Boston attorney John Swomley, the lead attorney of the team that freed Bernard Baran, is now working to free another innocent Berkshire county prisoner, Paul Litchfield. Please visit Paul’s website:
https://paullitchfield.webs.com/
And consider making a donation.
-Bob Chatelle
For several months, I have been corresponding with an Ohio prisoner named Shane Crum.
I have come to believe in his innocence. If you’d like to learn more, here is his web site:
It is a most difficult case, and his family’s resources are exhausted. To proceed, they are trying to raise some money.
You can donate to his defense fund at his web site.
-Bob
“COLUMBUS —
The state of Ohio will pay $1.2 million to M. Jenny Wilcox and Robert Aldridge, former Huber Heights residents who were wrongfully convicted in 1985 of 23 child molestation charges and told it’d be 60 years before they’d be eligible for parole.
“Wilcox, whose last name is now Reach, will receive $726,315, while Aldridge will be paid $527,255, according to a settlement approved Monday by the Ohio Court of Claims. The state will pay another $646,430 to Cooper & Elliott, the law firm that represented the two.
“Wilcox and Aldridge appealed their convictions and had them overturned in March 1996 — after spending 11 years in prison. The highly sensational case fell apart after it was determined that key information was withheld at trial, testimony was coerced and the state was aware of the possibility that its child witnesses were committing perjury. Three witnesses later recanted as adults.”
Read the article in the Dayton Daily News.
Gross police and prosecutorial misconduct contributed to their wrongful conviction.
Here is a summary of the case from the Dayton Daily News and the entry in The National Registry of Exonerations.
Many allies of the National Center for Reason and Justice made significant contributions to fighting this injustice, including Private Investigator Martin Yant, Dr, Richard Ofsche, Dr. Melvin Guyer, and NCRJ Advisor, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus.
Congratulations to them all, but especially to Jenny Reach and Richard Aldridge!
Yesterday I watched an excellent panel discussing the evidence for ending the sex-offender registries.
If you were unable to tune in, you can now watch it on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQUJR9X-kvM&t=621shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQUJR9X-kvM&t=621s
From Bill Dobbs of the Dobbs Wire
The Dobbs Wire: A rare event about the sex offense registry – it’s purpose and effectiveness, whether there’s a need, and if it should it dismantled! Presenters: Miriam Aukerman is one of the country’s most talented litigators against sex offense registration laws, co-counsel on a landmark 6th Circuit case (Does v. Snyder) and now fighting tenaciously to get that decision implemented. Judith Levine is co-author of the newly published, The Feminist and The Sex Offender, and an elegant, clarion voice on matters of sexual civil liberties and justice; her 2002 book, Harmful to Minors, stands as a classic in the field. Vincent Schiraldi is a leading national advocate for cutting back probation and parole, a former NYC probation commissioner, and currently co-anchoring EXiT (Executives Transforming Parole and Probation), a bold new campaign to overhaul community supervision. Josh Hoe, a prominent criminal justice advocate, podcast host, and policy analyst for Safe & Just Michigan will moderate the discussion. Kudos to Safe & Just Michigan and Josh for presenting this great conversation! Free enlightenment – the details and registration link are below. –Bill Dobbs, The Dobbs Wire If you or a friend would like to be added to The Dobbs Wire mailing list, drop us a line at: info@thedobbswire.com Twitter: @thedobbswire
Thursday, May 28 • 12:00 Noon • via Zoom • Free
Join Safe & Just Michigan to learn the evidence-based case for ending sex offender registries
The Evidence-Based Case for Ending Sex Offense Registries
Thursday, May 28 • 12:00 Noon • via Zoom • Free • Sign up: www.bit.ly/EndTheRegistry
Sex offense registries were supposed to keep communities safer. Under them, people convicted of sex offenses are required to register where they work, live, volunteer and go to school. Certain restrictions are placed on where they can live and earn a living. These laws have created an underclass of people who struggle not only to find a good job, but to even find an available place to live. Meanwhile, studies show the promised safety benefits of these laws have failed to materialize.
Join Safe & Just Michigan Policy Analyst Josh Hoe and special guests — ACLU of Michigan Senior Staff Attorney Miriam Aukerman; Columbia University School of Social Work Senior Research Scientist Vincent Schiraldi; and Judith Levine, feminist author, journalist, co-founder of the National Writers Union and author of “The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence” — at noon on Thursday, May 28. We’ll talk about recent court rulings regarding the unconstitutionality of Michigan’s sex offender registration act, the evidence showing registries fail to protect communities, and the movement to end the registries.
Joining the discussion is free. All you need to do to take part is sign up>>>> www.bit.ly/EndTheRegistry
Safe & Just Michigan event page: https://www.safeandjustmi.org/take-action/events/
Safe & Just Michigan works to advance policies that end Michigan’s over-use of incarceration and promote community safety and healing. We envision a Michigan in which all are safe in their communities and everyone is responsible for creating accountability, safety and justice.
# # #
“I sat in the prison medical unit across from Richard,* bound to his wheelchair, supplemental oxygen supply at the ready, almost three years to the day after he was granted compassionate release. We went over the list again. Relatives: public housing. Nursing home: too close to a school. Apartment: too much money; not wheelchair accessible. We would continue to do this for years.”
Read the article by Allison Frankel in The Yale Law Journal.
H/T Dr. Leonore Tiefer.
“What do you do when you are 25 years old and a county like Williamson County comes after you and you don’t have any money?”
–Troy Mansfield
A chilling case of cruel and unusual prosecutorial misconduct. Read the article by Tony Piohetski in the Austin American-Statesman.
h/t Bill Dobbs of the Dobbs Wire.
On August 24, we posted the following article from the Washington Post. The authors have requested that we repost the article with the following preface:
On October 17, 2019, after a two-week civil trial in Arlington County, Virginia, a seven-member jury found Galen Baughman to be a so-called “sexually violent predator” (SVP). Galen was slapped with the SVP label despite having never even been accused of any violent act, nor engaging in predatory behavior—nor even committing any crimes since his teens. If his appeals are unsuccessful, Galen now at age 36, faces the prospect of lifetime civil commitment at the Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation, a high security prison with a different name.
Galen’s trial provides a window into the Kafkaesque legal process for civil commitment, in which the state can violate basic legal rights, including due process; can engage in expert shopping; and routinely draws on what can only be characterized as “junk science” to inflict grossly excessive punishment. Galen was convicted not for anything he has done, but for what the state’s hand-picked experts claimed he might someday do.
The following article was written just prior to Galen’s trial. Our worst fears about the conduct of the trial, and its outcome, were borne out. Only the prosecution’s “experts” were permitted to testify. No exculpatory evidence was admitted. After a one-sided trial, an effective advocate for the rights of people accused of sex offenses was convicted.
—Philip Fornaci and Roger Lancaster.
Here is the article.
[Great news from Mark Pendergrast]
Elsie Oscarson is free!
After 21 years in prison, Elsie Oscarson was finally released on September 2, 2019. She was granted a new trial, but because it would be rolling the dice one more time, she took an Alford plea, which allows her to maintain her innocence, but she must still remain on a sex offender registry, cannot be in the same room or in a park or school with anyone under seventeen years of age without another adult present, and has to abide by other restrictions. She also cannot initiate contact with her children, though they may contact her through the courts.
Despite these restrictions. Elsie is ecstatic to be free, determined to abide by all regulations, and is living with her sister in a home in northern Vermont. She looks forward to gardening, cooking, taking walks, and drinking eggnog, and eating whatever she wants. (She has already had a big steak.)
As a volunteer and former board member with the National Center for Reason and Justice, I was instrumental in investigating her case, determining her likely innocence, and helping to get her case taken on by Seth Lipschutz, her lawyer (who retired just as she was freed) for the Vermont Prisoner’s Rights division of the Defender General’s office. The NCRJ has sponsored her case for many years and is delighted that she is finally free after being imprisoned for over two decades for offenses she almost certainly did not commit. –Mark Pendergrast
“In 1973, the idea of repressed memories became popularized with the publication of Sybil, a “nonfiction” book by journalist Flora Rheta Schreiber. Schreiber claimed that under psychiatric treatment, a patient whom she called Sybil recalled severe abuse by her mother, abuse that later manifested as 16 different personalities that all lived within her. The book sold over 400,000 copies and was later made into a movie, bringing the idea of both multiple personality disorder, and repressed memories, into pop culture.
“Sybil was later reinvestigated by journalist Debbie Nathan, who concluded that most of the story was based on lies. But the book sparked an industry. Therapists all over the country began to specialize in this treatment, and more and more books and articles were published legitimizing wild, outlandish stories of abuse.”
Read the article at The Stranger by Katie Herzog.
H/T Bill Dobbs of The Dobbs Wire
Copyright 2008-2024 Bob Chatelle. Design by Fort Hill Design.
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