DNA Tests Prove Broward Man Innocent

Right here in Broward County.

No easy road to freedom. 26 years in jail. 41 now. He was 15 and a kid when he was locked up. Says the confession was coerced. Complains the police beat him. And a quarter century later he is proven right. Justice failed him. The courts, the cops, the prosecutors, his lawyers. Until Diane Cuddihy, eight years ago, said, 'Let's look at this again.' How do you return a life lost?

One more mistake to compound so many others our courts have made all across this country for so many years. You know, the numbers are becoming so great, the Innocence Projects should be federally funded under a stimulus package by the Federal Government. Instead, people are debating cuts in crime labs. Insane. Cutting? We should be adding.

This past week, DNA results were released in the case of Anthony Caravella, a mentally retarded man, who was convicted at the young age of 15, of raping and murdering Ada Jankowski in Miramar, Broward County, Florida. How many other innocents was in he in jail with? How many are still there never to be freed?

Thank the courageous Diane Cuddihy of the Broward Public Defender's office.

Thank the Innocence Project of Florida.

Diane Cuddihy says the DNA results mean "Anthony is innocent, it exonerates him."

The test, performed by a private lab in Richmond, Calif., eliminated Caravella as a potential source for the sperm found inside the Miramar victim’s body 26 years ago.

The test yielded the DNA profile of an unidentified male that could be checked against genetic databases to see if there’s a match with anyone on file.

The State convicted Caravella of stabbing the victim to death and raping her in the meantime, depositing his semen inside of her during the crime.

Their own lab, in 1983, identified sperm on a swab of material taken from the victim’s vagina. Now, 25 years later, Forensic Science Associates, one of the best private labs in the nation, found some sperm cells on a slide made from the same swab, extracted the DNA from those sperm cells and determined, conclusively, that the sperm could not have come from Anthony Caravella.
It means the defendant is not the perp. It is as simple as that, no matter how much the State may try to confuse the issue.

From a scientific standpoint, what is interesting is that when the local crime lab had a crack at this evidence, they got no DNA result. In fact, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office Crime Lab, didn’t even detect semen, despite the fact that lab analysts did see sperm on the tested vaginal swab in 1983.

Everyone in the local law enforcement community is baffled, but should any of us really be surprised at this point, asks the Innocence Project on its web site:

"Government-run crime labs just are not as good as independent private labs at getting DNA results in these challenging old cases. Maybe it is because the scientist is not as experienced. Or they did not painstakingly search on the slide for microscopically visible sperm cells. Or maybe they just don’t view the importance of the case in the same way as a private lab would. Who knows."

The Innocence Projects knows though that time and time again, private labs succeed where government-run crime labs have failed.

"What we do know," the Project has said, "is that when the prosecutor Carolyn McCann says that they need to review the methods of the private lab because the result doesn’t comport with what her lab found, while certainly necessary, she is really only trying to intimate that something is amiss in an attempt to delegitimize the perfectly legit results. The only thing that is amiss, is that we now know a guy has spent 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and no one, except his attorney, is trying to rip down the prison walls to free him."

Another important point about this case will be the focus of ongoing conversations about this case, is Mr. Caravella’s mental retardation (IQ of 67) and how that, combined with coercive and suggestive interrogation methods by law enforcement, led to what DNA results show was a false confession. False confessions contributed to a wrongful conviction in about 25% of the DNA exoneration cases nationwide.

One of those cases, that of Jerry Frank Townsend, makes this case more troubling because both are Broward cases, both involve law enforcement suggestively interrogating a mentally retarded person until they confess and using that false confession to close cases, and both cases may even involve at least one of the same law enforcement officers.

When Caravella is exonerated, he will be the 243rd DNA exoneree nationwide, the 11th in Florida, and the 4th in Broward County alone. 243 wrongful convictions so far. And more to come. How could we have been so wrong so often in so many places?

JAABLOG has covered this at this link http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/2007/09/04/pardon-our-appearance.aspx

So has the Herald- http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/fred-grimm/story/1220123.html

and the Sentinel http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-dna-caravella-b090309,0,258915.story

'Dallas DNA' Newest Crime Reality Show to Air

First came LA Law. Then Boston Legal. Now, Dallas DNA is poised to hit the nation's airwaves, reports the ABA Journal.

But, unlike the earlier award-winning television dramas, this one is set in real life. "Dallas DNA chronicles a pioneering unit within the Dallas County’s District Attorney’s office where post-conviction DNA testing is being used to clear the innocent, as well as confirm the guilty," reports a press release about the new six-part series, which premieres April 28 on Investigation Discovery.

Under a new DA, Craig Watkins, the Texas office created the first DNA-testing program in the nation overseen by a prosecutor that seeks to correct unjust convictions. Investigation Discovery was given exclusive and unprecedented access by the DA's office and the local court system to film the work of the conviction integrity unit established by Watkins and interview the prisoners and families involved.

Since state law authorized post-conviction testing in 2001, there have been more DNA exonerations in Dallas County than anywhere else in the country.

Can't think of a better reality show for the public to see than this. You have to look at every viewer as a potential juror, who will one day not necessarily be deciding a murder case, but the reliability of forensic evidence or the credibility of a uniformed officer's testimony. A show like this has an underlying message of switching mindsets.

Times Editorial Urges DNA Testing

DNA Testing makes so much sense and is so fair how can anyone be against it? The Supreme Court should affirm a federal court of appeals ruling to give prisoners access to DNA evidence that could establish their innocence.

You would almost think it was mandatory with the number of innocent men our society has discovered that have wrongly been put in jail.

You would almost think.

A New York Times editorial calls out Alaska and asks for DNA testing, one day after an article by Robert Morgenthau, the retiring NY District Attorney suggests the same.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/opinion/02mon2.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

'The Hard Cases' Featured in New Yorker

New Yorker Examines a ‘Hard’ Detainee Case

If you are at a news stand and want to pick up a magazine to read, and you are looking for an intersting piece, may I suggest the New Yorker Magazine and the article, “The Hard Cases,” . Oh, and in a shameless, self promoting plug, it is available at Norm's News at 1400 East Las Olas, open seven days a week. See my nephew Tyler if he is not flirting with the female hairstylists in the barber shop next door.

It takes a close-up look at the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, an alleged enemy combatant held without charge in a Charleston, S.C., brig, and the difficult policy choices facing President Obama.

Al-Marri, whose criminal charges in the federal court system were dismissed in 2003 when al-Marri was declared an enemy combatant by President Bush, is at the center of a Supreme Court case on whether a president can order someone held indefinitely without charge in national security cases.

The article also looks at possible strategies, including a controversial proposal to create a national security court, that the new administration may employ in alleged terrorism cases.

Thanks to Gavel Grab for turning me on to this magazine piece. By the way, h is also a stunning article by the nationally respected New York District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, censuring the State of Alaska for its refusal to use DNA testing:

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/02/27/2009-02-27_alaskas_refusal_to_use_a_dna_test_for_tr.html

High Court to Hear DNA Testing Case

Justices to Debate Whether Convicts Should Be Guaranteed Access to Latest Techniques

Sunday's Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/21/AR2009022101704.html

A MUST READ FOR CRIMINAL LAWYERS:

Highlights:

--More than 200 people nationwide have been freed because DNA tests performed after their convictions showed they could not have committed the crimes. This on the heels of the Forensics report last Friday.

---It is the Supreme Court's first case that confronts the dilemma of how to deal with DNA evidence, which former attorney general John D. Ashcroft called the "truth machine of law enforcement."

----"Relying solely on the unfettered discretion of prosecutors to unlock the promise of DNA analysis can sanction injustice," said a brief filed on behalf of current and former prosecutors, including former attorney general Janet Reno.

Is there any doubt that with the number of inmates so wrongly convicted that we should do so much more to fund, research, and review the processes which have created and now perpetuate unconscionable levels of injustice? Any doubt at all?

Hell, it should be part of the stimulus package.