A very important message from Bill Dobbs

The Dobbs Wire:  Time sensitive request.  Do you have a friend or loved one who is locked up in jail, prison or a sex offense civil commitment facility?  They may be eligible for a $1,200 stimulus payment and not know …

The not so bold Peabody-Essex Museum

September 28, 2020

Dave Olson, Editor
The Salem News
300 Rosewood Drive, Suite 107
Danvers, MA 01923

Dear Editor,

My name is Robert Chatelle and I live in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Since its founding in April of 2002, I have served …

Great News in the Wilcox-Aldridge Case!

“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 …

Burned by ‘bad science’

Houston Chronicle

In the Texas courthouse 100 miles east of Dallas that day in September 2012, the prosecutor turned to his expert witness and asked whether he believed the child’s injuries could have been the result of an accident.

“The …

Hundreds of police officers have been labeled liars. Some still help send people to prison.

Scott Dalton for USA TODAY

“In a case that came down to one man’s word against another’s, jurors believed the police officer. Because of his prior offenses, Vara was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

“What happened to Vara has …

Repressed Memories are Back!

“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 …

The Wrongful Conviction of Bruce Perkins

Houston Chronicle

“Swept up in a wave of extraordinary child sex abuse claims in the 1980s and early 1990s, prosecutors across the country charged dozens of parents and caregivers with appalling-sounding acts despite scant physical evidence. Suggestive, leading questioning by …

The Justice Files: Exonerated Top Stories

It all began last year when the victims, his own sons, realized what they had done. Nathan Hawkins was nine-years-old when he told police a story he made up.

“At nine-years-old, I didn’t know what I was doing to be …

How Confirmation Bias Sends Innocent People to Prison

(innocence project)

“While cases like these often feature wrongdoing by individual prosecutors and police officers, a new study suggests the problem is deeper. After analyzing 50 wrongful convictions and other investigative failures, Texas State criminologists Kim Rossmo and Joycelyn Pollock …

Digital Jail: How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt

Photograph by Zora J Murff for The New York Times

Yet like the system of wealth-based detention they are meant to help reform, ankle monitors often place poor people in special jeopardy. Across the country, defendants who have not been …