The maddening irrelevance of Charlie Vaughn's innocence

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Radley Balko
@radleybalko
·
Follow
My first big report for the new Substack is now live. It's a two-year investigation into the horrific wrongful conviction of an intellectually disabled man in Arkansas.

No paywall, so I hope you'll check it out.

radleybalko.substack.com
The maddening irrelevance of Charlie Vaughn's innocence
A severely intellectually disabled man has spent more than 30 years in an Arkansas prison. The system doesn't seem to care if he's actually guilty.
8:47 AM · Oct 5, 2022

https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-maddening-irrelevance-of-charlie


In the summer of 1995, an envelope arrived at the federal courthouse in Little Rock, Arkansas. Inside was a handwritten, barely coherent plea from Charlie Vaughn, a man serving a life sentence for murder in the Tucker maximum security prison in the south central part of the state.

Vaughn can’t read or write, so he presumably asked another prisoner to draw up the document for him. It was a one-page bid for his freedom. “Amendment five is a constitutional right which was violated kidnap railroaded false imprisonment, [sic],” it read. “I would like to be released from custody.”

In 1991, Vaughn had confessed and pleaded guilty to the murder of 81-year-old Myrtle Holmes. In doing so, he implicated three other people. They were convicted after two trials and, like Vaughn, sentenced to life in prison.

In a form for indigent prisoners attached to his letter, Vaughn checked off that he had been falsely arrested, had received inadequate legal representation, and was wrongly convicted. He was right about all three. But without a lawyer, Vaughn provided no documentation for his claims. He couldn't cite a trial transcript, evidentiary record, or case law. He made no legal arguments.

*snip*

[drmeow]

1. OMG I so hate, hate, hate, hate, hate

the legal and criminal justice system in the country. It is a f**king joke and travesty.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R