December in 1997, Nichols was found guilty on eight counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of conspiracy for the killing of federal law enforcement personnel, and then he was sentenced to a life in prison. He was then tried on his state charges in Oklahoma in 2004 and convicted of 161 different counts of first degree murder and fetal homicide. His sentence was 161 consecutive life terms in
The suspect I will be talking about is Lydell Grant. Lydell Grant, a Houston man, was wrongfully convicted in 2012 for the murder of Aaron Scheerhoorn, who was fatally stabbed outside a Houston bar in 2010. Despite Grant's consistent claims of innocence and the lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime, six eyewitnesses identified him as the murderer, leading to his conviction and a life sentence. On December 10, 2010 Police were called to a club called Club Blur. Once police arrived at the club they found Aaron Scheerhoorn dead after being stabbed seven different times.
The death sentence was simple and utterly based off of the crimes he committed and not his
The James Holmes and the Aurora theatre shooting case. There are many pieces of evidence in this case that could be looked at as someone who committed a premeditated shooting and someone who was in fact insane. Ultimately the insanity plea did not work in James Holmes favor but it did extend what would have already been a long death penalty case. Some key pieces of evidence were highly controversial in the fact that there was arguing over whether or not it should be allowed in court.
He was sentenced to life in jail without the shot of parole in addition to
Throughout his sentence Ruiz continued to assert his innocence, interesting the Innocence Project. After taking on his case, the Innocence Project used the DNA originally found at the crime to clear him of his convictions. In court cases, such as Mr. Ruiz’s eyewitness testimonies, tend to be seen as the most credible and therefore persuasive form of evidence. However, human memory is fallible and recollection is often inaccurate. Due to the unreliability of human memory, many innocent people like Mr.Ruiz are convicted every year and sentenced to prison for crimes they did not commit.
Apparently, the jury understood the evidence, because on February 27, 1982, Wayne Williams was convicted of the two murders which he was tried for and he was sentenced to life in prison, at which point Atlanta’s police commissioner closed twenty-one other murder cases. In 1998, after Williams’s lawyers argued that prosecutors had withheld evidence in the case, Judge Hal Craig upheld the conviction and termed the fiber evidence in the case, the strongest scientific link in this case. Since then, the DNA from two human hairs found inside one of the victim ’s shirt excludes ninety-eight percent of the people in the world, yet it is consistent with the DNA of Wayne Williams (Nickell, 2011). When Wayne Williams went to trial in the two deaths DNA, testing was not as a common courtroom science and now it has grown significantly.
The sentencing trial followed soon after where Christopher Simmons was sentenced to the death penalty for the heinous act he had carried
However, we as a country have made incredible failures of eyewitness testimonies, including misidentification, that led to innocent people having to live out their lives in solitude behind bars. Recently though, with the rise of science and technology, eyewitness testimonies have become less and less reliable. As of now, almost 350 people, have been released because their DNA was discovered to be incompatible with the evidence collected from the crime scene
Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong In Brandon L. Garrett 's book, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, he makes it very clear how wrongful convictions occur and how these people have spent many years in prison for crimes they never committed. Garrett presents 250 cases of innocent people who were convicted wrongfully because the prosecutors opposed testing the DNA of those convicted. Garrett provided simple statistics such as graphs, percentages, and charts to help the reader understand just how great of an impact this was.
He was convicted of first degree murder, three first attempt murder and two different counts of
He was hung for his crimes even if they were not true. The court felt that they had done what was best for the community. They both similarly had to be punished for the sake of the community to be right
For example, in Claude Jones case, a later DNA test proved that he was an innocent in a conviction of shooting a liquor-shop owner. Jones was convicted the crime in 1989 and was executed in 2000. His murder conviction was based on a piece of forensic evidence, a strand of hair, which placed at the scene. Prosecutors claimed that it was belonged to Jones. As a result, he was found guilty and had to sit on the death row since 1989.
Murders that are left unsolved leaves family members puzzled and wondering. It is important that we solve murders so we can stop the victim from doing it again. I already know a bit about DNA evidence from my KWL chart crime research, but I would need to learn more about its specific application in cold cases. In my preliminary research, I learned that DNA has helped solve many cold cases over the years. There have been cases where decades-old evidence was retested with updated technology and resulted in identifying the victimizer.
In a murder case where an 18-year-old, Sarah Johnson was sentenced to life in prison for committing a first degree murder for both her and dad. The case reopened when a retired crime lab technician Michael Howard “testified that whoever shot Diane and Alan Johnson at close range on September 2, 2003, would have been hit by a "rain" of blood spatter” (http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/03/johnson/index.html?eref=sitesearch). Howard came up with his theories proving that, Sarah was not even close in committing those murders and it is a wrongful conviction. Based on blood spatter, Howard disclosed that the shooting which took place was at a very close range and blood would have been all over the assailant, where as there was no blood pattern found on Sarah’s clothes. In fact, the pajama pant, Sarah was wearing on the day of shooting had no trace of her parent’s DNA or blood.
