TheAgitator.com
Mississippi Moves Toward First DNA Exoneration
Saturday, January 12th, 2008I’ll go out on a limb, here, and predict it’s the first of many:
Attorneys for Arthur Johnson believe they will win his release from prison after a Sunflower County judge hears new DNA evidence they say clears Johnson of the crime of rape.
The Mississippi Supreme Court on Jan. 4 cleared the way for Johnson to argue for his freedom based on DNA tests that he alleges show he did not rape a woman in Sunflower County.
Johnson was convicted in 1993 of rape and burglary and was sentenced to 55 years in prison. The state Court of Appeals upheld his conviction in 1995.
Emily Maw, an attorney for Innocence Project New Orleans, said no physical evidence linked Johnson to the crime and his conviction was based on the victim’s identification of him as her attacker.
In August 2005, Circuit Judge Ashley Hines ordered the evidence in the rape kit to be tested by ReliaGene Technologies in New Orleans. After delays due to Hurricane Katrina, ReliaGene completed the testing late in 2007.
Maw said the testing excluded Johnson as the source of the seminal fluid collected from the underwear worn by the victim when she was raped.
“This DNA testing proves that Arthur Johnson was telling the truth when he claimed, from the beginning, that he is innocent of this charge,” she said in a statement Friday.
Defense attorneys in Mississippi like Rob McDuff, Andre de Gruy, and the New Orleans Innocence Project’s Maw deserve a ton of credit, and not just for this case. They’ve been fighting long odds and an entrenched, corrupt system for years down there. Now that the state has its own Innocence Project, expect to see more of these. The major barrier will be fact that prosecutors in Mississippi have a habit of destroying case files after a defendant has exhausted his appeals. One of Tucker Carington’s first objectives as director of the new project is to push a bill through the state legislature requiring prosecutors to preserve the evidence in these cases.
Interesting fact: Maw was actually University of Edinburgh Alumnus of the Year.
Too bad that the innocence project can’t push cases through against the crooked bastards that put the innocents in jail in the first place.
Bravo!
Now, if the officials will only finally “recognize” that false confessions are in fact a REALITY, and to make it LAW, that ALL interrogations MUST BE VIDEOED, and ALL files on ALL cases must be held/filed indefinitely.
OT…
Hey Radley, remember you sticking up for Fox’s right to exclude RP from the debate? Private property, agreed.
How about them eliminating a part of their “debate” from the OFFICIAL transcripts, and a cutting of that same part from their replay of the debate?
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/25288
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pZ_Z_XG0L2c
Not to begrudge anyone their right to claim that they are 1st in anything, but I know of at least one man who was exonerated through DNA evidence in Mississippi after serving 12 years in MS’s prison system. Cedric Willis was cleared of murder and robbery and released in 2006. Innocence Project New Orleans represented him.
see more info: http://www.exonerated.org/j/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=56