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LIVING ACCUSED is a documentary in progress about wrongfully convicted or falsely accused victims of our criminal justice system.

The most frightening apsect of these errors that cost people their futures literally and figuratively is that it could innocently happen to any of us or our loved ones.

Eyewitnesses are adamant about what they believe they clearly remember without the awareness of the way their subconcious mixes information up and disgests odd pieces of information from everywhere. The mind is highly suggestible that is why we don't speak to victims, particularly very young victims about their crimes (and never ask directly about the crime) is because the mind is so suggestible. It's easy to confuse a suggestion intentional or not with the facts.

Unfortunately those with enough integrity to come forward and admit a mistake maybe strongly encouraged not to do that, even by their superiors. Sweep it all under the rug. No use upsetting everybody about bringing it up again.

They will defend their wrong decisions it to ridiculous lengths while the victim of misinformation is away from their family, behind bars or under the glare of the hateful stares from people who get their information from Nancy Grace or some other tabloid. Some of these cases won't be resolved until those who were in charge are long gone or in some fortunate cases -- officers who once worked on the cases and never forgot that something didn't seem right and comes back to solve it. May will never be resolved. The truth will never come out.

Since this is a situation any of us could face, why are we so apathetic about it? Why are we so quick to believe they have correct person? How have so many people been convicted on virtually no evicence? We are outraged over the treatment of crime victims yet we distance ourselves from the accused, even the cleared accused. They are victims and so are their loved ones.

For as often as this happens (that we find out about) the masses seem alarmingly comfortable with the chance of being ruined personally, professionally and legally based on gossip that got out of hand or a mistake nobody could bother correcting. It doesn't even have to be a "legal crime" any frivolous assualt on one's character based on gossip or personal hunches is wrong.

The Night Birds -- The West Memphis 3 Case

Prosecutors in 2,341 jurisdictions have stretched, bent or broken rules to win convictions. Since 1970, judges and appellate panels cited prosecutorial misconduct when dismissing charges, reversing convictions or reducing sentences in over 2,000 cases. In another 500 cases, they found the misconduct warranted a reversal. In thousands more, judges labeled prosecutorial behavior inappropriate, but upheld convictions using a doctrine called "harmless error."

Who suffers when a prosecutor is cited for misconduct? Larry Johnson walked out of a Missouri prison summer 2002, exonerated by DNA testing from a wrongful rape conviction after 18 years, St. Louis as word trickled out Nels C. Moss Jr. led the prosecution in 1984.

How credible are child witnesses? Child Witness Cases

Justice: Denied -- The Magazine for the Wrongly Convicted.

Free Battered Women (FBW), is a grassroots coalition of currently and formerly incarcerated women, their families, activists, attorneys, students, community members, and other dedicated individuals who strive to end the re-victimization of battered women in prison.

Many agencies exist to investigate crimes and prosecute criminals, but no entity exists to investigate the injustice of wrongful conviction. Authorities in the criminal justice system make no effort to collect, organize and review their mistakes.

Why Would Anyone Make a False Confessions? In more than 25% of DNA exoneration cases, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pled guilty. These cases show that confessions are not always prompted by internal knowledge or actual guilt, but are sometimes motivated by external influences. Why do innocent people confess?

20th Century Erroneous Executions

Miscarriages of justice Scotland

Survival Guide For The Falsely Accused -- Provides resource information to adults unjustly accused of child abuse, child neglect, sexual child abuse, "repressed" memories, sexual harassment, or domestic violence (spousal abuse).

The courts’ reliance on witnesses built is kept in limited check by cross-examination—an important adversarial legal process—used to appeal to the jurors common sense. Witnesses testimony are often considered the most important personal testimony given. Recent studies illustrate that this weight must be balanced by the awareness that a witness may be honest, not coaxed by prosecutorial error by anyone else but simply by being human the results of distorted memory and inaccurate testimony are easily possible and common.

The Case For Innocence -- Examines why inmates remain in prison despite DNA evidence that exonerates them.

Local prosecutors in 2,341 jurisdictions have stretched, bent or broken rules to win convictions. Since 1970, judges and appellate panels cited prosecutorial misconduct when dismissing charges, reversing convictions or reducing sentences in over 2,000 cases. In another 500 cases, they found the misconduct warranted a reversal. In thousands more, judges labeled prosecutorial behavior inappropriate, but upheld convictions using a doctrine called "harmless error."

Prisoners released because of court findings of innocence. How can wrongful convictions occur? Chicago Tribune's expose explains how it is in Illinois.

The Power to Harm -- The town of Wenatchee, WA, made world headlines in 1994 and 1995 when police and state social workers undertook the nation's most extensive child sex-abuse investigation. 60 adults were arrested on 29,726 charges of child-sex abuse involving 43 children. Many accused were poor or developmentally disabled. Many cases were settled on the strength of confessions taken down by Wenatchee police Detective Bob Perez.

In Paris, Illinois, Karen Spesard, 24, was an office assistant at a factory when she married Dyke Rhoads a landscaper in 1986. Dyke and Karen Rhoads were found dead July 6, 1986, after an early morning fire engulfed their home. The couple were stabbed over 50 times, murdered, prior to the fire. Two men were convicted of the crime: Herb Whitlock, 41, a part-time construction worker and drug dealer, and Randy Steidl, 35, also worked in construction. Prosecutors said the motive was a drug deal gone bad. Both men said they were innocent. In 1999, a journalism professor, David Protess of Northwestern University, gave his students the Rhoads murder as a class project to re-investigate.

Who did kill Wendy Sewell? The former newspaper editor who campaigned for the release of Stephen Downing after he was wrongly jailed for 27 years for the murder of Wendy Sewell, says he has "a very good idea" who the real killer was. In Denial of Murder -- Over 30 years Wendy Sewell, typist was was savagely attacked in a graveyard. She died in a hospital several days later.

Wrongfully convicted of murder they spent years on death row. DNA evidence freed Ray Krone after 10 years, four of them on Arizona's death row. Despite no physical evidence, Gary Gauger, was sentenced to death. Ronald Keine, was 10 days away from the New Mexico death chamber until another man's confession got him a new trial. Also see the Death Penalty page.

Gloria Killian was on her way to becoming a lawyer when she ended up behind bars for masterminding a robbery-homicide.

Is Clarence Elkins guilty or murder? -- In June 1998, Judith Johnson, 58, was found beaten, strangled and sexually assaulted in her home outside Akron, Ohio. Her 6-year-old granddaughter was also assaulted, and became the prosecution's star witness. She said that the man who had killed her grandmother was her uncle, Clarence Elkins. Today, he is serving a life sentence in prison.

A Parent's Nightmare, American Justice -- Traces the events that started with a phone call to the police from David and Cynthia Dowaliby on September 9, 1998. The distraught parents reported their 7-year-old daughter missing. Five days later, her body was found, and the authorities soon suspected the parents in her death. Despite a lack of direct evidence linking them to the crime, the Dowalibys stood trial, but in the middle of the proceedings the judge granted Cynthia a directed verdict of acquittal, citing the lack of evidence. David's case, however, went to the jury, which found him guilty.

"The Killer's Trail," in which a team of experts investigates the forensic evidence in the 1954 murder of Marylin Sheppard. Dr. Sam Sheppard was convicted of his wife's murder in 1954. 45 years later Sam Reese Sheppard is fighting to clear his father's name and collect a $2 million wrongful arrest award. His case was bolstered by DNA tests that reveal blood on the elder Sheppard's pants was not his own. The Sam Sheppard Case: Sam Reese Sheppard and lawyer Terry Gilbert.

Mockery of Justice: The True Story of the Sheppard Murder Case -- by Cynthia L. Cooper, Sam Reese Sheppard -- In 1996, Sam Reese Sheppard spoke on All Things Considered: "My mother and dad were very flamboyant people.... They were out of step ... in the Bible Belt of Ohio at that time, but, very quickly, and it happens today, a high-profile case spins out of control, and hatred and hysteria rise in the community. When a pregnant woman dies in an ugly way in our community, people are stricken with fear ... the blame on my dad got pinpointed by the newspapers." Dr. Sheppard was convicted of the 1954 murder of his wife. In 1966 the US Supreme Court ruled that he'd been denied a fair trial. He was retried, found innocent, then died a few years later. Mockery of Justice goes into Dr. Sheppard's own account of that night, the role of a powerful coroner, the media frenzy, the mysteries surrounding the case records, and the recent investigation of a likely suspect. The book includes map, timeline, footnotes, and index.

A case of injustice where two men with the same name are implicated in the same crime and one - Terence Garner - is sentenced to 32 - 43 years in a North Carolina prison.

The US justice system's racial bias and abuse of power behind the arrest and trial of a youth accused of murder. Courtroom footage from Brenton Butler's murder trial in 2000, with interviews of Butler's public defenders as they prepare their case of mistaken identity.

Jerry Frank Townsend walked free after 22 years in prison for murders he did not commit. Sentenced to life in Northwest Fort Lauderdale from the 1970s, Townsend won exoneration after DNA testing cleared him in 3 murders.

In December 2000, after 14 years on Florida's death row, Frank Lee Smith was cleared of the rape and murder of Shandra Whitehead, 8, as a result of DNA testing. Smith died of cancer in prison, steps away from Florida's electric chair.

William Hetherington -- A case of false accusation by a wife against her husband during a bitter custody dispute.

Kirk Bloodsworth is one of a small but disturbing number of innocent people released from death row after being wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted and wrongfully sentenced to die.

Death Penalty Controversy -- April 1993, Gary Gauger was living on his parents' farm, working in his father's motorcycle shop. He found his father in the shop, lying in a pool of blood. Gary called the paramedics, police found his mother's body in a nearby trailer. Gary became a suspect in a double homicide.

The 1992 death of Roger de la Burde at Windsor, his 220-acre horse farm on the James River outside Richmond, had all the markings of suicide. His body lay on a blood-spattered sofa in the library, a single bullet hole in his forehead. His fingers were stained with powder residue, and his .38 Special lay near his side.

Bambi Bembenek -- Entered the police academy in March, 1980, graduating 6th in her class. Stunned by the behavior at the department and not liked, she was fired from her job ... then falsely accused of murder.

"A Dingo Took My Baby!" - Lindy Chamberlain in a camping ground close to Ayers Rock, Central Australia discovered that her nearly 10-week-old baby, Azaria had been taken by a dingo.

"McMartin" was one of the first Multi-Victim Multi-Offender (MVMO) child abuse cases. At 6 years duration, it was the longest US criminal trial in history. At a cost to the state of $15 million, it was the most expensive. No convictions were obtained. It has become the most famous case of its type.

Akron, Ohio -- Paul 31, and Karen Stanley, 34 dated 12 years before marrying in October 1998. 13-month-old Bo Michael was conceived about the same time. Paul was asleep in bed and Karen was asleep on the couch when Paul was awakened by a crackling noise from the baby monitor.

Susan Nelles, RN, Toronto's Sick Children's Hospital, was accused of murdering 4 babies in 1981. The charges were dropped, but Nelles' spent 4 years seeking vindication and sued the Ontario Crown Attorney's Office for "malicious prosecution." Her father died without living to see her vindicated.

August 6, 2007
Kari & Associates
PO Box 7372
Olympia, WA 98507

Copyright Kari Sable Burns 1994-2007

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American Justice: Lying Eyes -- How a man served 11 years for a rape that he did not commit. Ronald Cotton was convicted after Jennifer Thompson, told a court Cotton was her assailant. DNA testing later proved that the rapist was another man, and Cotton and Thompson became friends and are now advocates for the rights of the wrongfully accused.

American Justice: Marijuana and Murder David Ronald Chandler, a small-town marijuana dealer was sentenced to death for ordering the murder of a man who sold marijuana for him. Before Chandler's legal journey was through, the hit man recanted his testimony and Chandler's fate ended up in the hands of President Bill Clinton.