Friday, September 28, 2012
Fingerprints
People
generally believe that finger prints are objective proof and have a
long standing basis in science. However this article illustrates the
history of finger prints, the abuses and the purely subjective nature of
the analysts. The National Academy of Science report started an
important dialogue about how to improve forensic science that is used in
American courts. This article helps underscore just how much
improvement needs to occur.
Friday, September 21, 2012
What to look for in a potential lawyer
Justin
McShane recently wrote about the differences between a DWI professional
and a wannabe. His blog was great and precise. I encourage anybody
looking for a defense lawyer to go down the list and ask, where does my
lawyer fit? It is important to have high standards as a defense
attorney, and I am eager to have my clients go through that list and
realize that I will go to trial, know their case and fight to win.
The Difference Between a DUI Professional and a Wannabe by Justin McShane
The Difference Between a DUI Professional and a Wannabe by Justin McShane
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
CSI's Affair Takes Center Stage In Kaufman Murder Trial
CSI's Affair Takes Center Stage In Kaufman Murder Trial
Howell, who first denied the accusations, also said that he job was important to her
Anna
Howell, who gathered evidence in the death of Eleonora Kaufman, was
questioned by Adam Kaufman's defense attorney William Matthewman about
an affair she had with Anthony Angulo, the lead detective in the case.
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The sex life of an Aventura police
crime scene investigator took center stage in the Adam Kaufman murder
trial Thursday in an effort to chip away at the credibility of the
officers who investigated the 2007 crime.
Ana Howell, who gathered evidence in
the death of Eleonora Kaufman, was questioned by Adam Kaufman’s defense
attorney William Matthewman about an affair she had with Anthony Angulo,
the lead detective in the case.
“Isn't it true, ma'am, you previously had an intimate sexual relationship with detective Angulo?” Matthewman asked her in court.
Howell, who first denied the accusations, skirted around the question.
“I am married and I have three kids
and my job is important to me,” she said. “This is very important
because this is my life here.”
She then admitted to the affair after Matthewman requested that the court admonish her.
“Yes, and my husband is well aware of
it sir, and I am happily married and I don't have any issues with that
any longer,” she said.
Howell then stormed off the witness stand and left the courtroom slamming the door behind her.
Adam Kaufman, an Aventura developer, is charged with murdering his wife in 2007 after her body was found in the couple’s home.
Kaufman said he woke up and found his wife dead on the floor of their bathroom with her neck on a magazine rack.
Prosecutors say Kaufman strangled
his wife. He wasn't charged until nearly a year and a half later when
the death was ruled a homicide by the Miami-Dade medical examiner.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Wrong man was executed in Texas, probe says
News Article:
AFP - Tue, 15th May 2012 05:11 AM
He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour: Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report out Tuesday found.
Even "all the relatives of both Carloses mistook them," and DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman.
Liebman and five of his students at Columbia School of Law spent almost five years poring over details of a case that he says is "emblematic" of legal system failure.
DeLuna, 27, was put to death after "a very incomplete investigation. No question that the investigation is a failure," Liebman said.
The report's authors found "numerous missteps, missed clues and missed opportunities that let authorities prosecute Carlos DeLuna for the crime of murder, despite evidence not only that he did not commit the crime but that another individual, Carlos Hernandez, did," the 780-page investigation found.
The report, entitled "Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution," traces the facts surrounding the February 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, a single mother who was stabbed in the gas station where she worked in a quiet corner of the Texas coastal city of Corpus Christi.
"Everything went wrong in this case," Liebman said.
That night Lopez called police for help twice to protect her from an individual with a switchblade.
"They could have saved her, they said 'we made this arrest immediately' to overcome the embarrassment," Liebman said.
Forty minutes after the crime Carlos DeLuna was arrested not far from the gas station.
He was identified by only one eyewitness who saw a Hispanic male running from the gas station. But DeLuna had just shaved and was wearing a white dress shirt -- unlike the killer, who an eyewitness said had a mustache and was wearing a grey flannel shirt.
Even though witnesses accounts were contradictory -- the killer was seen fleeing towards the north, while DeLuna was caught in the east -- DeLuna was arrested.
"I didn't do it, but I know who did," DeLuna said at the time, saying that he saw Carlos Hernandez entering the service station.
DeLuna said he ran from police because he was on parole and had been drinking.
Hernandez, known for using a blade in his attacks, was later jailed for murdering a woman with the same knife. But in the trial, the lead prosecutor told the jury that Hernandez was nothing but a "phantom" of DeLuna's imagination.
DeLuna's budget attorney even said that it was probable that Carlos Hernandez never existed.
However in 1986 a local newspaper published a photograph of Hernandez in an article on the DeLuna case, Liebman said.
Following hasty trial DeLuna was executed by lethal injection in 1989.
Up to the day he died in prison of cirrhosis of the liver, Hernandez repeatedly admitted to murdering Wanda Lopez, Liebman said.
"Unfortunately, the flaws in the system that wrongfully convicted and executed DeLuna -- faulty eyewitness testimony, shoddy legal representation and prosecutorial misconduct -- continue to send innocent men to their death today," read a statement that accompanies the report.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Contact your State Senators!From NORML.ORG :New Hampshire: House Members Pass Medical Cannabis Measure By Veto-Proof Majority
Concord, NH: Members of the New Hampshire House
of Representatives voted 236 to 96 last week in favor of legislation that
would allow for the personal cultivation and use of cannabis for
therapeutic purposes. The veto-proof majority approval came
following renewed veto threats by Democrat Gov. John Lynch, who
previously rejected a separate, more
restrictive medical marijuana measure in 2009.As passed by the House, Senate Bill 409 allows qualified patients to possess up to four cannabis plants and/or six ounces of marijuana for therapeutic purposes.
Members of the Senate had previously passed the measure in March by a 13 to 11 vote.
Because House members added a fiscal note to the bill, it must now go before the House Finance Committee before returning to the Senate for a concurrence vote. The measure requires three additional Senate votes in order to override Gov. Lynch's anticipated veto.
Separate legislation -- HB 1526, which sought to decriminalize the possession of up to one-half ounce of marijuana for adults for non-medical purposes -- was rejected by the Senate on Wednesday. The House had previously voted in favor of the measure in March.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Connecticut becomes 17th state to abolish death penalty
Connecticut becomes 17th state to abolish death penalty
updated 3:27 PM EDT, Wed April 25, 2012
The law is effective
immediately, though prospective in nature, meaning that it would not
apply to those already sentenced to death. It replaces the death penalty
with life in prison without the possibility of release as the state's
highest form of punishment.
"Although it is an
historic moment -- Connecticut joins 16 other states and the rest of the
industrialized world by taking this action -- it is a moment for sober
reflection, not celebration," Malloy said in a statement.
He added that the "unworkability" of Connecticut's death penalty law was a contributing factor in his decision.
"In the last 52 years,
only two people have been put to death in Connecticut -- and both of
them volunteered for it," Malloy said. "Instead, the people of this
state pay for appeal after appeal, and then watch time and again as
defendants are marched in front of the cameras, giving them a platform
of public attention they don't deserve."
This month, lawmakers in
the state's House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 86 to
63. The state Senate had approved it a week before.
State lawmakers first tried to pass a similar bill in 2009 but were ultimately blocked by then-Gov. Jodi Rell, a Republican.
Capital punishment has
existed in the Nutmeg State since its colonial days. But it was forced
to review its death penalty laws beginning in 1972, when a Supreme Court
decision required greater consistency in its application.
A moratorium was then imposed until a 1976 decision by the high court upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment.
Since then, Connecticut
juries have handed down 15 death sentences. Of those, only one person
has been executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a
nonpartisan group that studies death penalty laws.
Michael Ross, a convicted serial killer, was put to death by lethal injection in 2005 after he voluntarily gave up his appeals.
The state now has 11 people on death row.
Advocates of a repeal
say that Connecticut's past law kept inmates -- who were often engaged
in multiple appeals -- on death row for extended periods of time,
costing taxpayers far more than if the convicts were serving a life
sentence in the general prison population.
They also point to
instances in which wrongful convictions have been overturned with new
investigative methods, including forensic testing.
Opponents of the repeal
had said that capital punishment is a criminal deterrent that offers
justice for victims and their families.
In the last five years,
New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Illinois have repealed the death
penalty. California voters will decide the issue in November.
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