Free Republic

The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Wednesday overturned the conviction of a Houston man sentenced to death in the killing of a Houston Police Department officer. The court ordered a new trial for Alfred Dewayne Brown because of evidence withheld during his trial in 2005. Prosecutors said Brown and two other men were robbing a check-cashing store when they shot and killed the store clerk, Alfredia Jones, and then Officer Charles Clark, who responded to the scene. Brown claimed he was innocent and that he had an alibi that could prove it. He said he was at his girlfriend's house...

In March, I posted a long report on the Darryl Howard case. There’s a lot to this story, but here’s a quick and dirty summary: Howard was convicted in 1995 for murdering a woman and her 13-year-old daughter in a Durham public housing complex. Despite evidence that both women had been sexually assaulted, there was no physical evidence linking Howard to the crime scene. In post-conviction, Howard’s attorneys discovered a police memo describing a tip indicating that the murders were the work of a gang called the New York Boys. The tip seemed particularly reliable because it referred to the...

In the outpouring of praise for William D. Cohan's new book "The Price of Silence"—a work, remarkably enough, being celebrated as a model of evenhandedness, scrupulous objectivity, etc.—one essential has gone overlooked. Namely, the central point of this tale about the Duke lacrosse case and accusations against three players of rape and assault at a house party. It takes no close reading to see that the book is meant to recast the story so as to nullify the outcome Americans thought they knew—

The Duke lacrosse case was a spectacular scandal – a cause célèbre that had the country abuzz about race, class and gender. Three wealthy Duke students, all of them white, were charged with raping a poor black woman during a spring break party at a scruffy rental house in Durham. Then the whole mess imploded in real time, in the national media, due to prosecutorial misconduct. North Carolina, of all places in America, was perhaps the most fertile soil for a case that ended with the state attorney general declaring the three players innocent and state regulators disbarring the prosecutor,...

On August 25, 2006 the New York Times published a nearly 6,000-word, front-page analysis of the evidence in the case against the three lacrosse-playing students at Duke University who were charged with raping a prostitute who had been hired to dance at a party. The article conceded that holes had emerged in the case brought against them by Mike Nifong, the district attorney in Raleigh, North Carolina. But by presenting material in the light most favorable to Nifong’s claims and by excluding or diminishing the significance of key exculpatory evidence, the Times implied that a rape still might have occurred....

An innocent man who spent nearly a quarter century in prison for a murder he did not commit walked out of a Brooklyn courtroom with his freedom and his mother by his side Tuesday. Jonathan Fleming, now 51 years old, was in tears as he hugged his lawyers and family Tuesday after his conviction was thrown out by a judge. "I feel like the time I felt when he was born and the nurse bring him to me," said Patricia Fleming, the mother of the wrongly jailed man. "That's how happy I was." From the start, Fleming proclaimed his innocence...

Former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has held his tongue since his career imploded in the Duke lacrosse case. But his thoughts are about to land in bookstores, at length and virtually unchallenged. “The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, The Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities” is scheduled for publication April 8. The book – $35 in hardback, 650 pages long – bills itself as “the definitive, magisterial account” of a case that generated tens of thousands of news stories, countless blog posts, seemingly endless cable gabfests and a handful of books. Three...

When Darryl Howard was convicted of murder in 1995, he cried out ”I didn’t do it!” then sobbed in open court. He has maintained his innocence ever since. (snip) But for all his problems, there has never been much compelling evidence that Howard is a murderer. Howard was convicted of killing a woman named Doris Washington and her 13-year-old daughter Nishonda in November 1991. Despite indications that both women had been sexually assaulted, no DNA or biological evidence connected Howard to the crime scene. He was convicted entirely on eyewitness testimony, much of which was vague, contradictory, or later recanted....

Exclusive: John Rocker compares media coverage of accused QB vs. Duke athletes With each passing year, we regrettably get more stories of college athletes acting up and getting in trouble with the law. From armed robbery to rape, there appears to be no crime that college athletes aren’t capable of committing. Dominating the sports world right now is the story of a likely nominee for the Heisman Trophy standing accused of sexual assault. Jameis Winston is the star quarterback for the Florida State Seminoles, who are currently undefeated and ranked No. 1 out of all college teams in the country....

DURHAM Crystal Mangum was found guilty of second degree murder Friday in the death her boyfriend, Reginald Daye. In a quick-moving trial, jurors deliberated over four options: first-degree murder, guilty of second-degree murder, guilty of voluntary manslaughter or not guilty. That Mangum stabbed boyfriend Daye, 46, on April 3, 2011, was never in question. She admitted during the eight-day trial that she “poked” Daye with a knife in the side of the chest with a steak knife at his apartment, but she claimed she did it in self-defense while he was straddling her and trying to choke her. Daye told...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Mark O'Mara said his legal fight with the people who tried to convict George Zimmerman is not over. On Friday, at a Tiger Bay Club luncheon in Orlando, O'Mara detailed the case that garnered national attention. Mark O'Mara described the struggle he said he went through to get evidence from the prosecution team of Bernie De La Rionda and State Attorney Angela Corey. He cited the picture of a bloodied Zimmerman, taken the night Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, as an example. "It is undeniable that they had a plan in mind, with the 15...

There is an aphorism to the effect that there is only a small difference between police and criminals, just as there is only a small difference between sheep dogs and wolves. It is that small difference, however, that distinguishes heroes from enemies of society. Sheep dogs and wolves are members of the same species, and both are physically and temperamentally capable of killing other animals. The key difference is, of course, that sheep dogs never harm the sheep they protect from the wolves. A police officer must, like the violent criminals he or she arrests, be similarly capable of handling...

There is an aphorism to the effect that there is only a small difference between police and criminals, just as there is only a small difference between sheep dogs and wolves. It is that small difference, however, that distinguishes heroes from enemies of society. Sheep dogs and wolves are members of the same species, and both are physically and temperamentally capable of killing other animals. The key difference is, of course, that sheep dogs never harm the sheep they protect from the wolves. A police officer must, like the violent criminals he or she arrests, be similarly capable of handling...

We’re working on figuring out why Judge Nelson wants Richard Conner kicked out ASAP. Using the “francining names” placed into trial records by Don West late last night we begin to find the unknown backstory. From them we make a remarkable discovery. Unbelievably, it appears Trayvon’s Dad, Tracy, was actually one of the people talking to Trayvon about buying and selling a handgun. Considering the “conversation was mysteriously deleted” this appears to be a big effen’ deal. WOW.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t4EKnS_1RHA Ronquavis “Qua” Fulton Spoonhead Zach Jay Ron Dario Diamond (probably Rachel Jeantel) But not about buying And THEN the THUNDERCLAP name...

10.30.12 - 08:41 pm By Ray Gronberg gronberg@heraldsun.com; 919-419-6648 DURHAM – A new court filing purporting to be from Crystal Mangum says she can supply evidence in a Duke lacrosse lawsuit that she was paid, up front, to set up Duke University’s 2005-06 men’s lacrosse team. The filing surfaced on Tuesday, a day after federal court clerks in Greensboro received it from the U.S. Postal Service. It was styled as a motion by Mangum, acting as her own lawyer, asking that she be allowed to intervene in the civil-rights lawsuit that exonerated lacrosse players David Evans, Colin Finnerty and Reade...

DURHAM – A historian who’s written about the Duke lacrosse case must answer questions from Duke University lawyers defending the school from lawsuits filed by two groups of former lacrosse players, a federal court in Maine says. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Rich III said Brooklyn College professor K.C. Johnson has to give Duke’s legal team a deposition and turn over documents about his dealings with the players. Johnson invoked a form of journalist’s confidentiality privilege as he fought Duke’s subpoena. Rich acknowledged that such claims can be valid, depending on how the interests in each case balance out. In this...

<p>Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman is suing NBC over the network’s botched editing of his 911 tape, Page Six can exclusively reveal. We hear Zimmerman’s attorneys are about to file a complaint against NBC and its top executives, naming news president Steve Capus and correspondent Ron Allen, who was the reporter on the scene for the broadcast on “Today” on March 27.</p>

. . . [Duke President Richard] Brodhead’s initial public statement said that people must uphold the presumption of innocence. But at a private meeting that included faculty members who signed the ad, he was excoriated for that statement . . . In a subsequent open letter to the Duke community, Mr. Brodhead canceled the lacrosse season, accepted the coach's resignation, and added several sentences about the evils of rape and the legacy of racism and misogyny. It made no reference to the lacrosse players' presumption of innocence. . . . In the end, justice was done, to some extent. North...

Florida prosecutor Angela Corey has come under withering criticism from Alan Dershowitz for overcharging and leaving out important details in the Affidavit of Probable Cause filed in connection with the charge of Second Degree Murder lodged against George Zimmerman. Corey allegedly responded by threatening to sue Dershowitz and Harvard. This appears to be part of a pattern when she is criticized. Now Corey has brought a charge of felony perjury against Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie, based on testimony during George’s bond hearing with regard to their financial resources. (Criminal Information and Affidavit of Probable Cause embedded at bottom of post.) There...

DURHAM -- Crystal Mangum’s attorney withdrew from her defense Tuesday, saying she had compromised the case by sharing information with supporters who rallied for her the same day. “The truth will set Crystal Mangum free,” said Sidney Harr, of the Committee on Justice for Mike Nifong, which held a press conference Tuesday morning outside the Durham County jail. Mangum, 33, is charged with the murder of Reginald Daye, 46. Police found Daye with one stab wound in the torso April 3 at Mangum’s 3507 Century Oaks Drive apartment. Mangum was charged with murder after Daye died April 13. She remains...