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Julie Rea Biased Trial

721 Words3 Pages

Innocent until proven guilty is a phrase the United States justice system says we abide by but in many cases this seems to falter from true. Due to various factors such as tunnel vision, faulty forensics, false confessions, improper identification, missing evidence and the list could go on; all of these reasons can lead to a biased trial and ultimately lead to a wrongful conviction. Julie Rea was a single mom convicted of the murder of her ten year old son Joel Kirkpatrick on October 13th, 1997. This twenty-eight year old mom and her son lived in a rural area in Lawrence, Illinois that was referred to as a quaint little town that very rarely saw any crime so when the news of sweet little Joel Kirkpatrick being murdered got out it sent the …show more content…

Her conviction was influenced by several factors such as: perjury, inaccuracies at the crime scene and official misconduct; the prosecution even went as far to let her ex husband testify and state that she was debating on aborting Joel (which was false) (Bluhm Legal Clinic, 2022). All while the defendant was claiming a man broke into her home and there was a struggle between the two of them. Julie also sustained injuries from the struggle but ultimately he had escaped and she then ran for …show more content…

Tommy Lynn Sells at the time of her son's murder had been linked to committing similar crimes in several different states. Sells after being arrested and convicted of a similar crime admitted that he killed Joel Kirkpatrick and struggled with Julie inside of the home. He stated that he had broken into their home through a window and stabbed Joel to death with a knife he took from Julie’s butcher block (The National Registry of Exonerations, 2012). The details he provided were not released to the public and they matched exactly what Julie had been saying all along. The Downstate Innocence Project was able to conjure up evidence that puts Sells in the area at the time of Joel’s murder and along with his confession that was all they needed to prove Julie Rea’s innocence. She was able to post bond in 2006 due to the overwhelming evidence provided and she was officially exonerated in the year

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