Indiana Woman Released on Bail Pending New Trial

Kristine Bunch was recently released on $5,000 bail after she was granted a new trial earlier this month. (Read more here.) Bunch was convicted in 1996 of setting a fire that killed her 3-year-old son. However, new fire science suggested that the fire was not arson as originally thought.

Bunch’s attorney, Ron Safer,  told the Associated Press that prosecutors “did exactly the right thing” in recommending Bunch be released on low bond, but he is still disappointed they are moving forward with retrial in light of the scientific evidence.

Bunch will live with her mother and 16-year-old son while awaiting the outcome of the new trial. Still, she is not taking her freedom for granted. “I can learn how to Facebook,” she said. “All of my friends tell me they’re on Facebook.” She also hopes to teach her son how to drive. Bunch earned her GED and a college degree during her 16 years in prison and hopes to go to law school to help other wrongfully convicted inmates.

Read more here.

Fire science has increasingly been discredited and the subject of several wrongful conviction stories in recent years. NCIP client George Souliotes has been fighting to prove his innocence in a fatal arson case for many years. Finally, his case is being heard. Read more about the Souliotes case here.

California Supreme Court Overturns Death Sentence Due to Prosecutorial Misconduct

The California Supreme Court reversed Miguel Bacigalupo’s death sentence Monday finding that the prosecution failed to turn over evidence that would probably have led to a sentence of life-without-parole.

Bacigalupo was convicted of the 1983 murders of two brothers in San Jose. The appeal, which has been pending in the California court system for over 20 years, found that the prosecutor, current Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Joyce Allegro, and her lead investigator failed to turn over evidence that a Colombian drug cartel was involved in the crime. The suppressed evidence supported Bacigalupo’s defense that he committed the murders because the cartel threatened his family.

The Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office is currently deciding whether to again seek the death penalty or recommend Bacigalupo serve life-without-parole.

Read more here.

Vermont’s First DNA Exoneration

John Grega, 50, walked out of a Vermont prison Wednesday after spending 18 years in prison for a murder he always said he didn’t commit. Grega was convicted in 1995 of murdering his wife, Christine, but recently, new DNA evidence collected from the victim’s body revealed male DNA that did not match Grega.

Grega is the first inmate to successfully challenge their conviction using a 2008 Vermont law allowing DNA testing for serious felonies. While the Windham County State’s Attorney joined the motion to vacate Grega’s conviction, they also filed a simultaneous motion to retry him for his wife’s murder.

Grega’s family drove from Long Island, New York to meet him when he was released. He collapsed into the arms of his mother who told him, “Johnny. You look great. I brought you a Snapple.” Grega will be staying with his mother in New York while a new trial is pending.

Read more here.

Court Rules Virginia Death Row Inmate Should Get New Trial

Justin Michael Wolfe is one step closer to being exonerated from Virginia’s death row. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals granted Wolfe a new trial because prosecutors withheld evidence.

Owen Barber IV accused Wolfe of hiring him to kill Wolfe’s marijuana supplier. However, Barber recanted his story and a federal district judge found his recantation credible last year. The recantation along with a never-before disclosed report that indicated a police officer told Barber to implicate Wolfe to avoid the death penalty led the court to grant a new trial.

The court’s opinion stated that the report was “indubitably impeaching, in that it establishes a motive not only for Barber to implicate someone else, but to point the finger specifically at Wolfe.” It went on to note that the state clearly suppressed the report noting the prosecutor “offered the flabbergasting explanation that he has ‘found in the past when you have information that is given to certain counsel and certain defendants, they are able to fabricate a defense around what is provided.’”

Wolfe remains in prison while the Virginia Attorney General’s Office decides whether to appeal the ruling.

Read more here.

Plight of Maryland Man Illustrates Need for Prompt DNA Testing

K’vaughn Hines, 19, was charged with rape in January and spent more than four months behind bars before a DNA test exonerated him.

His attorney, James Shalleck, told the Maryland Gazette, “This is a case of an example of why DNA testing is so important. If innocent people can be exonerated, it’s worth the inconvenience to take a sample from somebody. When I visited [Hines] in jail, I could see his frustration. Many say they didn’t do it and are still convicted. This is just a case that just cries out for the need of more DNA testing.”

Hines was identified by witnesses who claimed they were at the scene of the crime, a Metro station, the night of the rape. While the DNA tests finally freed him from prison, Hines suffered through a terrible ordeal. He faced death threats while in prison, was kicked out of his apartment and lost his job. Hines, who has no criminal record, faced life in prison. “I was trying to get used to being in jail for the rest of my life,” he told The Gazette. “I wanted to commit suicide.”

Hines is currently living with his grandmother and trying to rebuild his life. “Sometimes I just sit it in the dark, but I’m just going to take my blessings and run with it because it could have been way worse.”

Read more here.

California Innocence Project Petitions Attorney General to Release Innocent Man

Daniel Larsen’s weapons conviction was overturned by a federal judge two years ago and yet he still remains in prison. This month Larsen’s supporters delivered over 100,000 petition signatures to California Attorney General Kamala Harris asking her to release Larsen.

Larsen was convicted of possessing a concealed weapon in 1999 and sentenced to 27 years to life under California’s Three Strikes Law. He was convicted based on the testimony of two police officers who claimed they saw Larsen throw a knife underneath a parked car. However, the California Innocence Project (CIP) found nine other witnesses who say it was another man who threw the knife. CIP convinced a federal judge who reversed Larsen’s conviction in 2009.

Larsen remains incarcerated while the Attorney General’s Office appeals the ruling claiming that Larsen did not present proof of his innocence in a timely matter and should therefore be barred from bringing his claim.

Read more here.

Ex-Judges and Former Prosecutors Join Fight Against Prosecutorial Misconduct

A coalition of retired federal judges and former U.S. attorneys filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to hear a case to overturn an Eleventh Circuit ruling which they claim will “allow serious prosecutorial misconduct to be excused and, in doing so, will undermine public confidence in our system of justice.”

The case involves Dr. Ali Shaygan who was awarded over $600,000 in legal fees after a botched drug prosecution against him. The prosecutors committed several different types of misconduct including evidence suppression and witness tampering. But the appeals court overturned the award ruling that monetary awards are only allowed when the overall prosecution is unreasonable and since the charges stemmed from the drug overdose death of one of Dr. Shaygan’s patients, the prosecution was reasonable.

Dissenting judge, Beverly Martin, wrote that the Eleventh Circuit’s decision will “render trial judges mere spectators of extreme government misconduct.” Martin’s opinion was cited by the former judges and prosecutors in their brief.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided to hear the case, Ali Shaygan v. United States.

Read more here.

Indiana Woman Gets New Trial Due to Fire Science Failure

Kristine Bunch will get a new trial in the death of her three-year-old son after the Indiana Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court decision.

Bunch was convicted in 1996 after prosecutors argued that she used kerosene to start a fire in her son’s bedroom. However, in March, lawyers with the Center of Wrongful Convictions convinced an Indiana appellate court that new fire science shows that kerosene was not used and there are other accidental causes that were not explored.

Her attorney, Ronald Safer, told a local news channel, “Kristine’s case bears eerie similarities to one that occurred in Texas in the early nineties involving a man named Todd Willingham. Mr. Willingham’s children died in a fire for which he was convicted of murder and arson, and he unfortunately was executed in prison before advances in fire science proved he could not have set the fire. We are grateful it did not come to that in Kristine’s case, and that she has the chance to right this terrible wrong.”

Read more here.

Innocence Project of Texas Investigating Arson Cases For Junk Science

At the request of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas is examining over one thousand arson cases to weed out any that might be based on the same bad forensic science that was used in the conviction of Cameron Todd Willingham.

Willingham was executed in 2004 despite egregious problems with the evidence used in his conviction. The Commission does not have direct jurisdiction to re-investigate cases and so it asked Blackburn to partner with the State Fire Marshall’s office to determine if there are any people currently incarcerated on discredited science.

Blackburn updated the Commission on his preliminary findings at their quarterly meeting in July. He says that his staff will be able to get through all the cases by next spring and he estimates singling out 10-15 cases for closer review by a panel of fire science experts.

Read more here.

U.S. Attorney Investigation: Five People Convicted in 1995 New York Cabbie Killing are Innocent

Five people, Devon Ayers, Michael Cosme, Eric Glisson, Carlos Perez and Cathy Watkins, were all convicted of the murder of a cab driver in the Bronx in 1995. An article in New York magazine even focused on the investigation with the headline, “How to Solve a Murder.” However, now an investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office claims the murder was not actually solved.

At the time of the trial, prosecutors claimed that the five defendants were part of an elaborate conspiracy to steal $50,000 worth of cocaine from one of the cab’s passengers. Jurors accepted this theory and all five were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms.

Recently, federal prosecutors received a letter from Eric Glisson who professed his innocence in the 1995 slaying and presented a new theory of the crime. He alleged that the murder had been committed by two members of a Bronx gang called Sex Money and Murder (S.M.M). The letter, addressed to a prosecutor who was no longer in the office, landed on the desk of John O’Malley, an investigator in the  office’s violent crimes unit. O’Malley immediately recognized the description of the crime in the letter as eerily familiar to a confession he had heard in 2003. Two former S.M.M. members had agreed to work with prosecutors against their former gang and told O’Malley they were involved in a robbery and murder of a cab driver in 1995. Each man separately gave accurate descriptions of the crime.

O’Malley presented an affidavit to the defendants’ attorneys in support of their potential motions for new trial based on this new evidence.

Read more here.