These article excerpts point out news items that are destined to impact your Property Rooms! One describes re-opening the case of a man executed almost 15 years ago. One describes a man cleared after 20 years in j ail, and the new confessed criminal is immune from prosecution. One describes hurricane damage to property in multiple storage locations, interrupting prosecutions, and blocking court-ordered re-tests ofD N A evidence. Worst of all, these all effect YOU! Is PERMANENT DNA EVIDENCE in the future of your Property Room? Los Angeles (CA) Times, Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. - Gov. Mark R. Warner on Thursday ordered DNA evidence to be tested to determine whether a man convicted of rape and murder was innocent when he was executed in 1992. If the testing shows Roger Keith Coleman did not rape and kill his sister-inlaw in 1981, it will be the first time in the United States a person has been exonerated by scientific testing after his execution, death penalty opponents said. Warner said he ordered the tests because of technological advances that could provide a level of forensic certainty not available in the 1980s. "This is an extraordinarily unique circumstance, where technology has advanced significantly and can be applied in the case of someone who consistently maintained his innocence until execution," said Warner, a Democrat who leaves office January 14th. "I believe we must always follow the available facts to a more complete picture of guilt or innocence," Warner said. Coleman was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, his wife's sister, who was found raped, stabbed and nearly beheaded in her home in Grundy. The case drew international attention as the well-spoken Coleman pleaded his case on talk shows and in magazines and newspapers. Time magazine featured the coal miner on its cover. Then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder's office was flooded with calls and letters of protest. Warner has heard requests throughout his term from death penalty opposition groups who wanted the evidence retested. "This is a proper action for the governor to take. It's not right to shy away from a difficult question or even shy away from reopening cases when there is a chance that something new might be learned," said Richard Dieter, head of the Death Penalty Information Center. Coleman's lawyers argued that he did not have time to commit the crime, that tests showed semen from two men was found on McCoy's body and that another man bragged about killing her. Coleman was executed May 20,1992. "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight," the 33-year-old said moments before he was electrocuted. "When my innocence is proven, I hope America will realize the injustice of the death penalty, as all other civilized countries have." Brad McCoy, who was married to Wanda McCoy when she was slain, said he remained convinced Coleman killed her and said he had been hurt by the questions about Coleman's guilt. "I really don't understand why it's being done," said McCoy, who has remarried. "We keep talking about Roger Coleman as the victim. Wanda McCoy was the victim. I have no doubt in my mind it will prove him guilty. Where does it end?" ********************************** Chicago (IL) Tribune
CONROE, TEXAS A man who spent nearly two decades in prison for sexual assault was freed Thursday after DNA evidence exonerated him, and his brother admitted responsibility for the attack. DNA testing was not available at Arthur Mumphrey's 1986 trial for the rape of a 13-year-old girl, but recent tests requested by his attorney showed Mumphrey's blood and saliva samples did not match stains on the victim and her clothes. Mumphrey, 42, had been sentenced to 35 years in prison. Prosecutor Marc Brumberger apologized to Mumphrey. "We feel terrible about what happened to you," he said. Mumphrey's brother, Charles, confessed to the rape this week while serving time injail for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. He is unlikely to face charges in the sexual assault because the statute of limitations has expired. ******************** The Associated Press State & Local Wire
CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. Gov. George Pataki followed up on his State of the State promise to crack down on sex offenders with a cross-state trip Thursday promoting plans to catalog the DNA of every convict, lengthen prison terms for child molesters and expand the state's sex offender registry. Pataki also said he would seek an end to the statute of limitations for rape and continue to pursue civil confinement legislation to keep some predators locked up beyond their prison terms, a practice that has stirred civil liberties concerns and a legal challenge. When those who stalk and rape a child can be out on the streets in two or three years, when 5,000 sexually violent predators are currently awaiting release from our state prisons, we owe it to families across New York to waste no more time and to enact these measures now," Pataki said. In Buffalo, joined by western New York Republican Sens. Dale Volker and George Maziarz, Pataki chided the Assembly's ruling Democrats for blocking the civil confinement legislation approved by the Senate seven times. "Allow a vote on the floor of the Assembly on this bill," said Pataki, who added he'd had "some hopeful discussions" with Speaker Sheldon Silver on the issue. Silver responded by saying the Assembly majority has advanced a "coordinated, comprehensive plan" that includes longer sentences, expanded monitoring of sex offenders, civil commitment and improved services for crime victims. Absent new legislation, Pataki in September ordered state authorities to use existing mental health law to begin evaluating every sexually violent predator in prison before their release to determine whether they should be civilly confined. As of Thursday, he said 33 people, many of them child molesters, had been confined to mental health facilities. "These are not people who made a sincere effort to overcome their burdens," Pataki said. "They should not be out on our streets." A state Supreme Court judge ruled Nov. 15 that the process was illegal, a decision Pataki appealed. A Jan. 10 court hearing is scheduled. ********************************* The Times Picayune
When word began filtering through the prison grapevine that Hurricane Katrina had inundated the vast basement evidence lockers at New Orleans Police Department headquarters and the criminal courthouse, hundreds of pretrial inmates quietly cheered. With evidence from rape kits to bags of cocaine underwater for several days, police and prosecutors admitted the chances of obtaining convictions in many cases probably had been washed away. But to another, much smaller group of inmates, the news has been devastating. Those inmates, most of them grizzled lifers who already have been locked away for years, were counting on the dusty old evidence to buttress their long-standing claims of innocence. A few of them, according to their defense attorneys, were within months of being granted DNA tests that could have exonerated them outright. A full accounting of the evidence has not been produced, but the news so far has been grim. Most of the evidence in old cases was flooded and possibly ruined, officials concede, snapping once promising threads of hope for the inmates and their families. "I cried. I cried for days," said Emily Maw of Innocence Project New Orleans, a nonprofit group dedicated to freeing the wrongfully convicted. "It's horrifying to think that people serving life without parole, whose only chance at freedom was DNA evidence, could have lost that opportunity. In some of these cases, their freedom was waiting for them in the basement, and then suddenly the basement is underwater." Yolanda Miles is the sister of inmate Darrel Miles, who was convicted of rape in 1978. "When I heard that news about the evidence, it was a blow. Before Katrina, there was a chance for him to be heard again," she said. "Now it sounds like there's no evidence at all." Restorers are hired Whether the flooded evidence, especially fragile DNA samples, can be salvaged remains an open question as the Police Department and the Orleans Parish clerk of court's office sort through their respective piles of flooded debris, evidence tags and supporting paperwork. Each office has hired restoration specialists to save what they can. The Police Department's Central Evidence and Property Room, housed in the basement of its headquarters on Broad Street, contained mostly evidence in unsolved crimes and cases awaiting trial, said Capt. Thomas Smegal, who oversees the operation. Some of the pieces, though, were from cases under appeal in which inmates had obtained court orders to re-examine evidence. The stockpile included a vast inventory of critical forensic items: weapons, bloody clothing, bullet fragments, hair, fibers, bodily fluids from rapes and murders, countless baggies of narcotics, two-by-fours, even a kitchen sink or two ripped off in architectural thefts. When the levees broke, the water in the basement rose slowly at first, Smegal said, but eventually it rose past the ceiling and into the first floor. The evidence losses could potentially torpedo dozens, maybe hundreds, of cases awaiting trial, prosecutors have said. But officers assigned to the police evidence room salvaged most of the delicate DNA samples before Katrina wreaked her havoc, Smegal said. Those samples were moved to refrigerators in the coroner's office and higher floors of police headquarters, all of which remained dry, he said. Even so, the viability of the evidence is in question. While the slides and glassine envelopes containing the DNA were saved, the loss of ref rig eration when electricity and generators gave out could pose problems. "They haven't been tested, so I can't speak for the integrity of the samples," Smegal said. Back to square one Even more depressing to the lifers with innocence claims is the condition of the clerk of court's sprawling basement vaults under the courthouse at Tulane and Broad. Most of the evidence stored there came from closed cases, those that had gone to trial and resulted in a conviction. That is precisely the evidence that inmates with innocence claims were relying on to get their cases reopened. "The water put everything in disarray," Clerk of Court Kimberly Williamson Butler said in an earlier interview. She did not respond to recent calls for comment. According to Maw, 19 inmates from New Orleans had already filed court petitions asking for testing of DNA samples in an attempt to show they were wrongfully convicted. About 100 more promising cases were being reviewed by the Innocence Project when Katrina hit, she said. One case already in the pipeline was that of Leroy Johnson, convicted in 1992 of raping a woman in Algiers. Ever since he was found guilty and sent to the State Penitentiary at Angola, Johnson has claimed he was railroaded. The Innocence Project seemed to score a breakthrough earlier this year when attorneys discovered through a court order that some DNA evidence had been saved from the original crime scene. Now Johnson and his family are dealing with another, perhaps irreversible, setback. "When the Innocence Project took his case, things seemed to be moving," said Johnson's sister, Rosetta Palmer. "But then we heard about the flooding and it seemed to put everything back to square one. He called just the other night and told me how upset he was. He really wants that DNA test." In December, Innocence Project attorneys filed a motion compelling the clerk's office to account for the evidence in nine cases that were among the group's most promising. Chief Judge Calvin Johnson scheduled a hearing for February 6 for Butler to respond, but the Innocence Project discovered several troubling facts in researching the motion. Twist of fate "In some cases, rape kits and other biological evidence were located in the Criminal Court attic," staff attorney Ava de Montagne wrote in the motion. "This evidence subsequently was transported down to the basement. The supervisor of the property room had informed counsel that he was keeping all of this found evidence in a single pile in the downstairs evidence rooms." In what amounts to a cruel twist to an already tragic situation, de Montagne said she is referring to pieces of long-Iost evidence that were once thought to be destroyed. When the Innocence Project attorneys learned of its existence in the attic early in the year, the clerk's office moved it to the basement. "It's very sad and extremely frustrating," she said. "I pushed so hard to get into that attic; now I wonder if they (the inmates) wouldn't be better off ifl hadn't gotten involved at all." Judge Johnson said he sympathizes with inmates who may have lost their rightful shot at freedom. "I understand their perspective, but if an item no longer exists because of a force of nature, there's nothing anybody can do," Johnson said. "These are tough and painful lessons, but we're going to learn from them and we're going to improve our operation." Maw recalls the first telephone conversation she had with de Montagne, her Innocence Project colleague, after Katrina hit. Both had evacuated: Maw to Jackson, Miss., de Montagne to Decatur, GA. "Emily, the basement! The basement!" de Montagne said. "I know, I know," Maw replied. "I can't even talk about it." At that point, both attorneys began crying. Maw said she has spoken to many of the group's clients and prospective clients during a recent visit to Angola. While the largely forgotten lifers have peppered her with questions and expressed varying levels of dismay, she has been reluctant to snuff out their hopes until the office obtains a full and official accounting of the evidence. Away from her clients, though, Maw said she has been crushed by the turn of events. "It's just heartbreaking," she said. "So much hinges on this evidence, but so little regard was paid to it. Surely the people who run New Orleans' public institutions had a notion that things kept in the basement could flood. Why couldn't it just have been spare furniture? Why was it used to store critical, irreplaceable evidence?" ********************************************* The Tallahassee (FL) Democrat
The only key to Melvin Thompson's freedomor the final proof of his guilt may be resting in a manila envelope locked in a courthouse evidence vault. Thompson, now 33, has been serving a life prison sentence since 1997, when he was convicted of sexual battery and other charges. Thompson has maintained his innocence ever since. The problem is, he may never be able to prove it. TIMELINE • Sept. 17, 1997 : Melvin Thompson is sentenced
• June23, 2000: The Florida Department of
• Feb. 5, 2002: Thompson files for
• March 4,2002: The physical evidence in the
• March 3, 2003: Circuit Judge Kathleen
• March 5,2003: A Public Defender's Office investigator
goes to TPD to go over the evidence but is told it no longer exists. Copyright © 2006 International Association for Property and Evidence, Inc. Reprinted from the Evidence Log, Volume 2006, Number 1, Page 27 |
