A crowded courtroom erupted in applause after Forrest County Circuit Judge Robert Helfrich's ruled to set aside the men's guilty pleas, ending what some described as a 30-year ordeal for the imprisoned men.
Posted on 09/16/2010 12:13:29 PM PDT by JoeProBono
A judge in Hattiesburg, Mississippi today threw out the guilty pleas of two men who had spent three decades in prison for rape and murder after DNA tests showed they were innocent. The decision comes too late, however, for a third man who died in prison eight years ago. Bobby Dixon, Phillip Bivens and Larry Ruffin were sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of Eva Gail Patterson of Hattiesburg in 1979. Larry Ruffin died behind bars in 2002.
The Innocence Project filed a petition in July on behalf of Dixon and Bivens and a separate petition on behalf of Ruffin just yesterday. The advocacy group had lobbied for new DNA tests of the evidence from the 1979 rape, and tests showed that the DNA matched that of another man Andrew Harris, who is currently serving a life sentence in a Mississippi prison for a 1981 rape.
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A crowded courtroom erupted in applause after Forrest County Circuit Judge Robert Helfrich's ruled to set aside the men's guilty pleas, ending what some described as a 30-year ordeal for the imprisoned men.
That never occurs to the reporter, it seems.
So sad, but at least they got vindication.
My bad - there is a PAGE 2 to the story.
“It is better to let 10 guilty men go free, than to imprison and innocent man”
No S#!t....I know if I were accused of something I didn’t do I sure as hell wouldn’t plead guilty!
Not every admission of guilt is really an admission of guilt.
Two points:
1) Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and
2) People are coerced into confessions or guilty pleas (to avoid even stiffer penalties) all the time.
DNA testing ought to be mandatory for all new charges BEFORE trial, and all old cases should be examined for testable evidence.
Too many innocent people have been convicted. However, if DNA PROVES guilt, dump the criminal 50 miles out into the ocean and be done with them.
Usually a plea deal to avoid the executioner...............not unusual...........
The law says otherwise.
66,882,230 people were fooled into voting for Obama. The rest were fooled into voting for McCain. Anything is possible.
I assume you read the portion where he alledges he was beaten into a confession, of a crime for which he has now been proven not to have committed.
Why did they plead guilty? Probably had public defenders, possibly had been told they would lose at a jury trial, probably offered some sort of illusory promise of a benefit if they plead guilty.
Eyewitness identification is inherently unreliable, and even “confessions” are not 100% reliable. Remember, all of the victims of Stalin’s purges confessed, too. Once the police “interviewer” has decided the guilty person is in front of him in the interview room, he won’t quit until he hears what he wants to hear. He’s there for HIS truth, not THE truth. And modern interrogation techniques are very effective and don’t require physical coercion.
You got me....how's that?
You say that, but a DA and his thuggish threats of the death penalty or a incompetent public defender’s advice might make you do otherwise.............
Not so sure I agree with that sentiment. Human justice is not perfect, but that doesn’t mean we should let the guilty go free. We should do the best we can and recognize that even so, in rare cases, the innocent are punished for crimes they did not commit, and the guilty are not punished for crimes they do commit.
Letting the guilty go free means letting them go on to create new victims.
Not really. Case in point, plea bargains. The kid who ran a red light 7 years ago, totalling my vehicle pled to a parking ticket. You really have no point.
He still pled now, didn’t he?
but this story lacks much info....generally a confession can not alone convict somebody....they need corroberating evidence....what was that evidence....????
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