has the FBI told the whole truth about their case against Dr. Ivins?
******
is Mr. Thompson’s case at all related to Dr. ivins?
John Thompson writes in the NYT (4/9/11) …
- I SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row.
- I’ve been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date.
- an investigator they had hired to look through the evidence one last time found, on some forgotten microfiche, a report sent to the prosecutors on the blood type of the perpetrator of the armed robbery.
- It didn’t match mine.
The report, hidden for 15 years,
had never been turned over to my lawyers.
The investigator later found the names of witnesses and police reports
from the murder case that hadn’t been turned over either.
******
Those prosecutors were never punished.
- The prosecutors involved in my two cases, from the office of the Orleans Parish district attorney, Harry Connick Sr., helped to cover up 10 separate pieces of evidence. And most of them are still able to practice law today.
- When the hidden evidence first surfaced, Mr. Connick announced that his office would hold a grand jury investigation. But once it became clear how many people had been involved, he called it off.
John Thompson is the director of Resurrection After Exoneration, a support group for exonerated inmates.
read the entire column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/opinion/10thompson.html?scp=1&sq=the%20prosecution%20rests&st=cse
******
LMW COMMENT …
The abuse of power by some prosecutors (and police) is a sickness of the American justice system that no one seems interested in addressing. Other prosecutors will simply not prosecute their colleagues, even when their purposeful behavior sends innocent people to prison or to death. Legislatures made up largely of lawyers will not pass laws clearly defining purposeful prosecutorial abuse as criminal behavior.
Here is “Prosecutors Gone Wild”, one of many articles on this topic … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opinion/03farmer.html?ref=opinion … by John Farmer, who was the attorney general of New Jersey from 1999 to 2002.
see also … the Chicago Tribune series titled Trial and Error, How Prosecutors Sacrifice Justice to Win, by Ken Armstrong and Maurice Possley … http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/newsreleases/99mn001?opendocument
I have been furious about this problem for years, prompting my second novel, A Good Conviction, about a young man convicted of murder by a New York City prosecutor who knew he was innocent.
see Lew’s amazon author page and purchase A GOOD CONVICTION at …
http://www.amazon.com/Lewis-M.-Weinstein/e/B002IZ1BNK/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
******
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 