On February 20, 2008, the First Circuit Louisiana Court of Appeals vacated and remanded for further proceedings a trial court’s judgment awarding a former prisoner compensation for a wrongful conviction and imprisonment.

Calvin Williams was convicted in 1977 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1991, Williams’ application for post-conviction relief was granted because the state failed to disclose exculpatory evidence. He was granted a new trial but the state chose not to re-try him. Williams was discharged from prison in 1992, and on August 19, 1996 the first-degree murder charge was dismissed as moot.

During a March 2007 trial on the merits of Williams’ application for compensation pursuant to Louisiana Revised Statute (La.RS) 15:572.8, the trial court prohibited the state from questioning Williams about his criminal history related to the murder charge. The state presented no witnesses and instead proffered the entire criminal record of the underlying case into evidence. The court concluded that Williams had “proven his case to the satisfaction of this court,” and awarded him $150,000 (the maximum amount allowed under La.R.S.15:572.8), along with various sums for job skills training and necessary medical and counseling services. Those payments were to be paid from the ...

California’s County of Sacramento paid $5,000 to settle the wrongful imprisonment claim of Robert B. Weber, who was arrested on February 1, 2004 on suspicion of driving under the influence. At the jail, a computer error indicated “no bond, 30 day immediate confinement.”
Weber was taken to court eleven days ...

An $8,000 settlement was reached in a false imprisonment claim against the State of Washington.

Duane A. Cooper had been sentenced to a 60 month sentence for a class C felony on April 4, 1996. On May 14, 2002, Cooper was arrested and placed into custody for violation of his ...

Recent revelations of shoddy blood analysis at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) crime lab led to an investigation that uncovered at least 190 cases of serious blood work errors in criminal cases. Those cases included three death penalty convictions that resulted in executions, four other capital punishment cases where the prisoners remain on death row, and 40 cases that never went to trial.

The most common error was a failure of lab personnel to note in their reports the fact that a subsequent, more accurate test had shown that blood was not found after a less-accurate preliminary test indicated the presence of blood. Other errors included failing to mention inconclusive or negative results in repeated tests, making entries that contradicted the actual test findings, and claiming that no follow-up testing was done when it had been. The fact that such errors always favored the prosecution indicates they were intentional, not random mistakes or oversights.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper commissioned former FBI special agents Chris Swecker and Michael Wolf to conduct a comprehensive audit of SBI blood analysis cases between 1987 and 2003. Their investigation of 15,000 crime lab files, released in August 2010, revealed the ...

Earlier this year PLN reported on the phenomenon of suspects who falsely confess to crimes they did not commit. [See: PLN, April 2011, p.18]. As false confessions occur in wrongful conviction cases with disturbing regularity, this article revisits and expounds on this important topic and the tragic consequences that can ...

The State Bar of Texas has filed a lawsuit against Lubbock attorney Kevin Glasheen, alleging that he grossly overcharged clients in violation of the Bar’s Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct.

Glasheen, who represents over a dozen exonerated former prisoners, charged them about $5 million in combined attorney fees. He gave around $1.5 million to Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel of the Innocence Project of Texas, and kept $3.5 million for his law firm.
Glasheen is accused of having told his clients to forgo pursuing lawsuits and instead use the state’s compensation system. He then charged them 25% of the compensation money, which they could have obtained without legal representation.

In fact, an exoneree need only fill out a simple one-page form to request compensation, which doesn’t require an attorney. Some exonerated former prisoners, frustrated with waiting, filled out their own compensation forms and then were billed by Glasheen for 25% of the compensation they received nonetheless.

Glasheen sent Steven C. Phillips, an exoneree who spent 25 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted, a bill for $1 million. Yet according to Phillips, Glasheen never filed a single motion in court on his behalf. Phillips and another of Glasheen’s former clients, exoneree ...

On March 31, 2011, a man who had been falsely convicted of burglary, rape and sexual abuse accepted a $1 million settlement after being exonerated by DNA evidence.
Donald Wayne Good filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil rights suit in federal court against the City of Irving, Texas and ...

A Michigan federal jury awarded a former prisoner $1.27 million in a malicious prosecution lawsuit. After she was robbed at gunpoint, Tevya Urquhart was arrested, found guilty and sentenced to prison. After her successful appeal, Urquhart filed suit against the city of Detroit, as well as the officers involved in ...

By Matt Clarke

On April 12,2011, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion upholding the $2.5 million jury award and $250-per-hour attorney-fees award to two women who were wrongly convicted of felonies.

Kimberly Sykes and Tevya Grace Urquhart were wrongly convicted of larceny by conversion and false report ...

The Superior Court of California, Alameda County, entered a $26,203.80 judgment in a false imprisonment claim. Jorge Gallegos was a prisoner in the California Department of Corrections (CDOC) serving a 12 year sentence that began on September 14, 1995. In August of 2002, an agent of the CDOC informed his ...