Justice Triumphs -- Finally

[George_S]

His faith sustained Tom Goldstein as he served 24 years for a murder he didn't commit. His own legal study helped free him.

Goldstein lived in an $85-a-month efficiency apartment for three years. Then, after being evicted on Nov. 1, 1979, he moved into a garage where he installed a bed and a hot plate. Along the way, he had acquired a minor criminal record — two convictions for drunkenness and one for disturbing the peace. Two nights after Goldstein moved into the garage, and just yards away, John McGinest was killed by four shotgun blasts.

"I never knew McGinest," Goldstein said. "I didn't know anything about this killing until the police came to my garage." Police searched his place and found nothing relevant.

Goldstein agreed to take a polygraph test. The results were inconclusive. He was arrested.

Police never found the shotgun. No blood, fingerprints or other physical evidence was found to link the victim to Goldstein.

What happened next stunned him. The prosecution case against Goldstein rested on two witnesses — jailhouse informant Edward F. Fink, who had a heroin habit and testified against 10 cellmates in return for deals on some of his 35 arrests — and eyewitness Loran Campbell.

Fink said Goldstein confessed to him while they briefly shared a cell. Goldstein said it was a lie. Campbell said he thought Goldstein was the man he saw running by his apartment house carrying a rifle at the time of the murder. Several other eyewitnesses said the killer was black or Mexican American and larger than Goldstein.

Goldstein was flabbergasted when a jury found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to 27 years to life.

"I was shocked…. Even when I was sentenced, I said to my attorney, 'Are they really sending me to prison?' " he recalled in a lengthy interview.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-goldstein12dec12,0,5611093,print.story?coll=la-home-local

[salin]

1. how does one reclaim 27 years

hard to fathom this man's journey.

[Calvinist Basset]

2. This is just one of the many reasons I oppose the death penalty.

What if he'd been sentenced to death and the evidence to absolve him came *after* his execution?

Damn, stories like this just aggravate me. How can anyone make up for 24 years of life spent in prison? And the only provision for recompense is the possibility of suing the wrongdoers--there really needs to be a federal measure that gives major reparations for the trauma and hardship caused by the "justice" system.

I am just happy that Goldstein was able to keep his faith, that his faith carried him through, and that he's looking toward the future. He'll be in my prayers . . .

[bemildred]

3. This isn't a triumph, it's a travesty.

This is why I oppose our criminal "justice" system.
It doesn't care a fig about justice.

[Evening Star]

4. INNOCENCE PROJECT

Barry Scheck and his group have been hard at work for a few years in this type of issue:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/about/index.php

Amazing that Goldstein was able to push it forward on his own ,a very difficult thing indeed

I personally knew this fellow, his wife and two boys:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/case/display_profile.php?id=87

In May 2001, Jeffrey Pierce walked out of an Oklahoma prison after being exonerated by DNA testing. His innocence was proven during the investigation of Joyce Gilchrist, formerly a scientist at the Oklahoma City Police Laboratory, for falsifying testimony and shoddy forensic analysis. Pierce's case was one of more than one thousand involving Gilchrist's testimony.

Pierce was convicted in 1986 of raping and robbing an Oklahoma City woman. The prosecution relied on the testimony of their forensic expert, Joyce Gilchrist. In 1985, the victim was returning to her apartment complex when she was confronted, raped, and sodomized. Pierce was part of a landscaping crew that had been working around the apartment complex. The initial description of the perpetrator did not match Pierce and, when he was pointed out to her, the victim could not identify him. Months later, police arrested Pierce and placed his picture in a photo lineup wearing a tan shirt, which was an element of the victim's initial description of her attacker. The victim identified him from this array.

At trial, Gilchrist claimed that hairs collected from the victim's apartment, where the rape took place, matched Pierce's hair. These findings would be disputed in 2001 by the FBI's laboratory's analysis of the hairs. DNA testing would not only confirm that Gilchrist's findings were wrong but also preliminarily matched a felon in Oklahoma.

Pierce now lives in Michigan with his family, including twin sons who were infants at the time of his conviction. He had spent fifteen years in prison."

Oklahoma DA Bob Macy and Gilchrist are a disgrace

The case is still being investigated and indications are, they not only were incompetent, they needed a conviction and were willing to destroy lives to get what they wanted

[George_S]

5. CASE PROFILES

This section provides a brief summary and additional resources for each of the postconviction DNA exonerations that occur in the United States. In little over a decade, as more innocent people have been freed, these stories have become familiar. The themes that occur over and over -- misidentification, corrupt scientists and police, overzealous prosecutors, inept defense attorneys, poverty, race -- must not be ignored. The stories that accompany these exonerations also underline a point that often gets forgotten when the criminal justice system is discussed: wrongful convictions are paid for with lives.


FEATURED CASES

The problem of false confessions has been further illuminated by the exoneration of five men - Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise - who were wrongfully convicted of a brutal attack in New York's Central Park. DNA testing corroborated the confession of Matias Reyes. Reyes stated that he acted alone and that he did not know the five men that were convicted in what is now known as the Central Park Jogger Case. The five men, teenagers at the time, were convicted were picked up by police following a chaotic night in Central Park, marked by violence and what was termed "wilding". Their statements to authorities was quite damning. Each gave a detailed videotaped statement minimizing his own involvement in the crime but implicating the rest. What the jury did not see were the tactics used to elicit these statements, one of which came after over twenty four hours of interrogation. Despite the fact that their accounts varied greatly, these confessions were used to convict all five men, all of whom served out their sentences.

To read more about the problem of false confessions and potential remedies, please visit our False Confessions section. To read more about the case, click on the name of any of the defendants above.

33 of the first 123 postconviction DNA exonerations involve false confessions or admissions. These cases expose the need for reform, as suggested by Governor Ryan's Commission on Capital Punishment.

37 of the first 123 DNA exonerations in the United States involved homicides. In two thirds of those cases, false confessions or incriminating statements were used to obtain the conviction. Eddie Joe Lloyd confessed to a rape and murder he did not commit. Police obtained his confession while he was on heavy medication in an institution. To read more about the Lloyd case, please see Eddie Joe Lloyd's case profile.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/case/index.php

Wow, I didn't know that. The wilding case was when the crackdown on crime started back in the 80s when all the Satanic cult false arrests happened. It's all politics.

There was a Salon article on Bush before the 2000 election. It was about how Bush felt absolutely nothing over all the people he put to death. I knew then we were in trouble.

[struggle4progress]

6. kick

:kick:

[customerserviceguy]

7. This looks suspicious

...jailhouse informant Edward F. Fink...

If I were writing a novel that included an incarcerated stool pigeon, my editor would laugh me out of the building for calling him "Fink"! Perhaps we need to stop using jailhouse snitches, but I'm still satisfied with Scott Peterson getting the death penalty. Even though I don't believe that he'll ever have it exacted on him.

[Dancing_Dave]

8. Thank you!

This is one of them most inspiring stories I ever heard...and it all rings so true to me, I think this unusually fair and thoughtful journalist got it right on!:)