William Van Poyck is on death row for a murder he did not commit.
William Van Poyck, aka, “Billy” has been on death row since 1988 for a killing he did not commit. On the heels of new legislation in Florida to speed up executions,Governor Scott has signed his death warrant. Billy was convicted under Florida’s felony-murder rule, which states that if a person commits a felony and someone dies during the course of that felony, he is guilty of felony murder.
How does this happen? Billy was involved in an attempt to free an inmate from a prison van. During this botched attempt, a correctional officer was killed. Billy’s co-defendant, Frank Valdes, was subsequently identified as the actual, sole triggerman. Billy did not even see it happen. Because of the felony-murder rule, both Billy and Frank received death sentences. The actual killer, Frank Valdes, died in July of 1999 as the result of a beating by guards at Florida State Prison.
Frank Valdes was indeed MURDERED by 8 prison guards at Florida State Prison in 1999. Those guards stomped Frank to death in retaliation for the killing of correctional officer, Fred Griffis. The following are excerpts from articles I will link to. What is happening in this case is absolutely insane. The Judge, Charles Burton has appointed lawyers that have stated they have no expertise to represent Van Poyck as the clock ticks toward his scheduled June 12 execution.
Despite pleas today from Van Poyck’s attorney that he is incapable of representing the condemned murderer through complex, high-stakes last-minute appeals, Circuit Judge Charles Burton showed no interest in derailing the execution.
“This is not an unanticipated event,” Burton said of Gerald Bettman’s claims that he represented Van Poyck as a favor and never imagined he would be forced to handle his appeals under the strict deadlines that are set after a death warrant is signed.
“Before you execute someone you have to appoint a lawyer who is competent,” Bettman replied.
But, Burton said, the matter is out of his hands. “Any beef you have is with the Florida Supreme Court, not me,” he said.
The high court on Wednesday rejected Bettman’s so-called “notice of non-representation” and ordered him to handle Van Poyck’s case.
Other attorneys who specialize in death penalty cases called Bettman’s predicament unprecedented. “It’s shocking to me that they’re going to force an attorney who is unqualified to handle the appeals,” said Martin McClain, one of the state’s top death penalty defense attorneys.
“Everyone’s willing to clear the decks and put in the time necessary,” he said. “But (four) days — that’s just not enough time.”
“Frankly, this is the kind of case that gives the death penalty a bad name.”
I am asking you all to please sign Williams petition which can be found HERE.
No one who is facing the death penalty should have to go through this. This is much worse than a Kangaroo Court, this is bizarre. But the real issue here is RETALIATION and Vengence. I have known of this case for years, as I am very good friends with Frank Valdes’ widow. I am absolutely convinced William is and has been railroaded… because a prison guard was killed. The real issue here is that William is the fall guy. Now the State of Florida wants to kill him….after 25 years on death row. This is not justice. Please sign the petition…and share William’s story.
Articles on the bizarre court happenings in Poyck’s case:
Gov. Rick Scott has signed a Death Warrant for William Van Poyck and has scheduled his execution for Wednesday, June 12th at 6pm ET. Billy Van Poyck is to be killed for the 1987 homicide of corrections officer Fred Griffis during a failed escape attempt.
Please TAKE ACTION!!! Contact Governor Rick Scott and ask him to STOP SIGNING DEATH WARRANTS and VETO THE TIMELY JUSTICE ACT.
Last week the Mississippi Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision denied Willie Manning the opportunity to do DNA testing that could prove he is innocent of the crime that landed him on death row. Tragically, Manning is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday and may never get the opportunity to do the testing that could prove whether he is innocent as he has always maintained.
We urge Gov. Phil Bryant to issue a stay so the testing can be done. While people can differ on whether the death penalty is an appropriate form of punishment, nearly everyone would agree that it should be used only in those cases where we are certain of guilt. DNA testing could provide that certainty or prove, as Manning insists, that he is innocent. It could also, as the Mississippi Supreme Court judges noted in their dissent, provide the identity of alleged second perpetrator who has never been caught.
Eighteen people who served time on death row have been exonerated by DNA evidence since it became available two decades ago. One of those men, Kennedy Brewer, was convicted in Mississippi. Like Manning, Brewer was convicted based on circumstantial evidence and unvalidated forensic science. In Brewer’s case, the prosecution relied on widely discredited bite mark testimony, and in Manning’s case the prosecution presented hair microscopy, which because of its unreliability will be subject to a recently announced FBI nationwide review. The DNA evidence in Brewer’s case proved his innocence and identified the real perpetrator who confessed to the crime and another murder for which someone had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to life. Fortunately, that man, Levon Brooks, was also exonerated.
We don’t know what the DNA evidence will ultimately prove in Manning’s case, but there is a good chance that it will be highly probative — and much more reliable than the kind of evidence that was used to convict him of the 1992 murders of Pamela Tiffany Miller and Jon Stephan Steckler. The two students were kidnapped after leaving a party at Mississippi State University and were driven to a remote location and both were shot to death. At trial, there was no physical evidence linking Manning to the crime. The prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence. At one point the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned his conviction because Manning’s lawyers weren’t allowed to fully cross-examine the informant, but the court later reconsidered its decision and let the conviction stand.
Since 1994, Manning has been seeking DNA testing of the rape kit, fingernail scrapings that were recovered from both victims and hairs recovered from the scene. Rape kits and fingernail scrapings are routinely tested today because the testing can prove with near certainty who committed the crime. Before DNA evidence, prosecutors would often rely on hair microscopy to place a defendant at the scene even though the practice was never scientifically validated. After DNA evidence exonerated three people who had been wrongly convicted in part based on this type of evidence, the FBI announced this year that it would undertake a massive review of all cases in which one of its analysts testified about this type of evidence. Given that the FBI performed the hair microscopy in this case, it would seem that Manning’s case should be subject to this review — if he isn’t put to death first.
As the dissenters noted, given that it is alleged that two perpetrators committed the crime, it’s puzzling that the district attorney is so resistant to testing.
The Mississippi Supreme Court has said that the DNA testing is unnecessary because there is other overwhelming evidence of guilt. But appeals courts were also wrong in the cases of all 306 DNA exonerations, including the 18 who served time on death row. DNA testing has the potential to tell us once and for all who committed these two tragic murders, and that’s something we all should want.
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Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld are co-founders and co-directors of the Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent injustice.
Willie Manning is on death row in Mississippi, awaiting execution for the abduction and murder of two college students in 1992. He was convicted on circumstantial evidence, including the testimony of a jailhouse informant who had previously given a statement implicating another person. No physical evidence has ever linked Willie to the crime, and he has always maintained his innocence. He has been seeking DNA testing of crime scene evidence for years.
Incredibly, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that there is “overwhelming evidence of guilt,” so no DNA testing is needed. His execution has been set for May 7th. Eighteen men have been exonerated by DNA testing after being sentenced to death, including Kennedy Brewer of Mississippi. We are asking the Governor to stay the execution and order the DNA testing that will definitively prove Willie Manning’s guilt or innocence.
Join us in calling on Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant to stay Willie’s execution and order DNA testing!
One year ago, George Zimmerman shot and killed 17 year-old Trayvon Martin because he thought the young man looked suspicious.And one year later, what happened that night in Sanford, Florida still outrages us.
In a culture that inundates us with images of Black men as violent — not to be trusted, inherently criminal — we are continually reminded that something as simple as walking home from the corner store can draw unwanted attention that puts our very lives in danger.Black Americans face racial animosity every day, and far too often that animosity turns violent.
Today as we mourn, we must also acknowledge that if it weren’t for the hundreds of thousands of you who spoke up to demand basic dignity and justice, Trayvon Martin’s case would have been ignored — and George Zimmerman would have gone free.
Build the Movement towards Justice for Trayvon…take action here
What happened to Frank Valdes is what started my journey/advocacy in Prison Reform. I share with you now because we should never forget. I wont ever forget….and there are many more Frank Valdes’. Just because you dont hear about these atrocities, doesnt mean they are not happening-because they are.
Frank Valdez had broken ribs and boot prints on his body, a state attorney says.
By LUCY MORGAN, SYDNEY P. FREEDBERG and JO BECKER
St. Petersburg Times, published July 20, 1999
A death row inmate whose suspicious death has prompted a criminal investigation suffered broken ribs and boot marks on his upper body after a weekend confrontation with corrections officers at Florida State Prison, a prosecutor said Monday.
Gainesville area State Attorney Rod Smith said he also is looking into a reported delay of several hours between the time of the fight and the time prison authorities sought medical attention for inmate Frank Valdez.
“At first blush it appears that the cause of death had to do with the actions of one or more people in charge of the custody of this individual,” Smith said Monday night.
“I’m told the crap was beat out of him,” Smith said. “He died from blunt trauma—a beating in all likelihood.”
Nine prison guards have been placed on paid administrativeleave by the Department of Corrections. Smith said the guards, whose names were not disclosed, have hired lawyers and are refusing to talk.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is conducting a criminal investigation into the death. Smith said he has notified federal authorities and advised them that he will take the lead in handling the investigation.
The FDLE briefed Gov. Jeb Bush about the investigation Monday. State Corrections Secretary Michael Moore, whom Bush hired from the South Carolina prison system this year, also was present at Monday’s meeting with the governor.
“This is being taken very, very seriously,” said Bush spokesman Cory Tilley.
An attorney for the guards said Monday night that the incident occurred when officers tried to subdue Valdez after he threatened to kill a guard. “All of what was done was done in compliance with department rules and regulations,” said Gloria W. Fletcher, one of the officers’ lawyers.
Valdez, 36, was sentenced to death for killing corrections officer Fred Griffis in Palm Beach County in 1987. Valdez, 5 feet 8, 180 pounds, was an unruly inmate who frequently caused trouble with his guards, according to his lawyer and his ex-wife.
Ed O’Hara, the South Florida lawyer who represented Valdez, said his client had told him he was being “dogged” by guards because he killed a corrections officer.
“They would put him in areas they deemed punitive,” O’Hara said.
The lawyer quoted Valdez: “Whatever I do, they make things more difficult for me because they know I’ve been convicted of killing Griffis.”
A gap in time
The episode began late Saturday morning on X-Wing,
the solitary confinement unit that houses the most
disruptive inmates at Florida State Prison
Fletcher, the officers’ attorney, said the prison dispatched a five-member “extraction team” to Valdez’s cell because he had threatened an officer. They went to search his cell for contraband, but Valdez objected.
According to Fletcher, the officers sprayed a chemical agent at Valdez to get him out of his cell. He was taken to another cell. Officers filed what Bradford County Sheriff Bob Milner called a “use of force” report on the incident.
“When an officer did a routine check, he determined Mr. Valdez was in medical distress and he was taken immediately to the clinic,” Fletcher said.
Paramedics were called to Florida State Prison at 3:25 p.m. Valdez was pronounced dead at Shands Hospital in Starke about 4:18 p.m., according to State Attorney Smith.
Smith said he is trying to determine if there was a lapse between the time the altercation occurred and the time prison authorities sought medical attention for him.
“It is unclear,” Smith said. “But there was force used and reports of it were filed, minor injuries were reported and he was returned to his cell. I don’t know how much time elapsed, but when he was found for the last time around 3:15 p.m. Saturday, he was likely dead or dying.”
Bradford County authorities said two paramedics responded to a call of an inmate with a “respiratory problem.” The medics found Valdez in the prison clinic suffering from “a traumatic injury,” said Nelson Green, director of the Bradford County Department of Emergency Services.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was notified at 4:35 p.m., according to an agency spokeswoman. Bush’s office was not alerted until the next morning.
An agreement between the FDLE and the state
Department of Corrections mandates that the FDLE be notified any time a homicide, suicide, shooting death or any other suspicious death occurs in Florida’s prisons. The FDLE is also supposed to be notified of any life-threatening injuries in which “death is imminent.”
A long rap sheet
Valdez, who had a long rap sheet for burglary, drug
trafficking and assault on a police officer, was sent to death
row for gunning down corrections officer Fred Griffis, 40, a
highly decorated Vietnam veteran, in 1987. Griffis had just
retired from the Army two months before becoming an officer
Officers Griffis and Steve Turner were transporting a manacled prisoner, James O’Brien, to a doctor’s office when Valdez and an ex-prison pal, William Van Poyck, decided to spring O’Brien.
O’Brien had served previous stretches in Florida prisons with Valdez and Van Poyck.
Griffis was shot three times in the head after he refused to give Valdez and Van Poyck the keys to the van O’Brien was locked in and threw the keys in the bushes.
After arriving on death row in 1990, Valdez and Van Poyck had a series of run-ins with officers, which repeatedly landed both men in the toughest disciplinary units of Florida State Prison. The prison, in rural north central Florida, is home of the electric chair and widely regarded as the most maximum security prison in Florida.
In 1993, Van Poyck challenged what he called overly harsh conditions in solitary confinement, suing the Department of Corrections, said his former lawyer, Randall Berg, executive director of the Florida Justice Institute in Miami.
“The conditions were atrocious,” said Berg, adding that Valdez planned to be a witness at Van Poyck’s court showdown.
Berg said neither man had to testify because the
Corrections Department, rather than risk a court battle, agreed to settle with Van Poyck for what the lawyer said was about $45,000 to $50,000.
“The entire way Van Poyck was treated was based on who he allegedly murdered,” Berg contended.
Little information released
Susan Cary, a Gainesville attorney for death row inmates, said that in the past year she has received complaints from inmates of beatings on X-Wing, the solitary confinement unit where prison officials send the hardest disciplinary cases, including Valdez.
About a year ago, she said, she turned over some complaint letters to federal authorities, but she’s not sure what happened. “It’s really a no man’s land,” she said of the prison.
On Monday, corrections officials refused to talk about the wing, Valdez or the prison. They said they did not want to jeopardize an ongoing investigation.
“Until the investigation is completed, we cannot comment further on this matter,” corrections spokesman C.J. Drake said in a news release.
Department officials would not say whether any of the suspended guards had been disciplined previously. They also refused to make public the initial report filed after the incident, even though an assistant attorney general said the report should be public.
Pat Gleason, an assistant for Attorney General Bob Butterworth who specializes in Florida’s public record law, said police agencies must release copies of initial incident reports even when a criminal investigation is ongoing.
She pointed to a 1996 opinion written for St. Petersburg police Chief Darrel Stephens. In that opinion, Butterworth said initial incident reports are generally considered to be open to public inspection and are not considered criminal intelligence.
The Murdering of Mr. Valdes
The Story
Frank Valdes was beaten for being human: for loosing it after helplessly listening to a week long series of savage attacks being committed on other inmates.The man closest to him had been targeted for punishment.. Seems several inmates at Hamilton “C”I. had caused a rucus and had been moved to FSP for punishment. The guards had reportedly been literally hanging up the inmates, putting cloth around their heads, and beating them viciously day after day most of the week. Good old boys just having a little fun.
The screams were disturbing to other inmates, and Frank grew desperate as the days went by, until One day he couldn’t take it any longer. He began to scream at the guards to quit, that he was going to tell the outside world about them.
That got their attention alright, and on July 16th, C/O Montres Lucas reportedly beat Frank Valdes severely enough to leave him lying on the floor with a broken jaw. The next day, on July 17th, nine guards, according to most reports, entered Mr. Valdes’ cell early in the morning, woke him, handcuffed him and slowly and methodically beat him to death.
The coronor’s report says all Frank’s ribs were crushed, boot prints were imbedded in his chest, and his testicles were swollen to the size of a man’s head! I got reports from others that when the guards first saw his body it was black from bruising. How did this happen? The guards were asked. “He threw himself off the top bunk over and over, until he did this to himself!”
That’s the DOC’s Story and they’re stickin’ to it!
A few days after Christmas, a divided three-judge panel of the court ruled that Ronald B. Smith, a death row inmate in Alabama, could not pursue a challenge to his conviction and sentence because he had not “properly filed” a document by a certain deadline.
As it happens, there is no dispute that the document was filed on time. But it was not “properly filed,” the majority said, because Mr. Smith’s lawyer did not at the same time pay the $154 filing fee or file a motion to establish something also not in dispute — that his client was indigent.
Nor did the majority place much weight on the fact that the lawyer himself was on probation for public intoxication and addicted to crystal methamphetamine while he was being less than punctilious. In the months that followed, the lawyer would be charged with drug possession, declare bankruptcy and commit suicide.
Mr. Smith is almost surely guilty of murdering a convenience store clerk in 1994 in Huntsville, Ala. But it is not clear that he deserves to die for his crime.
His jury, by a vote of seven to five, determined that the murder did not warrant the death penalty, recommending instead that Mr. Smith be sentenced to life in prison.
But the Alabama capital justice system has many idiosyncrasies. One of them is that it allows judges to override such recommendations. The judge rejected the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Mr. Smith to death.
Following the advisory filed by the Attorney General’s office and media reports, Hank’s attorney issued the following press release:
Statement from Attorney for Hank Skinner in Response to Initial DNA Test Results in Hank Skinner Case
“We find it troubling that the Attorney General’s Office has seen fit to release partial results of the DNA testing and submit its ‘advisory’ to the court while the DNA testing is still in progress. The partial results which have been produced by the initial round of DNA testing show that at least one person other than Hank Skinner and the victims may have been present in the house on the night the murders took place, and may have had contact with one of the weapons used in the killings.
We will remain unable to draw any strong conclusions about whether the DNA testing has resolved the stubborn questions about Hank Skinner’s guilt or innocence until additional DNA testing has been completed, and the data underlying that DNA testing has been made available to our experts for a detailed review.
Specifically, DNA testing of a carpet sample from the bedroom occupied by victims Elwin Caler and Randy Busby reveals a mixture of the DNA of Mr. Caler and that of an unknown person who is not Mr. Skinner, Randy Busby, or Twila Busby.
In addition, DNA testing of one stain on a knife that may well have been used in the murders reveals a mixture of DNA from three contributors. Two of those contributors appear to be Mr. Caler and Mr. Skinner, but the third contributor is someone other than Mr. Caler, Mr. Skinner, Randy Busby or Twila Busby.
The DPS crime laboratory submitted the unknown DNA profile from the carpet sample to the Texas law enforcement DNA database, but that search produced no matches.
We have requested additional DNA testing that could improve the quality of the unknown DNA profile from the carpet sample, to allow authorities to submit it to CODIS, the national law enforcement DNA database, to search for matches there. We have also requested additional DNA testing of the stains from the knife, likewise hoping to develop further the DNA profile of the third contributor.
All the parties must do everything in their power to make sure Texas does not make an irreversible mistake.”
DNA testing that death row inmate Hank Skinner sought for more than a decade further implicates him in the New Year’s Eve 1993 triple murder for which he was sentenced to die, according to an advisory that the Texas attorney general’s office filed Wednesday in Gray County state district court.
But a lawyer for Skinner, who was convicted in 1995 of the murders of his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons in Pampa, said the DNA testing is incomplete and indicates that another person may have been at the scene of the crimes.
“We find it troubling that the Attorney General’s Office has seen fit to release partial results of the DNA testing and submit its ‘advisory’ to the court while the DNA testing is still in progress,” Rob Owen, co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic, said in an emailed statement.
Skinner has steadfastly maintained his innocence, claiming that he was unconscious on the couch at the time of the killings, intoxicated from a mixture of vodka and codeine. Beginning in 2000, he pleaded for DNA testing that he argued would prove his claims. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed his execution less than an hour before he was scheduled to die and agreed to hear arguments in his case. Skinner sought testing on a slew of crime scene evidence that was not analyzed at his original trial, including a rape kit, biological material from Busby’s fingernails, sweat and hair from a man’s jacket, a bloody towel and knives.
Lawyers for Skinner and the state finally agreed in June to testing. In the advisory filed Wednesday, state lawyers said the DNA results further confirmed that Skinner, 50, was responsible for the murders.
“DNA evidence collected at the crime scene consistently indicated Skinner was guilty of strangling and bludgeoning Ms. Busby to death in the living room of her home on New Year’s Eve 1993,” the advisory states. “Crime scene evidence also showed that Skinner was responsible for the stabbing deaths of Randy Busby and Elwin ‘Scooter’ Caler.”
The AG’s office reported that a rape kit did not indicate that Busby was sexually assaulted, and vaginal swabs did not reveal DNA from any other person. Fingernail scrapings and hairs from Busby’s body also did not reveal another person’s DNA, the advisory states.
The DNA results, state lawyers wrote, also show that Skinner’s blood was found in the back bedrooms of the house, where Randy Busby was found stabbed to death in the back. Skinner’s DNA was identified in blood stains from a tape, in two blood stains on a tennis shoe, a blood stain from the bedspread, a blood stain on a cassette holder and on a blood stain near a dresser in the boys’ bedroom.
Skinner’s DNA was also found on the handle of a bloody knife that was recovered from the front porch of the home, along with DNA from Caler and at least one other contributor, who was not identified.
But testing was not done on a man’s jacket found at the scene, because that item had been lost. Owen has said the jacket is a critical piece of evidence that must be tested, because it looks like one that Twila Busby’s uncle Robert Donnell wore.
Statement from Attorney for Hank Skinner in Response to Initial DNA Test Results in Hank Skinner Case
“We find it troubling that the Attorney General’s Office has seen fit to release partial results of the DNA testing and submit its ‘advisory’ to the court while the DNA testing is still in progress. The partial results which have been produced by the initial round of DNA testing show that at least one person other than Hank Skinner and the victims may have been present in the house on the night the murders took place, and may have had contact with one of the weapons used in the killings.
We will remain unable to draw any strong conclusions about whether the DNA testing has resolved the stubborn questions about Hank Skinner’s guilt or innocence until additional DNA testing has been completed, and the data underlying that DNA testing has been made available to our experts for a detailed review.
Specifically, DNA testing of a carpet sample from the bedroom occupied by victims Elwin Caler and Randy Busby reveals a mixture of the DNA of Mr. Caler and that of an unknown person who is not Mr. Skinner, Randy Busby, or Twila Busby.
In addition, DNA testing of one stain on a knife that may well have been used in the murders reveals a mixture of DNA from three contributors. Two of those contributors appear to be Mr. Caler and Mr. Skinner, but the third contributor is someone other than Mr. Caler, Mr. Skinner, Randy Busby or Twila Busby.
The DPS crime laboratory submitted the unknown DNA profile from the carpet sample to the Texas law enforcement DNA database, but that search produced no matches.
We have requested additional DNA testing that could improve the quality of the unknown DNA profile from the carpet sample, to allow authorities to submit it to CODIS, the national law enforcement DNA database, to search for matches there. We have also requested additional DNA testing of the stains from the knife, likewise hoping to develop further the DNA profile of the third contributor.
All the parties must do everything in their power to make sure Texas does not make an irreversible mistake.”
– Rob Owen, attorney for Hank Skinner | Clinical Professor, University of Texas School of Law
November 14, 2012
Preston Hughes is scheduled to be executed this month. Is he innocent of murder, as his defenders claim? Or did police frame a guilty man?
Preston Hughes
By Jordan Smith
The police were not looking for LaShandra Charles and her cousin Marcell Taylor, but that’s who they found.
It was around 11pm on Sept. 26, 1988, when a man flagged down two police officers near a Fuddruckers restaurant in far West Houston. The man was looking for his wife, whom he believed to be missing. As the trio searched the area, a Fuddruckers employee approached the officers to say that while walking home to a nearby apartment complex, he’d found a body in the woods behind the restaurant.
The cops walked to a large, overgrown field of tall trees dissected by a network of weed-choked trails. The restaurant parking lot was well-lit, but the field was not. The night was clear, and the officers used the moonlight to find their way along the trash-littered trail toward a fence at the far end of the property. There, police found a body – but not that of the person they’d been flagged down to find.
Instead, police found Charles, 15, and her 3-year-old cousin, Taylor. Taylor, who was lying facedown when the police found him, was dead. Charles was sprawled facedown just off the trail, not far from her cousin. Blood pooled under her head, staining the weeds on both sides of the trail. According to Houston police reports, her shorts and underwear were pulled halfway down and the leather strap she used for a belt was discarded nearby. Both Charles and Taylor had been stabbed through the neck. Whatever the weapon, its blade was long enough to cut clear through Taylor, leaving a gash where it emerged, just below the hairline on the back of his neck.
According to officer testimony, Charles was still alive. Sgt. Don Hamilton was on patrol when he got the call that two people had been found in the field. He rushed to the scene. Charles was having a hard time breathing, and her neck wound was “bleeding rather profusely,” he testified the following spring; blood covered her face and matted her hair. Nonetheless, Hamilton said, she was able to speak. “I asked her … ‘What happened?’” testified Hamilton. “She replied, ‘He tried to rape me.’” Who did, he asked. “She stated, ‘Preston.’” She knew her assailant, Hamilton said Charles told him; as her voice grew weak, forcing him to bend down to hear her talk, she asked him to find her cousin. An ambulance finally took Charles to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
It took less than a day for police to find and arrest 22-year-old Preston Hughes III, secure two separate confessions from him, and find evidence in Hughes’ nearby apartment that police said matched the crime. Hughes was charged with capital murder, and seven months later was sentenced to death.
Although the deaths of Charles and Taylor and the subsequent conviction of Hughes might appear a simple tale of prey and predator, the truth is far more complicated, says John Allen, a California-based blogger better known in cyberspace as The Skeptical Juror. Allen is adamant not only that Hughes is innocent, but also that he was framed by members of the Houston police, who planted evidence in his apartment; by the police crime lab, whose scientists did scant testing of the evidence; and by a deputy medical examiner who bent over backward during Hughes’ trial to bolster the state’s theory of the crime. Allen has written more than 60 stories about the case, and he charges that Hughes has never had defense counsel do enough on his behalf. “It shouldn’t be this way,” says Allen.
If Houston police did indeed corrupt the process, it may be quite difficult to determine whether Hughes is guilty or innocent. According to the New York-based Innocence Project, government misconduct is a leading cause of wrongful convictions. Equally problematic is when otherwise well-meaning police attempt, in effect, to “frame the guilty” – or those they believe to be guilty – thereby tainting legitimate evidence of guilt. In those circumstances, how can the system determine who should be punished – or in capital cases, deserve to die?
Hughes is scheduled to be executed Nov. 15.
Allen is determined to expose the corruption in Hughes’ case, and to demonstrate his innocence, of which Allen says he is certain. “It’s going to get done.”
In October 2011, the police-related shooting death of unarmed man, Michael Nida, 31, raised serious questions about the state of policing in the city of Downey, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.
Why did it raise questions? The father of four who worked in construction wasn’t shot with a handgun by one of the Downey Police Department’s officers. He was shot with an MP5 submachine gun, the same gun used by the Navy Seals.
“Why would he have a machine gun?” asks Jean Thaxton, one of Nida’s guardians since birth. “We’re not in a war zone, I didn’t think. I didn’t think this was a war zone.”
“An ordinary patrolman isn’t going to be carrying something like a submachine gun,” says Timothy Lynch, the director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the CATO Institute. Lynch says that even if they have those types of weapons, they should only be using them in rare circumstances, such as when they are confronting a heavily armed suspect.
But for decades police have been arming themselves with military equipment like M16s, grenade launchers, and armored personnel carriers.
“At first when they got it, the idea was, yeah, this is extraordinary weaponry, we’ll have it just in case we’ll ever need it.” But as decades went by, police started to use them to enforce drug warrants and then started carrying them on routine calls.
Nida’s Rydas , Have been on the streets for a year now. The locals love them, but the mainstream media is nowhere. Michael was an innocent man gunned down by Downey police for running. Committed no crime, just buying smokes, while his wife got gas.
Please support by trying to make it to candle light Vigil on 10/22-There is no acceptable number for the loss of Innocent lives to police the public.
The United States Criminal Justice System is flawed, broken, yet fixable; Prison Reform and Sentencing Reform should be major agenda's for each state- we need to stop warehousing prisoners and ready those who are going to parole.
Inmate rehabilitation improves public safety and lowers prison costs.
“We have to care because we can't afford not to".
Posts here are NOT my work, unless noted as such. See my disclaimer in the 'about' section. This blog serves as a Public Service Announcement.
