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Burton was convicted of murdering 13-year-old Alexius McNeal, the daughter of his second cousin.  Burton had discovered her dead body, and because of his criminal history, he was a suspect from the start.  However, fingerprints lifted from the scene did not link him to the murder.  Burton had a liver ailment, weighed 120 lbs., and had difficulty getting up a flight of stairs.  The prosecution theorized that he struggled with the 5’9”, 186 lbs. Alexius before murdering her.

While in prison, Burton had a known prison snitch, Obie Jacobs, assigned as his cellmate.  Jacobs had testified at other murder trials.  Burton complained to his lawyer, but his request for a different cellmate was denied.  Two months later, the cellmate was meeting with the police and telling them that Burton confessed to him using police supplied information.  Jacobs told them that Burton confessed that he killed McNeal between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m., but the coroner had placed her time of her death between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.  (InjusticeBusters)  [10/05]

Samuel Jason Derrick was sentenced to death for the murder of Rama Sharma.  Sharma, 55, owned the Moon Lake General Store and was found dead behind the store.  Following the murder, police received a tip that a car was seen driving suspiciously around the crime scene vicinity in the early morning hours of June 25, 1987, prior to the finding of the victim's body.  The description of the car, including a partial license plate number, seemed to match that of a car driven by David Lowry.  Lowry deflected the investigation away from himself by implicating Derrick, who was then his friend.  At trial, five Pasco County detectives swore under oath that Derrick confessed to the crime.  There was no written, audio, or video record of this "confession" or any interrogation notes written by any of the five detectives.  The Pasco County Sheriff's Office had a reputation for corruption.  Just two years earlier, St. Petersburg Times reporter Lucy Morgan won a Pulitzer Prize for her series of articles documenting this corruption.

The prosecution case contained numerous inconsistencies:  (1) Lowry testified that he saw Derrick with a double-edged knife on the evening of June 24.  This was shortly before the murder according to the prosecution theory.  However, the medical examiner determined that the victim's stab wounds were made with a single-edged knife.  (2) Detectives testified that Derrick confessed to stabbing the victim 13 times.  However, the medical examiner determined that the victim was stabbed 33 times.  (3) Detectives testified that Derrick admitted committing the crime at 10:30 p.m. on June 24, 1987.  However, the medical examiner testified that the time of death was 6:00 a.m. the following morning.  (4) Detectives testified that Derrick said he threw the murder knife in the woods, and his bloody shirt and shoes in a pond.  However, they never located this evidence or any other physical evidence linking Derrick to the crime.

Prosecutor Michael Halkitis repeatedly discredited the testimony of his own witness, that of Medical Examiner Edward Corcoran. In his closing arguments, he informed the jury that Mr. Corcoran was mistaken about the time of death.  Other evidence supports Derrick's claim of innocence.  A witness, Shannon Loyce, testified that she saw Sharma alive between 2:15 and 2:30 a.m. on June 25, 1987.  A trial juror, Nancy Rocco, sent a letter to the St. Petersburg Press, and subsequently signed an affidavit stating that she "now knows the state did not prove its case."  In 2002, another man had made statements implicating himself in Sharma's murder.  (www.savejasonderrick.org) (SP Times)  [4/08]

While riding her bicycle, 23-year-old Dana Ireland was hit by a car.  Then she was taken to a remote area 5 miles north of the collision site where she was raped and murdered.  Two-and-a half years later an Oahu inmate, Frank Pauline, Jr., came forward with information.  He said that in exchange for the information he wanted the authorities to look kindly on his half-brother who was facing drug charges.

Pauline confessed to committing the crime with Ian and Shawn Schweitzer, two brothers.  However, he was unable to lead police to either of the crime scenes.  The brothers owned a 1957 Volkswagen Beetle that had scratches on the front bumper that Pauline said they hit Ireland with while she was riding her bicycle.  Ian Schweitzer admitted repainting the car since the time of the murder.  Witnesses placed Pauline with the Schweitzers around the time of the crime, although they did not place any fourth person with them.

Bite marks found on the victim did not match the dental impressions of Pauline or either of the Schweitzers.  DNA tests of semen recovered from the victim, did not match any of them either.  Pauline eventually recanted his confession and denied involvement.  Prosecutors had to drop charges against the Schweitzers, but they tried Pauline for murder in 1999, based on his confession.  Despite the forensic evidence showing Pauline’s confession to be false, he was convicted and sentenced to 180 years of imprisonment.

Several months before Pauline’s conviction, a prison informant came forward and said Ian Schweitzer confessed to the crime.  Based on the informant’s testimony and the allegedly unusual circumstance of having scratches on his car bumper, Ian Schweitzer was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to 130 years of imprisonment.  After seeing his older brother get convicted, Shawn Schweitzer plea-bargained for 5 years probation.  As his part of the bargain, Shawn had to give a true confession to the crime.  Shawn confessed to being at the crime scene and implicated Pauline as the person who raped and bit the victim.  The DA accepted this confession.

Edward Blake, the DNA expert who testified for Pauline’s defense, does not believe any of the defendants participated in the crime.  He noted that Pauline fingered the Schweitzers and the Schweitzers fingered Pauline, but they all just “happened to forget” the alleged fourth participant who raped the victim.  (AJ)  [8/07]

Lloyd Lindsey was convicted of murdering three little girls and their brother.  He was also convicted of raping one of the girls.  A man who boarded with the children's family and a surviving brother told police when interviewed together that Lindsey along with Eugene Ford and Willie Robinson had strangled the children after raping the girls.  The three men then set fire to the home.  Lindsey confessed to this crime, parroting the details of the boarder and surviving brother.  The home, at 1408 W. 61st Street in Chicago, was occupied by Mrs. Catherine Horace, her six children, and Lavelle Watkins, the boarder.

Medical evidence indicated that the children had not been strangled, but had died of smoke inhalation.  Two of the girls, moreover, were virgins and showed no signs of sexual abuse.  Lindsey and his compatriots, who had not confessed, were tried together, but with separate juries.  Lindsey was convicted, but his compatriots were acquitted.  In 1979, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed Lindsey's conviction, and barred a retrial.  It ruled “the inconsistencies in the testimony of [the principal prosecution witnesses] were not only contradictory but diluted [their testimony] to the level of palpable improbability and incredulity.”  (NL)  [1/06]

Wilson was convicted of the attempted murder of June Siler.  While waiting at a bus station, a man, for no apparent reason, slashed Siler’s throat and face with a box cutter.  Siler identified Wilson as her attacker from suggestive police photo lineups, although, at one point, she complained that Wilson was too old to be her attacker.  After 30 hours in custody, Wilson signed a confession.  He soon recanted the confession and said he signed it because he was sick, police had refused his requests for his heart medicine, and he was scared police would beat him.  He said a detective had slapped him.

Wilson’s confession did not match the facts of the crime.  The confession stated Wilson attacked Siler because he was smoking a cigar and he became angry when she had complained of the smoke and said he would get cancer.  Siler said later her assailant was not smoking a cigar, and there was no discussion about smoking or cancer. "I smoke," she said. "I wouldn't have said anything like that."

Siler always had anxiety about whether she helped to convict the right person.  Later after Wilson got a new trial, she learned another suspect had been wearing black Velcro shoes that her attacker had been wearing.  Siler is now convinced that Wilson was not her attacker and blames police for the mix-up.  (Chicago Tribune) (NL)  [3/07]

After a storm at sea, a shrimp boat named “The Bandit,” containing Alvin Latham and the ship’s captain, Raymond Leiker, failed to return to its home port of Venice, LA.  Latham was picked up at sea 14 hours later holding onto a piece of wood.  He said the storm came up suddenly and that while trying to pull fish into the boat, Leiker’s foot got caught in a fishing net. Latham tried to help Leiker free his foot, but eventually Leiker told him to save himself.  Moments after Latham swam away from the boat, the boat submerged into the sea.

Leiker’s body was found five days after the storm.  The coroner ruled his death a homicide, because an autopsy of the body indicated several defensive stab wounds and a blow to the head.  In addition, Leiker was allegedly attached to the boat and should have sank with it, but was found floating on the surface.

After a grueling eight-hour videotaped interrogation, police got Latham to confess that he clubbed Leiker with a pipe on the back of his head in order to obtain the only life jacket on the boat.  Then after Latham put on the life jacket, Leiker came back at him and Latham used a knife to defend himself.  The case prompted a discussion of "lifeboat ethics" in the press involving the morality of having to kill others in order to survive.

A review of the taped interrogation shows that the confession was involuntary.  Latham repeatedly guessed at details until police accepted his answers.  Secondly, the owner of the boat, who leased it to Leiker, said there were three life jackets on board.  Thirdly, Latham was not wearing a life jacket when he was picked up.

A defense review of the autopsy findings showed that the alleged stab wounds were not very deep.  The defense felt that Leiker’s floating body had been run over by a boat several days after the storm, and that the boat’s propeller had caused the shallow stab wounds and the blow to the head.  The boat owner who found Leiker readily agreed that his body had been run over.  In addition, the owner noted that Leiker was found wearing only one boot, corroborating Latham’s original story.

At Latham’s trial for third degree murder, the prosecution presented Latham’s confession.  However, after the jury watched the entire eight-hour tape of Latham’s interrogation, they acquitted him.  (Forensic Files)

Ryan Ferguson and Chuck Erickson were convicted of the brutal murder of Columbia Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt.  A janitor, Jerry Trump, caught a glimpse of two young white men running away from Heitholt’s car around the time of the murder.  The janitor said he could not provide a detailed description of them.  Two years after the crime, after reading anniversary newspaper coverage, Erickson began telling friends he dreamed he had killed Heitholt.

When police questioned him, Erickson confessed but gave videotaped details inconsistent with the crime.  He also named his friend Ryan Ferguson as his accomplice.  Erickson said that following the murder, he and Ferguson went back to the bar they had been at earlier.  However, the bar had closed more than a half-hour before the murder.  Erickson confessed, that he, then 17, beat the 6'3", 315 lb. Heitholt with a tire iron just once.  An autopsy showed Heitholt was beaten multiple times.  Erickson said that afterwards, Ferguson, also 17, strangled the victim.  He did not know how, and seemed surprised when told that Heitholt had been strangled with his own belt.

There was no physical evidence linking either defendant to the crime.  Nevertheless, Erickson pleaded to the crime, and was the state's star witness at trial against Ferguson.  The janitor, who had little memory at the time of the crime, identified Ferguson at trial.  Ferguson is not absolutely sure that Erickson was not at the crime, but is adamant about his innocence.  The jury could not get over the fact that Erickson was willing to implicate himself in the crime, if he did not do it.  Ferguson will be eligible for parole in September 2042.  (48 Hours) (CrimeMagazine) (www.freeryanferguson.com) [9/06]

Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot were convicted of murdering Denice Haraway.  Haraway, 24, worked part-time at McAnally’s convenience store.  She was last seen leaving the store with a man who had his arm around her waist.  The two appeared to be a pair of lovers.  The store was found deserted with the cash register drawer opened and emptied.  Haraway’s purse and driver’s license were found inside, and her car nearby.

Months later, after Haraway still remained missing, police questioned Tommy Ward, who resembled the man accompanying Haraway from the store.  After days of interrogation, Ward confessed to the crime.  He also implicated his friend, Karl Fontenot, and Odell Titsworth, a man he never met.  During the videotaped confession, Ward frequently forgot Titsworth’s name and called him “Titsdale.”  Ward said the three gang-raped Haraway, murdered her with Titsworth’s knife, and dumped her body near Sandy Creek.  Fontenot was soon arrested and confessed after only two hours of interrogation.  His confession was similar to Ward’s but contradicted it many details, like the order in which the three raped Haraway, or the location and number of stab wounds on her.  Fontenot said the three brought Haraway into an abandoned house where Titsworth poured gasoline over her body and burned down the house.  Ward had mentioned a burned down house in an earlier unrecorded confession, and police knew it existed.

Titsworth was arrested, but he had broken his arm two days before the murder in a fight with police.  Medical and police records made him an unlikely suspect, and he was never charged with murder.  While police were sifting through the remains of the burned down house, the owner appeared.  After police told him of Fontenot’s confession, the owner said Fontenot’s story was impossible, as he himself had burned down the house 10 months before the murder.

At trial, the prosecutor presented the confessions and was forced into the position of telling the jury the defendants were lying about details while asking the jury to believe them anyway.  Two jailhouse informants supplemented the confessions.  One said Ward confessed, while the other said he overheard Fontenot talking to himself, saying, “I knew we’d get caught.  I knew we’d get caught.”  The jurors returned with guilty verdicts and death penalties.

Haraway’s body was found four months later in Hughes County, far from anyplace that was searched.  She had not been stabbed or burned, but died from a single gunshot to the head.  The case attracted the attention of a New York journalist, Robert Mayer, who published a book about the case entitled The Dreams of Ada.  (Source:  The Innocent Man by John Grisham)  (www.wardandfontenot.com)  [1/07]

Eklof was convicted of the murder of James Salmu.  After eight to ten hours of daily interrogation for nine days, Eklof recited on videotape a police invented scenario in which she stabbed Salmu with a plastic knife.  Eklof was prosecuted for Salmu’s murder based on this “confession.”  Following Eklof’s indictment, Salmu’s body was found.  At trial, testimony was presented indicating that Salmu had been stabbed.  The prosecution then presented Eklof’s confession, which appeared to agree with the cause of death as she confessed to stabbing Salmu.  The prosecution also presented the testimony of two witnesses who made incriminatory statements against Eklof.

On appeal it was discovered that DA Fred Hugi had engaged in multiple Brady violations involving the withholding of exculpatory evidence.  Salmu’s cause of death was bullet wounds and there was no evidence that he had been stabbed.  It was also not revealed that the two witnesses who testified did so in order to avoid prosecution themselves.  One of these witnesses was under indictment for molesting his daughter, and the DA went to extraordinary efforts to conceal this fact.  As of 2007, Eklof is using the Brady violations to appeal her conviction.  Eklof’s complete story is written in Improper Submission: Records of a Wrongful Conviction by Erma Armstrong.  (JD35 p3)  [7/07]

Cox was convicted of murdering Brian Roberts.  Ten days before his murder, Roberts pointed an automatic weapon at a police officer and was arrested.  He was carrying 34 rocks of crack cocaine.  He walked free after telling police the gun and drugs belonged to Roland Cephas.  Cephas was busted and vowed retaliation.

Police arrested Cox after an imprisoned informant implicated him in exchange for money and freedom.  Police also claimed Cox confessed during interrogation.  Cox admitted confessing, but said police told him he would get the death penalty if he did not confess and would only prosecute him on a self-defense charge if he did confess.  The informant said he saw Cox shoot Roberts at close range in the chest.  Cox confessed to shooting Roberts from a distance in the chest.  However, Roberts was actually shot in the back.

After the conviction, numerous witnesses have come forward indicating that neither Cox nor the informant were at the murder scene and that Cephas had killed Roberts in retaliation.  Cephas and the informant were murdered in 1997 and 1999 during a wave of street gang killings.  Cox is still imprisoned in 2006.  (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)  [12/06]

Max Soffar was convicted of murdering Arden Alane Felsher, 17, Tommy Lee Temple, 17, and Stephen Allen Sims, 25, during a robbery of the Fair Lanes Windfern Bowling Center.  He was sentenced to death.  Soffar, 24, a mentally impaired individual, confessed to the murders after hours of police interrogation.  No physical evidence connected him to the crime.  A fourth victim, Gregory Garner, survived a gunshot wound to the head but failed to identify Soffar as a participant in the robbery.

Soffar had been caught in neighboring Galveston County with a stolen motorcycle and was looking for a plea deal by claiming to know something about the famous murders that occurred three weeks before.  He also wanted to get revenge against his friend, Latt Bloomfield, who resembled a police sketch of the murderer.  Both Soffar and Bloomfield had agreed to rob their parents’ houses, but Bloomfield reneged after they burglarized the home of Soffar’s parents.

Soffar first spoke only with Bruce Clawson, a local detective that he knew.  Clawson got Soffar to talk to Houston detectives.  Soffar made three statements to detectives that grew in detail during the three days he was interviewed.  Neither Clawson, nor his brother Mike, who was a policeman in the area, believed the statements.  Clawson said, "I specifically recall believing that Max's responses to these questions (posed by Houston detectives) were vague and unconvincing."  "Max certainly said nothing during the interrogations I witnessed which indicated to me that Max knew things about the bowling-alley murders that only a person involved in the offense would know."  Soffar soon disavowed his statements and later wrote that they were the result of relentless and pushy Houston detectives.

The federal Fifth Circuit Court overturned Soffar’s conviction in 2004.  It cited ineffective representation by Soffar’s trial attorney, Joe Cannon, the famous “sleeping lawyer.”  Cannon did not even call surviving victim Garner as a witness.  The court also cited at least 10 major discrepancies between Soffar’s confession and Garner’s recollection of events.  Garner, for instance, said there was only one robber, but Soffar said Bloomfield accompanied him.  Garner said the robber wore nothing to hide his face, while Soffar said he and Bloomfield covered their heads.

Garner said the robber gained entrance to the bowling alley, which had just closed, by feigning car trouble and asking the manager if he could come in to fill a plastic jug with water.  Soffar said he and Bloomfield simply walked through an unlocked front door.  Crime-scene photos showed a plain jug on the counter, but a cleaning crew washed it before police realized its possible significance.  Soffar said he and Bloomfield had burglarized the bowling alley the night before to gain more knowledge of the place.  The burglary had been reported in television accounts of the crime.  However, police had already arrested some area youths in connection with the burglary before Soffar was arrested.

Prosecutors contend Soffar made an admission that corroborates his presence in the bowling alley.  Soffar said that Bloomfield fired a warning shot into the floor.  That shot, they said, accounted for a bullet hole in the carpet that did not match up with an exit wound from one of the bodies.  However, detailed ballistics indicates the carpet hole came from a fragment of an exit wound bullet that shattered after it hit the cement floor under the carpet.  In addition, for there to have been a warning shot, five shots would had to have been fired.  Garner recalled only four.  Soffar was retried in 2006, reconvicted, and sentenced to death.  (DP News) (Info)  [2/07]

Washington, who has an IQ of 69, was arrested in 1983 on minor charges in Fauquier County, VA.  After 2 days of questioning, police announced that he had confessed to 5 different crimes including the murder of Rebecca Lynn Williams.  Of the five confessions, four were dismissed because of inconsistencies in the confessions and the inability of the victims to identify Washington.  In the remaining confession, Washington said that he raped and killed Rebecca Lynn Williams.

Questioning revealed that Washington did not know the race of his victim, the address of the apartment where she was killed, or that he had raped her.  Washington also testified that Ms. Williams had been short when in fact she was 5'8", that he had stabbed her two or three times when the victim showed thirty-eight stab wounds, and that there was no one else in the apartment when it was known that her two young children were with her.  Washington said he kicked in her door, but her door was undamaged.  Only on the fourth attempt at a rehearsed confession, did authorities accept Washington's statement and have it recorded in writing with Washington's signature.  He only picked out the scene of the crime after being taken there three times in one afternoon by the police, who in the end had to help him pick out Williams' apartment.

At trial, the confession proved to be the prosecution's only evidence linking Washington to the crime.  The defense failed to point out the inconsistencies of the prosecution's case, especially the results of the Commonwealth's own serological analysis of the seminal fluid found at the scene of the crime, which did not match Washington.  It also failed to inform the jury of Washington's other false confessions.  Washington was convicted and sentenced to death.  He came within 9 days of execution when a New York law firm picked up his case pro bono.

In 1993, DNA tests exonerated Washington, but Virginia law barred the introduction of new evidence so he had no redress though the courts.  In 2000, Gov. Gilmore granted Washington an absolute pardon.  The case was featured on "Frontline" and is the subject of a book, The Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington, Jr.  (IP076) (Times-Dispatch) (Profiles of Injustice)  [5/05]

Joe Giarratano was convicted of murdering Michelle Kline, 15, and her mother, Barbara “Toni” Kline, 44.  Michelle had been strangled and Toni had been stabbed to death.  Joe had stayed at the Kline’s apartment a few weeks before the murders.  The day after the bodies were found, Joe was in Jacksonville, Florida and police there contacted him.  He confessed to them that he committed the crime.  He gave four statements inconsistent with details of the crime.  After two detectives from Norfolk arrived and interviewed him, he gave a fifth statement.

This statement was more consistent with the facts of the crime, as Norfolk detectives showed him crime scene photos and could feed him details of the crime, but it was still inconsistent.  Joe claimed to have killed Lori before Michelle, but medical reports show that Michelle died before Lori.  He had stated that he strangled Michelle with his hands, when the autopsy report stated a non-hands form of strangulation.  This report was changed to say manual strangulation prior to trial.  Other discrepancies exist.

At trial the prosecution withheld evidence such as that of an alternate suspect whose driver’s license was found in the Kline’s apartment.  This suspect was heroin user and a federal informant with a history of sexual assaults.  All trace of him has since disappeared as though he entered the federal witness protection program.  In 1991, Joe’s appellate attorneys convinced Gov. Wilder to commute Joe’s death sentence to life imprisonment and to recommend a new trial.  However, Virginia law does not allow new evidence to be introduced after 21 days following a conviction.

Joe had been a serious alcohol and drug abuser.  However, in prison, after he stopped taking tranquilizers issued to him by prison doctors, he became a competent "jailhouse lawyer."  A couple of his cases have made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  He worked tirelessly on Earl Washington's case as well as many others.  He taught non-violence classes and helped some inmates to read and write.  Officials at Red Onion State Prison have since stopped his activism by placing him in solitary confinement.  (JusticeDenied)  [2/07]