Salon.com > Wrongful Conviction

Damien Echols: How death row prepared me for my new life

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:45:00 +0000

After spending 18 years in prison for murders I didn't commit, I walked off of death row one year and 10 months ago. I know it's this amount of time because at least once a week someone will stop me and ask, "So, how long have you been out now?" In some ways that year and 10 months seems like it's been a very, very long time. In other ways it has passed in the blink of an eye.

I've barely had time to rest for more than a handful of days since I've been out. While on death row I wrote a book called "Life After Death," that was published by Blue Rider Press soon after my release. Almost immediately I was on the road doing book signings and talks. And then the documentary that my wife, Lorri, and I produced -- most of which was also done while I was still on death row -- came out. We traveled from state to state, theater to theater, screening the film and answering the audience's questions. We've also undertaken a speaking tour, going from school to school to discuss the case with law students, criminal justice majors and future journalists. Rarely has there been a moment when I wasn't moving.

For Central Park Five, wrongful conviction meets false equivalence

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:36:00 +0000

In Friday’s New York Times, columnist Jim Dwyer appears to equate the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of five innocent teenagers in the notorious Central Park jogger case -- including Raymond Santana, a co-author of this column -- to the dissemination of an online petition demanding professional accountability against the prosecutor who helped put them there.

“It was a simple task to discover [prosecutor] Elizabeth Lederer on Google, just as those boys were easy to find in the park,” Dwyer writes. “The petition has found someone to blame, repeating the very mistake of the injustice it deplores.”

Indeed, the petition started by Frank Chi (the other co-author of this column) to fire Elizabeth Lederer from Columbia Law School may have affected her online search results. But by reading Dwyer’s column, you’d think her life was ruined. Locked up, key thrown away.

Why can’t law enforcement admit their mistakes?

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 14:00:00 +0000

After honor student Stephanie Crowe was stabbed to death in her bedroom in Escondido, California in January 1998, police briefly questioned (and collected clothes from) Richard Tuite, a drug-addicted, mentally ill transient who had been spotted prowling nearby the previous evening and scaring the Crowes’ neighbors. But the first person to get the third degree by detectives was Stephanie’s 14-year-old brother Michael, who weathered 10 hours of grueling interrogation without his parents or attorney present.

Michael was told – falsely – that his 12-year-old sister’s blood was found in his room, that his hair was discovered between her fingers and that his voice stress analyzer test showed deception. Eventually, Michael cracked. He told detectives he had no memory of the crime, but he would be willing to make something up for them.

Finding redemption without DNA proof

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:00:00 +0000

The most hopeful scenario possible for innocent inmates fighting a wrongful conviction is when DNA testing of existing evidence might be enough to exonerate them. DNA holds out an unparalleled promise of certainty. As far as evidence goes, it’s the gold standard; solid science. Just last month, a Louisiana man became the 300^th inmate in the U.S. exonerated by it.

Yet DNA evidence plays no role in 90 to 95 percent of criminal convictions and the inmates in such cases’ subsequent innocence claims. Often biological evidence simply doesn’t exist. Sometimes it has been badly degraded or has simply vanished. Without DNA’s “aha” moment, judges are even more loath than usual to consider setting aside a conviction. So, what of the wrongfully convicted for whom DNA can never offer a glimmer of hope?

Criminal defense attorney Glenn Garber, who founded the non-profit Exoneration Initiative known as EXI in 2003, calls this the forgotten population “because protestations of innocence from prisoners whose cases lack DNA fall on deaf ears.”

Why police lineups can’t be trusted

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Studies have shown that memory and recall are more fallible than failsafe. That finding undermines eyewitness identifications—a critical prosecution mainstay—revealing them as far more fragile evidence than imagined. Just ask Rickey Dale Wyatt of Dallas, Texas. On January 4, 2012, he was released from prison after serving 31 years of a 99-year sentence for a rape he did not commit.

Police were sure that a single rapist had committed a cluster of rapes when they arrested Wyatt for three assaults.

The third victim, who had been grabbed from behind and dragged at knifepoint to a dimly lit area, was the first to identify Wyatt. Ultimately, all three picked Wyatt from photographic lineups. All had described their rapists as being between 170 and 200 pounds, between 5’9” and 6’, and as having no facial hair. Wyatt is 5’6”, was close to 140 pounds—and he had abundant facial hair and a mustache.

Can we predict a wrongful conviction?

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 14:00:00 +0000

While the law enforcement community widely views American jurisprudence as being rich with built-in safeguards, from the right to counsel to the right not to be physically abused by police officers, citizens’ protections aren’t always up to the task. People are sometimes convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.

Analyzing the errors that led to wrongful convictions, recurring themes emerge. Steven Drizin, clinical professor at Northwestern University of Law, and cofounder of its Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, and social psychologist Richard Leo posit that the errors are sequential. And as they stack up, says Drizin, they “develop a momentum that is very difficult to stop.” Safeguards in the system become “like speed bumps at best. They don’t do anything to really slow down that momentum towards a wrongful conviction.”