Veteran Detective Points to the Possibility of Wrongful Convictions

Jim Trainum, a police officer of over 25 years, recently discussed how shocked he was to discover how he and other officers were able to obtain a confession to murder from an innocent woman. Trainum explained, “Reviewing the tapes years later, I saw that we had fallen into a classic trap. We ignored evidence that our suspect might not have been guilty, and during the interrogation we inadvertently fed her details of the crime that she repeated back to us in her confession.”

Detective Trainum recently wrote about this danger and adocated a possible reform in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, arguing for the videotaping of police interrogations. Trainum said he never understood why someone would admit to a crime he or she didn’t commit until he secured such a false confession in the murder case.

Trainum indicated this experience was a turning point for him personally and professionally. He acknowledged that without the discovery and verification of the woman’s solid alibi, she probably would have been convicted and imprisoned for first-degree murder. He admits that the true murderer was never found partly because of an investigation derailed by focus on an innocent person. “I've learned that this is a nationwide problem. Of the 220 wrongful convictions in the U.S. that have been overturned based on DNA evidence, nearly 25% involved a false confession or false incriminating statements, according to the Innocence Project. In each of those cases, DNA proved that the confession was false.”

Officer Trainum’s full article may be found here.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center

Rudd confirms death penalty opposition as Bali executions loom

Kevin Rudd (pictured) has reaffirmed Australia's opposition to the death penalty as the Bali bombers await execution, while describing the terrorists as callous murderers.

Risking the anger of victims' relatives in the lead-up to the execution, the Prime Minister has unequivocally stated the federal Government's position after backbenchers complained he needed to make it clear.

"Well, the Bali bombers are murderers," he said today. "Many... have been affected by their murderous, cowardly and callous act. It's appalling.

"But I am not going to pretend to you that our policy on the death penalty has changed."

The Government has also warned there may be an increased risk of terrorist activity in Indonesia as the execution looms, warning Australians to think carefully before travelling to the region.

Mr Rudd said his position remained clear - that Australia would not intervene to oppose the executions and would only make special represenations on behalf of Australians facing the death penalty.

He said he was not aware that Indonesia had advised Australia of the execution date.

"We are universally opposed to the death penalty," he told Melbourne radio 3AW.

"We make no exception to that. That's been a bipartisan policy between us and the Liberals.

"Secondly, the other part of our policy is when any individual is convicted of the death penality anywhere in the world, we the Australian Government only intervene in the case of Australian citizens."

The Prime Minister's comments follow pressure from anti-death-penalty Labor backbenchers for the Government to state a clear position and the recent furore over WA Labor MP Melissa Parke's warning that the execution of the Bali bombers "will only decrease our human dignity" - a claim that angered victims' families.

Last year, Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland was forced to apologise to the families of Bali victims for speaking out against the death penalty for terrorists so close to the anniversary of the attacks.

Mr McClelland said at the time he was "very conscious ... this was a mistake I made" and "I would apologise for any hurt that any of those people may justifiably feel."

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said today speculation about the execution date of the Bali bombers only added to the suffering of the bombing victims' families.

"We have the understanding, from what the Indonesians have said publicly, that that (execution) is effectively imminent," Mr Smith told ABC Radio today.

"It's entirely a matter for the Indonesian authorities, it's a matter for their judicial and legal processes.

"Every time the matter is referred to, the families of the victims of the bombing will just relive the agony of the loss of loved ones."

Despite Labor's opposition to the death penalty, Mr Smith said: "We don't make representations on behalf of nationals of other countries, and we certainly don't make representations on behalf of terrorists in relation to the death penalty.

"We don't see that in any way as being contradictory," he told Sky News.

The Government has also warned there may be an increased risk of terrorist activity in Indonesia as the execution looms, warning Australians to think carefully before travelling to the region.

Mr Rudd said his position remained clear - that Australia would not intervene to oppose the executions and would only make special represenations on behalf of Australians facing the death penalty.

He said he was not aware that Indonesia had advised Australia of the execution date.

Source: The Australian

Yemen: two executed

Ismail Lutef Huraish and his cousin Ali Mussara’a Muhammad Huraish were executed this morning. They had exhausted all their appeal stages, and their death sentences had been ratified by the President.

Ismail Lutef Huraish and Ali Mussara’a Muhammad Huraish were sentenced to death in 2000 for a murder committed in 1998. They were reportedly arrested on 14 October in a village near the city of Ta’iz, and were charged with murder the following day. The Supreme Court upheld their death sentences in January 2004. In December 2005 Amnesty International called on the President not to ratify the death sentences against the men (see UA 301/05, 1 December 2008).

Since his arrest, Ismail Lutef Huraish, who was deaf and illiterate, had not been given access to sign-language interpretation. Therefore, at no point in the judicial process was he able to give his own account of events or to respond to allegations that he was involved in the murder. According to his lawyer, he was convicted solely on the basis of statements which Ali Mussara’a Muhammad Huraish made during police interrogation and during their trial, and which allegedly implicated both men in the murder. Amnesty International has no further information about these “confessions”.

The failure of the authorities to provide Ismail Lutef Huraish with interpretation facilities is in violation of Article 337 of the Yemeni criminal procedure law, which states that deaf defendants must have access to sign-language interpretation, as well as of Article 14 (3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Yemen is a state party, which states that defendants have the right to be informed of the charges against them and to have proceedings conducted in a language which they understand. This includes finding the appropriate language or method to inform people with a hearing or speech disability of the charges and proceedings which they face.

Source: Amnesty International

Krüger gets The Blues (Part VII)

Presented here is the seventh Blues Legend painting 'Bo Diddley'. Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 160 cm (31 x 63 inches).

Texas: Shameful record of executions

Imagine being sentenced to 50 years in the state penitentiary. Then consider how you might feel what kind of person you might have become as you reached the halfway point of your scheduled time in prison, marking off the calendar year 25 of being behind bars.

Now, imagine that you were innocent of the crime for which you had been convicted.

You might think that it couldn't get any worse than that, right?

Well, picture this: You're not just in a regular penitentiary cell, but on death row and even scheduled to die for a crime you did not commit.

Horrible, nightmarish images all.

Sadly there are too many people in this country, and particularly in Texas, who cannot only envision those and similar scenarios, but have lived them.

Only God knows how many innocent people have been wrongly convicted, although any one would be too many. We do know there is a growing list of individuals who have been exonerated through DNA testing, generally coming after the "victim" of the state already has lost many years of his life locked away from family, friends and society as a whole.

24 ex-death row prisoners from across the country will meet Friday at the state Capitol in Austin to call for a moratorium on executions in Texas and for the creation of a statewide commission on wrongful convictions, said Kurt Rosenberg, executive director of Witness to Innocence, a Philadelphia-based organization of former death row inmates and their families.

Their news conference will be at 2 p.m. in the Speaker's Committee Room.

The men who will appear at the Capitol have served "a combined total of nearly 200 years on death row for crimes they did not commit," Rosenberg said in a statement announcing the news conference.

"Last month, Texas became 3rd in the nation in death-row exonerations when Michael Blair was the 130th person exonerated from death row," he said. "Blair's exoneration came on the heels of a statement by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins that he will re-examine nearly 40 death penalty convictions and would halt executions, if necessary, to give the reviews time to proceed."

Watkins' announcement also came in the wake of Dallas County's record-setting number of overall exonerations 18 since 2001.

"Witness to Innocence believes the rest of the state should follow Watkins' lead and halt executions while it studies its broken death penalty system, which has exonerated 9 people from death row since 1987, 3rd only to Florida and Illinois in death-row exonerations," Rosenberg said.

More and more leaders are recognizing that we do have a broken system in the Lone Star State.

Last summer the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals announced the creation of a Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit to examine weaknesses in the criminal justice system. And, Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson of the Texas Supreme Court is among those calling for a statewide innocence commission.

It makes sense that while we recognize an imperfect system with weaknesses that must be examined and corrected, there ought not to be any more executions in Texas until those issues have been fully addressed.

The Star-Telegram is on record supporting a moratorium on executions.

I, of course, have long been on record calling for the abolition of the death penalty in this state.

Rosenberg points out that, as of Monday, "Texas has executed 417 people since the reinstatement of the death penalty, accounting for nearly 40 % of all executions nationwide, including 12 so far this year.

An additional 16 executions are scheduled in Texas this fall and winter, and in the next few weeks the state is expected to set a record of 10 executions in 30 days."

That is not a record of which we should be proud.

Instead, it ought to be a badge of shame.

Source: Column, Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Labour's job search allowance

Helen Clark said Labours job search allowance for redundant and laid off workers is fair, applied to everyone and was simple to administer. It either won't be fair, it will be hard to administer, or it will not apply to everyone. It can't be all three.

So I don't believe her. I`ve looked into it. It is going to be interesting to administer as some people may be paid twice by the state if the policy applies to all laid off and redundant workers who have worked for five years. Tomorrow I`ll post the details of how it can happen.

Labour breached the Electoral Finance Act again, today

Thousands get e-mails with a link to the "two Johns" video

Labour breached the Electoral Finance Act again today by sending unsolicited emails to many thousands of in boxes this evening. The email had a link to a Labour Party website which has the "two Johns" advertisement that was censured by the Advertising Standards Authority and removed from YouTube.

The e-mail, which had a false residential address of Mike Smith as its authorisation statement, was sent through the Smile City database.This database is a a rewards loyalty programme where subscribers give SmileCity express permission to send email offers, for which reward points can be earned. Its privacy policy says that information provided is only used by SmileCity to send appropriate reward mail and surveys.

But if you click on the designated button after you've read the Clark letter, you earn five points. You also end up at the Labour08 website that is also authorised by Mike Smith - except he now lives somewhere else. There are other links to the Labour site as well including this one which has the "two johns" video.

So not only has Labour encouraged Smile City to arrange letters asking subscribers to vote Labour and visit its website, its breached its own Electoral Finance Act as well due to the advertisement's false residential address. It is also arguable that the e-mail was not appropriate reward mail, and if that's so it is unsolicited, despite the ability to earn points, and Labour has encouraged SmileCity to breach its own privacy provisions as well.

I have a copy of the email and can send it to anyone on request.