Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson III granted stay of execution

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwlb9AoS2BPAnqTh-aBchKnBiqPGqWTnebuyKO7l7c24Qr35e14uDyj7qsTlC4GNB6cEk4KtXpSRp7ZIeHI_RPBBHb4hKH81vQqL0GjfiRFZFNQhDCDAmuI2vTbk4GxIX8xNj2sopuGBg/s1600/Robert+Roberson+TX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Robert Roberson" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwlb9AoS2BPAnqTh-aBchKnBiqPGqWTnebuyKO7l7c24Qr35e14uDyj7qsTlC4GNB6cEk4KtXpSRp7ZIeHI_RPBBHb4hKH81vQqL0GjfiRFZFNQhDCDAmuI2vTbk4GxIX8xNj2sopuGBg/s320/Robert+Roberson+TX.jpg" title="Robert Roberson" width="237" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Roberson III</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">There is breaking news in the case of Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson, who had a June 21 execution date. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr. Roberson received a stay of execution today, after the Court of Criminal Appeals found that the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs had presented compelling evidence that his capital murder conviction was based on flawed science. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The CCA has stayed the execution and sent the case back to state district court for a hearing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">You can read the CCA order in Ex Parte Roberson at: <a href="http://bit.ly/2613syW" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/2613syW</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Texas is scheduled to execute this man in six days—but four experts say he was convicted based on junk science</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">UPDATE: On June 16, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Roberson’s execution, sending his case back to a trial court for a hearing on the new scientific evidence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The scientific evidence was conclusive, doctors told a Texas jury in 2003: capital murder defendant Robert Roberson had violently shaken his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thirteen years later—and just days before Roberson is scheduled to be executed—four medical experts are now claiming that the scientific theory used to convict him has been thoroughly debunked.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Roberson, 49, is the next death row inmate in America scheduled to be executed, and will go to the death chamber June 21. He was sentenced to death in 2003 for the murder of his daughter, Nikki Curtis.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the time of Roberson’s trial, doctors believed that certain symptoms in a child could conclusively prove they were violently shaken or abused, based on a theory known as Shaken Baby Syndrome. But in the last decade, the four experts who submitted affidavits as part of his appeal say, there’s been a sea change in the scientific understanding of the issue.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Roberson, whose lawyers say suffers from “severe limitations in intellectual functioning,” was Nikki’s biological father but essentially shared custody with the parents of Nikki’s mother, whom she had lived with for the first two years of her life. He brought her home from her grandparents house in Palestine, Texas, on the evening of January 30, 2002, and put her to bed. Early the next morning, he was woken up by her crying, and found that she had fallen on the floor. She seemed OK, he told investigators, so he put her back in her bed and went to sleep. When he woke up again a few hours later, she was blue and barely breathing. Roberson rushed her to the hospital, and she was declared dead the next day.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Prosecutors dismissed Roberson’s account, his lawyers say, and instead charged him with murdering his daughter by shaking or beating her. At the time, most doctors believed that they could determine that a child could be diagnosed with Shaken Baby Syndrome based on three symptoms: retinal hemorrhaging, subdural hematoma/hemorrhaging, and edema, or brain swelling. Roberson’s jury was told that because Nikki had signs of all three, she must have been abused.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The defense didn’t contest that explanation or call any medical experts. On February 14, 2003, the jury convicted Roberson and sentenced him to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now, however, a growing group of scientists disagree with this method of diagnosing Shaken Baby Syndrome. Research has shown that the same symptoms can be caused by other natural or accidental causes, the four experts who reviewed Roberson’s case write. They present a range of possible causes for Nikki’s death that were not explored during the trial: meningitis due to an ear infection; an injury before Roberson arrived; a short fall like the one he described or a congenital condition.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://fusion.net/story/314584/robert-roberson-texas-death-row/" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article</a></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: Fusion, June 16, 2016 (updated)<br /><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Death Watch: Shaken Science -- Appeal rests on new research into Shaken Baby Syndrome</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>To have his federal habeas attorneys tell it, Robert Roberson is "dim-witted" and "mentally ill." The 49-year-old, sentenced to death in 2003 for the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis, was a "drug abusing petty criminal with a long family history of serious mental health issues," attorneys James Volberding and John Wright have said. But did that make him a ruthless killer? No, Volberding and Wright argued in a Sept. 2010 application for habeas relief made to the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas. Their client "probably did contribute" to the death of his daughter: "Just not knowingly or intentionally. Roberson is not the worst of the worst. Not even close." The 2 attorneys suggested a modified conviction of manslaughter, and a sentence of 20 years.<br /><br />Much of the old argument hinged on the manner in which Nikki is believed to have died, and the way Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe manipulated the trial process to elevate the jury's belief in the ruthlessness of the crime. According to Roberson, Nikki died during a night when he was left alone with her and was high on drugs. Prosecutors said he shook her, hard, when he was angry with her - hard enough that she slipped into a coma. When that happened, they said, he put her in bed, and left her there for hours. Nikki was only taken to a hospital after being checked on 5 hours later, at which point it was discovered she was not breathing.<br /><br />Roberson has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested, saying that Nikki died after landing on her head during a fall from her bed. Medical professionals who testified at his trial quickly dismissed his claims as unlikely.<br /><br />An examination of Nikki's body by a nurse upon her arrival at the Palestine Regional Medical Center revealed a "superficial tear to Nikki's anal cavity" and a rate of dilation to the anal canal that was considered faster than usual, suggesting what Roberson's attorneys described as "theoretical sexual penetration." Dallas pediatrician Dr. Janet Squires found no evidence of any sexual abuse, however - no deformities to her anal cavity, bruises, or markings on her vagina. Squires testified at trial that she found no semen or traces of sexually transmitted bacteria. She noted that the anal cavity usually dilates in the comatose state due to the nervous system shutting down.<br /><br />The notion that Roberson sexually abused his daughter that night ultimately became irrelevant during trial. Lowe ultimately even attempted to have that charge dismissed. (Capital murder indictments can be secured in cases in which a murder occurs during a felony, is premeditated, or involves a victim who is younger than 6, making Roberson a candidate under 2 circumstances.) In appeals, Volberding and Wright argued that the notion of sexual abuse was only important to Lowe at the beginning of the trial: By securing an indictment of sexual assault from the grand jury, Lowe would have an easier time turning the jury against Roberson, thus making a death sentence - a more appropriate penalty, he considered, for the high-profile death of a small girl in a small town - a more likely outcome. Roberson's trial attorneys John Vanmeter and Steve Evans used a strategy that pointed to Roberson's longstanding mental illness, though they never actually argued that their client was insane, which would have raised questions of cruel and unusual punishment.<br /><br />Since a final judgment was rendered in federal court in Sept. 2014, Roberson's effort has shifted away from the mental illness angle and instead toward the argument that "Shaken Baby Syndrome" (aka "Abusive Head Trauma") is a phenomenon rooted in junk science. Much of that shift has been Roberson's doing. In 2014, after learning of a Houston case involving a newfound understanding of SBS, Roberson wrote a letter to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals asking that he be granted new counsel. That request eventually led to the Texas Defender Service taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it ultimately failed.<br /><br />On June 8, 2 weeks before his pending execution, Gretchen Sween, an attorney with the Office of Capital Writs, filed 2 applications for relief (1 in Roberson's trial court and another with the Court of Criminal Appeals) as well as a motion with the trial court for a stay of execution. In each application, Sween argues that new forensic science could rebuke previous theorems of SBS, and corroborate Roberson's claims that Nikki - who had a temperature of 104.5 degrees only 2 days before her death - did fall from her bed. Among the claims, Sween has argued that Nikki's lack of any serious neck injuries indicates that she was not in fact shaken, and that the science surrounding SBS has evolved enough to change the course of Roberson's case.<br /><br />"The prior medical understanding was that a specific set of symptoms could be viewed together as categorical proof of SBS/AHT," Sween wrote. "More specifically, in 2002-2003, when Robert was tried, the medical community invited doctors to infer conclusively that a child had been violently shaken from the presence of 3 symptoms: retinal hemorrhaging, subdural hematoma/hemorrhaging, and edema or brain swelling."<br /><br />Roberson is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, June 21. As we go to press, he's still awaiting a response from the trial court and CCA. Should his latest efforts be denied, Roberson will be the 7th Texan executed this year and the 538th since Texas reinstated the death penalty in 1976.<br /><br />Source: Austin Chronicle, June 11, 2016<br /><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

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Robert Roberson III There is breaking news in the case of Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson, who had a June 21 execution date.  Mr. Rob...

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Texas Death Row Inmate Sentenced to Life over Intellectual Disability

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oO7tSsNoo8yBrLGz1rhGsPcd7qpFCyzMZFvDkAdDXXc9HtF-KWE8JlLAFWB-hzEm8hAK6ZnEa_5ulzd0Cc5CgwNcV8h43R1_zhUeTKKe0M521WgOVBHrLXeAqt8uJDztBd2NKl9m5hg/s1600/Jose-Martinez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Jose Noey Martinez" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oO7tSsNoo8yBrLGz1rhGsPcd7qpFCyzMZFvDkAdDXXc9HtF-KWE8JlLAFWB-hzEm8hAK6ZnEa_5ulzd0Cc5CgwNcV8h43R1_zhUeTKKe0M521WgOVBHrLXeAqt8uJDztBd2NKl9m5hg/s320/Jose-Martinez.jpg" title="Jose Noey Martinez" width="234" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jose Noey Martinez</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">A man who fatally stabbed a 68-year-old woman and her 4-year-old granddaughter during a 1995 burglary in Hidalgo County will no longer face execution after he has been determined to be intellectually disabled.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, changed Jose Noey Martinez's sentence Wednesday to life in prison. The court agreed with a lower court's ruling that Martinez, now 40, “is a person with intellectual disability” and “is constitutionally ineligible for a death sentence.” Martinez had been on death row almost 20 years.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Martinez broke into the home of Esperanza Palomo to steal a TV and stereo, according to court documents. Palomo was babysitting her blind granddaughter, Amanda. Shortly after breaking in, Palomo confronted Martinez with a baseball bat. He stabbed the grandmother, who fell to the ground immediately, and raped her.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After killing the woman, Martinez told law enforcement, he heard the granddaughter crying in another room, court documents show. He told officers that he stabbed her to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A Hidalgo County jury found Martinez guilty of capital murder in 1996 and sentenced him to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On appeal, Martinez's attorneys had claimed that he is mentally retarded and argued that executing him would violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Once the Texas Department of Criminal Justice receives paperwork from the appeals court, Martinez will be taken to the Byrd Unit in Huntsville, agency spokesman Jason Clark said in an email.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He will be interviewed, and information will be gathered about his family structure, criminal and social behavior, drug and alcohol involvement, military and institutional experience, as well as education and employment history," he said. "The results of the tests and interviews are the basis for classification decisions that determine the unit of assignment, the level of security supervision, housing and job assignments and time-earning status."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: The Texas Tribune, Jonathan Silver, June 15, 2016</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Death-Penalty-News-206848499362906/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

Commutation LWOP Mental retardation mentally incompetent inmates Texas USA Texas Death Row Inmate Sentenced to Life over Intellectual Disability

Jose Noey Martinez A man who fatally stabbed a 68-year-old woman and her 4-year-old granddaughter during a 1995 burglary in Hidalgo County w...

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For 50 Years, You've Had "The Right to Remain Silent"

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdVmFCt7PAgeu2hgUBVMfBd0VGk1JlbDYYPDagm2068K11g4skJNevhnx7grENhBCDYWgRaAbVjtTgVZbqRjHe1UAryGv0rfWzxAZBi2Yvef3wZLV1Z588ypKKyg_7r0LJNvTT9uUVBKo/s1600/Police+interrogation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdVmFCt7PAgeu2hgUBVMfBd0VGk1JlbDYYPDagm2068K11g4skJNevhnx7grENhBCDYWgRaAbVjtTgVZbqRjHe1UAryGv0rfWzxAZBi2Yvef3wZLV1Z588ypKKyg_7r0LJNvTT9uUVBKo/s400/Police+interrogation.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>So why do so many suspects confess to crimes they didn't commit?</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You have the right to remain silent."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If you've ever watched any of the tens of thousands of hours of television devoted to crime dramas, you know the 1st warning given to suspects who are arrested and questioned. And the 2nd: "Anything you say can and will be used against you." The Miranda warnings - named for<i> Miranda v. Arizona</i>, the 1966 Supreme Court decision that required them - celebrate their 50th anniversary on June 13. In that period, they have become so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget their origin and purpose.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Miranda </i>was the culmination of 30 years of Supreme Court cases that were designed to protect criminal suspects from abuse in police interrogations. The earliest of these decisions prohibited violence and torture. The 1st concern was to prevent confessions that are "unreliable"- that is, false.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1966, false confessions seemed like a rare problem. 50 years later, we have seen hundreds of exonerations of innocent defendants who confessed to terrible crimes after they received Miranda warnings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's a good time to take stock.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Do innocent people really confess without torture?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Why would an innocent person ever confess to a murder or some other terrible violent crime?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Torture would explain it. That was the issue in <i>Brown v. Mississippi</i> in 1936, the 1st case in which the Supreme Court excluded a confession from a state court prosecution. 3 suspects had been tortured for days. Asked how severely one defendant was whipped, the deputy in charge testified: "Not too much for a Negro; not as much as I would have done if it were left to me."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Between 1936 and 1966 the use of torture to extract confessions declined greatly, a major accomplishment by American courts and criminal justice reformers. When <i>Miranda </i>was written, a shift was underway to more "modern" methods of interrogation: isolation, deception, manipulation and exhaustion rather than beating. Without torture or threats of death or violence, it seems implausible that an innocent suspect would confess to a serious crime. That is precisely why confessions are such powerful evidence of guilt. But we know it happens, time and again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The National Registry of Exonerations has collected data on 1,810 exonerations in the United States since 1989 (as of June 7, 2016). They include 227 cases of innocent men and women who confessed, 13 % of the total, all after receiving Miranda warnings (at least according to the police). Nearly 3/4 of those false confessions were homicide cases.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But these exonerations deeply understate the extent of the problem.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">First, most suspects who falsely confess - probably the great majority - are never convicted at all. In a classic 2004 study, Steven Drizin and Richard Leo identified 125 proven false confessions in the United States from 1971 through 2002. Only about 1/3 were cases of exoneration after conviction. In most, charges were dismissed before trial or never filed at all because of indisputable proof of innocence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">2nd, few convictions based on false confessions are cleared by exoneration. That's true for all wrongful convictions, but especially for those based on confessions. It's very hard to convince people that a defendant who confessed is innocent. We see this in the cases: Exonerations of defendants who confessed are more likely to depend on the most unassailable evidence, DNA, to overcome the weight of a confession. 42 % of exonerated defendants who had confessed were cleared by DNA tests, compared to only 21 percent of exonerees who had not confessed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In some cases, even exculpatory DNA evidence doesn't help. In October 1992, after a grueling four-day interrogation, 19-year-old Juan Rivera falsely confessed to the rape-murder of an 11-year-old girl in Lake County, Illinois. In fact, he confessed twice. His 1st confession was so riddled with factual errors that the detectives made him do it again to "clear up" the inconsistencies, even though Rivera was plainly in a state of mental collapse.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rivera was convicted of murder in 1993, and again in 1996 after his 1st conviction was reversed for a host of legal errors. In 2005, DNA tests proved that a different man was the source of semen recovered from the body of the victim. Rivera's conviction was vacated but the prosecution took him to trial again, and in 2009, despite the DNA evidence, Rivera was convicted a 3rd time. Finally, in 2011, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that River's conviction was "unjustified and cannot stand" and dismissed the charges.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Juan Rivera barely overcame his false confession even with conclusive DNA evidence of innocence. Without it, he'd be in prison today - together with other innocent defendants who confessed but did not have DNA tests to rescue them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>False confessions by co-defendants</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In many cases, innocent suspects who confess implicate others who are also innocent. Some do it because that's the story their interrogators want to hear. John Kogut, for example, not only falsely confessed to his own involvement in murder, he also said he did it with 2 friends Dennis Halsted and John Restivo, both of whom (like Kogut) spent 20 years in prison before they were exonerated in 2005.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And some innocent suspects who confess blame others to deflect responsibility and reduce their punishment. Richard Ochoa, for example, was facing the death penalty for the murder of Nancy DePriest in Austin, Texas in 1988. He confessed, named his roommate Richard Danziger as the actual killer and agreed to plead guilty and testify against Danziger. Both were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Both were exonerated by DNA in 2002.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Registry includes 195 exonerations with confessions by co-defendants who implicated the exonerees, 11 % of all exonerations. The net result is that in 19 % of all exonerations in the United States - and in 34 % of homicide exonerations - the innocent defendant confessed or was implicated by a false confession of a co-defendant, or both.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Who falsely confesses?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All sorts of people falsely confess, but two groups are particularly vulnerable: young suspects and those with mental disabilities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1983, for example, Earl Washington, a 22-year-old black man with an IQ of about 69, was arrested in Culpeper, Virginia, for burglary and malicious wounding. Over 2 days of questioning, Washington "confessed" to 5 separate crimes, 4 of which were not pursued because his confessions did not match the actual crimes and the victims could not identify Washington as the criminal.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Washington's 5th confession, however, was to a murder, that of Rebecca Lynn Williams. His initial version - before police officers cleaned it up - was riddled with errors. He did not know the race of the victim (white), the address where she was killed, or that she was raped. Nonetheless, Washington was convicted and sentenced to death in January 1984. He was exonerated by DNA 16 years later, in 2000.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Overall, of exonerees with reported mental illness or intellectual disability, 72 % had confessed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Young suspects fared almost as badly. 40 % of exonerees who were under 18 at the time of the crime falsely confessed, including 53 % of 14- and 15-year olds, and 86 % of the few who were 13 years old or younger. By comparison, only 7 % of adult exonerees without reported mental disabilities falsely confessed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Why do all these innocent defendants confess?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Innocent suspects confess because they are terrified and confused and exhausted; because they are deceived or tricked; because they don't understand what they are doing; because they feel hopeless and helpless and isolated. But what leads to this desperate predicament? <i>Miranda </i>sets the stage.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In part, <i>Miranda </i>was a step in the Supreme Court's campaign to eliminate violence in interrogations. But <i>Miranda </i>also ratified the "modern practice of in-custody interrogation [which] is psychologically, rather than physically, oriented." <i>Miranda </i>described how this is done:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The officers who conduct "modern" interrogations may lie about the evidence and tell the suspect that his fingerprints were found at the scene; that a codefendant already confessed and put the blame on him; that he was seen by an eyewitness. They routinely say that they already have him dead to rights and that this is his only chance to tell his side of the story and help his cause; that the victim must have provoked him; that what he did is understandable. They may describe dire consequences if he does not come clean, perhaps the death penalty, and imply leniency if he does. This can go on for days, in isolation, with police officers constantly repeating that they know the suspect is guilty, that the evidence is overwhelming, that this is his only chance to help himself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Supreme Court recognized that this process "exacts a heavy toll on individual liberty, and trades on the weakness of individuals," but it did not forbid any of these practices. As a result, <i>Miranda </i>is regularly cited as authority for the legality of all of these coercive techniques.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Instead of regulating the process of non-violent interrogation, the court required police to give warnings before they start, and then only continue if the suspect waives his right to silence. But most do waive their rights at the outset of the ordeal; it's hard to tell an officer who has you under arrest that you won't talk to him. After that, the issue almost never comes up again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">By the time they confess, <i>Miranda </i>is a distant memory, if not entirely forgotten. The process works. Many suspects confess after <i>Miranda </i>warnings and most are guilty; that's why these techniques are used and trusted. But some are innocent.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Can we do better? Here again, <i>Miranda </i>is a good starting point.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The court noted that it's difficult to regulate interrogations because we don't know what goes on: "Interrogation still takes place in privacy. Privacy results in secrecy, and this, in turn, results in a gap in our knowledge as to what, in fact, goes on in the interrogation rooms."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's changing. 50 years ago almost no interrogations were electronically recorded. The FBI, for example, prohibited recording. Now the FBI requires it, as do 23 states and many local police forces, at least in homicide cases. It should be universal. Recording greatly helps us evaluate any claim that a confession was false, and it has taught us how to improve the conduct of interrogations. It's a good start.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: The Marshall Project, Commentary, June 2016. Samuel Gross is the editor and co-founder of the National Registry of Exonerations and a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Maurice Possley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and senior researcher at the registry.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Death-Penalty-News-206848499362906/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

DNA Exoneration False confessions FBI Innocence Mental Illness Mental retardation Miranda Police Torture USA For 50 Years, You've Had "The Right to Remain Silent"

So why do so many suspects confess to crimes they didn't commit? "You have the right to remain silent." If you've ever wat...

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U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Two Major Death Penalty Cases

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7XMgC_pg63z89Vkq5D_5-dexwvW118-hqVXU97xzM_Zdny_LO2ILwLqwBKbWNeNJND-hko1ol5qbLV1GNI04Ubb9raASvRxbHR87HV4od0CKOE2aOHng6D-3nhU7qMbnxRfhBGpfMto8/s1600/US+Supreme+Court.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7XMgC_pg63z89Vkq5D_5-dexwvW118-hqVXU97xzM_Zdny_LO2ILwLqwBKbWNeNJND-hko1ol5qbLV1GNI04Ubb9raASvRxbHR87HV4od0CKOE2aOHng6D-3nhU7qMbnxRfhBGpfMto8/s320/US+Supreme+Court.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear two cases raising major questions about the death penalty, including whether executing a condemned inmate more than 35 years after he was sentenced to death violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That case, <i>Moore v. Texas</i>, No. 15-797, concerns Bobby J. Moore, who has been on death row since 1980 for shooting and killing an elderly Houston supermarket clerk, James McCarble, during a robbery. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr. Moore’s case also raises questions about whether Texas uses outdated standards in assessing whether a defendant’s intellectual disability was severe enough to bar his execution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The second case, <i>Buck v. Stephens</i>, No. 15-8049, concerns the role race may play in capital sentencing. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Duane Buck was convicted of the 1995 murders of a former girlfriend and another man. Texas law allows death sentences only if prosecutors can show the defendant poses a future danger to society.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">During the trial’s sentencing phase, Mr. Buck’s lawyer presented testimony from a psychologist who said that race is one of the factors associated with future dangerousness. I</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">n their petition seeking Supreme Court review, Mr. Buck’s new lawyers said his trial lawyer had been ineffective and that Mr. Buck’s death sentence was infected by racial bias.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/us/politics/supreme-court-to-hear-two-major-death-penalty-cases.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, Adam Liptak, June 6, 2016</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Death-Penalty-News-206848499362906/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

Inadequate counsel Inordinate delay Mental retardation mentally incompetent inmates Race SCOTUS Texas USA U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Two Major Death Penalty Cases

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear two cases raising major questions about the death penalty, including whether executi...

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