Northwestern say that the subpoena breaks federal laws regarding privacy for students and for journalists.

"I don't think it's any of the state's business to know the state of mind of my students," Protess said. "Prosecutors should be more concerned with the wrongful conviction of Anthony McKinney than with my students' grades."

While Protess and the attorneys involved continue to fight for McKinney’s freedom and the right of the students to maintain their privacy, MAIP hopes the prosecutors will focus on the overwhelming evidence of McKinney’s innocence instead of trying to question the intentions of the students involved.           

Click here to read more about the McKinney case.

Click here to read coverage of the Medill Innocence Project’s fight to maintain its privacy in the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times.

www.facebook.com/midatlanticip

Become a fan today!

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 cleared his name.

(more…)

As part of our efforts to connect with more people interested in the work we do, the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project recently joined Facebook Causes.

Our causes page features multimedia about our work and about exonerees from around the country. It also will have up to date news about MAIP events and legal developments.

Continue your support for MAIP by joining our cause .

On September 19, 2009, MAIP client Thomas Haynesworth became the first person in Virginia to win a Writ of Actual Innocence in a DNA case, when the Supreme Court of Virginia found that DNA testing had proven his innocence in the 1984 rape of a Richmond woman.

Mr. Haynesworth, who is represented by MAIP, the Innocence Project in New York, and Hogan & Hartson, was charged as the perpetrator in five separate incidents involving robberies, sexual assaults, or attempted sexual assaults in Richmond and Henrico County between January and April of that year.  

He has always insisted that he was innocent of those crimes, but he ultimately was convicted in three of them.  For years, he has sought DNA testing that he said would prove his innocence and link the crimes to Leon Davis, a serial rapist known as the “Black Ninja” who committed several rapes in Richmond and Henrico County during the latter half of 1984.  Notably, Mr. Davis was a neighbor of Mr. Haynesworth’s, and the two men look alike.

This year, DNA testing performed as part of Virginia’s Old Case Testing Project proved that Mr. Haynesworth was innocent of one of those rapes.  Instead, the profile matched Mr. Davis, proving that he committed at least one rape in the early half of 1984.

This victory eliminates 10 years of a 74-year sentence that Mr. Haynesworth is serving for the three crimes.  The other two crimes for which Mr. Haynesworth was convicted were not part of the Old Case Testing project, but MAIP and its co-counsel are continuing to investigate the other cases in which Mr. Haynesworth was convicted and are optimistic that additional investigation may help prove Mr. Haynesworth’s innocence.