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Thomas Berdue and Joseph Wildred were convicted of robbery.  The victim, Charles Jansen, was the proprietor of a wholesale dry goods establishment on Montgomery Street.  Jansen was struck on the head with a bar of iron and robbed by two men of several thousand dollars in coin and gold dust.  Police recognized from Jansen’s description that one of the robbers was James Stuart, the leader of a feared band of escaped Australian convicts.  Stuart was also wanted for the murder of a sheriff in Yuba County.

The following day, Australian immigrants, Berdue and Wildred were arrested.  A mob wanted to lynch them, but to avoid that fate, the authorities reluctantly agreed to a “Lynch Court,” composed of individuals voted on by the mob.  Jansen positively identified Berdue as the robber who struck him.  Many other witnesses testified that Berdue was Stuart, some of whom spent months in the same mining camp as Stuart.  Because the defense attorney believed Berdue and pleaded for time to check out Berdue’s identification, the jury could not agree on a verdict.

Berdue and Wildred were turned over to a regular court, which sentenced them to 14 years of imprisonment.  Berdue was sent to Marysville, Yuba County for the murder of their sheriff.  Under the name “James Stuart,” he was convicted and sentenced to be hanged in three weeks.  A week later, the real James Stuart was arrested and brought to San Francisco.  Stuart confessed to the crimes and everyone realized the mistake that was made.  While visiting San Francisco, the California Governor interviewed Stuart, and afterwards sent a pardon to Berdue.  The pardon reached him two days before his scheduled hanging.

Berdue returned to San Francisco in time to witness the hanging for which he was sentenced.  Stuart was hanged on the California Street wharf on the scheduled day.  After viewing Berdue and Stuart together, a reporter noted, “I never before or since saw such a resemblance.  Stuart was, perhaps, a trifle the stouter; but, having seen either one, I think I should have unhesitatingly, at any time thereafter, been willing to swear to the other as that one.  It scarcely seems possible that the men could have so perfectly resembled each other.”

According to a different, seemingly more reliable account (CTI), a few witnesses who knew Stuart well had little trouble recognizing that Berdue was not Stuart at his Marysville trial.  These included a Yuba County judge and another individual before whom Stuart was often brought to face charges.  Stuart’s movements were reportedly much quicker than Berdue’s.  The witnesses also stated that Stuart was more than an inch taller.  However, even by this account, these trial witnesses were outnumbered by others who swore that Berdue was Stuart and stated they could not be mistaken.

Along with Berdue, Wildred was also pardoned.  Since neither of them was willing to run the risk of another such adventure, both returned to Australia.  (The Galaxy, Feb 1868) (CTI)

Hutchinson was convicted of the robbery of a Milpitas 7-Eleven store.  After the robbery, the clerk who was on duty told the store manager that his friend had robbed the store.  With a local police officer, the store manager reviewed a video/audio surveillance tape of the robbery.  The manager expressed surprise that the robber appeared to be Michael Hutchinson.  The officer agreed that the robber appeared to be Hutchinson.  Both had known Hutchinson since childhood.  The robber wore a stocking mask, so it is not clear what basis the two men used to recognize him.  The clerk identified Hutchinson in a photo lineup and at trial.  At trial, the manager and the officer identified Hutchinson from the surveillance tape, although the officer expressed uncertainty.  Hutchinson was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Hutchinson’s appeals attorney thought the robber on the surveillance tape was too small to be Hutchinson.  In 2001, he sought funds from an appeals court to scientifically analyze the tape but was denied.  However, the San Jose Mercury News had the tape analyzed and the analyst concluded that the actual robber is several inches shorter than Hutchinson.  A frame photo of the robber leaving the store with a height overlay added to the door clearly shows that the robber could not be more than 5’ 8” tall.  In his stocking mask, the robber may have looked like Hutchinson.  He may have sounded like Hutchinson and had similar mannerisms.  However, he could not be Hutchinson as Hutchinson is 6’ tall.

In 2006, a federal court overturned Hutchinson's conviction.  The prosecution planned to retry him using his apparently hostile ex-wife as a identification witness.  Rather than face retrial, in 2007 Hutchinson  pleaded to a time-served deal.  (Tainted Trials (with robber photo)) (Mercury News)  [1/08]

A security guard at the Sears store in Lincoln Park stopped a woman leaving the store on April 15, 2002 with $1,300 in unpaid merchandise.  In an attempt to get away, the woman severely bit the guard.  After being arrested, the woman was taken to a police station where she told police her address, her phone number, that she was 15-years-old, and that her name was Dominique Brim.  She was allowed to leave without being booked.

Two weeks later, 15-year-old Dominique Brim was charged with retail fraud and felony assault.  She claimed she had not been at the store on April 15 and that she had not been arrested.  In court, several Sears employees, including the security guard, identified her as the person who was apprehended and who bit the guard.  The judge did not believe Brim’s mistaken identity defense and convicted her on both counts.

However, Brim’s vehement claim that she was the wrong person did impress Sears officials enough to review their store videotape of the April 15 incident.  They discovered that Brim was not the person who was involved in the incident.  After the prosecutor and Brim’s lawyer were contacted, the judge vacated her conviction before she was sentenced.  The woman on the tape was later identified as Chalaunda Latham.  She was not 15-years-old, she was 25.  Latham was able to pass herself off as Brim because she was a friend of Brim’s sister.  Prosecutors decided not to charge Latham because the Sears employees had already given sworn testimony that Brim was responsible for the theft and security guard assault.  (JD29 p4)  [3/07]

Earl Berryman and Michael Bunch were convicted of a 1983 rape.  Bunch later died of illness in prison.  U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise expressed "very serious doubt" that Berryman was involved in the crime.  A Centurion Ministries investigation showed that the lead police investigator in the case also had grave doubts about the victim's identification of Berryman.

The victim initially identified Berryman and Bunch from a mug book labeled “B,” which contained photographs of all individuals with names beginning with that letter.  The victim had earlier reviewed the “A” book and was told by police that, unless she could identify the suspects quickly, she would have to look through mug books for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, each containing more than 150 pictures.  The record also shows that she gave vastly different physical descriptions of her attackers on three separate occasions, all of which varied substantially from Berryman's and Bunch’s actual physical features.  (NACDL) (CM)  [7/05]

In 1918, a black coal miner named Cleveland Boyd was convicted on vagrancy complaints.  He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $25.  The judge who convicted him, Squire H. E. Cook, and a deputy sheriff, A. M. Godfrey, then prepared to take him to the jail at Matoaka.  Boyd, however, pleaded to stop at his home about 100 yards away where he could exchange his new shoes for older, more comfortable ones.  On stopping at his home, Boyd retrieved a revolver and shot the judge twice, mortally wounding him.  The deputy sheriff fled for his life.  Boyd fled into the hills and escaped capture.

In 1924, a black man, using the name Payne Boyd, was arrested for a minor offense in Richmond, Virginia.  Because his description seemed to match that of Cleveland Boyd, Richmond police mailed his photograph to authorities in Mercer County.  The authorities then came and took the defendant to West Virginia, after identifying him as Cleveland Boyd.  At trial in Feb. 1925, the defendant was convicted of Cook’s murder, but the conviction was overturned, and the defendant was retried in April 1925.  Eight prosecution witnesses testified that the defendant was Cleveland Boyd.  Two of them testified that Cleveland had a scar over his left eye.  The defendant had a remnant of a scar over his left eye.  Three of the witnesses testified that Cleveland had a scar under his left jaw, as did the defendant.  Sixteen other prosecution witnesses, who had known Cleveland, testified that the defendant resembled Cleveland, but they were not certain enough of their identification to swear to it.  Four of these witnesses entertained doubt.

Thirty-one defense witnesses testified that the defendant was not Cleveland.  Many of these were blacks who had known Cleveland intimately.  Some testified to points of dissimilarity between the two as to height, weight, complexion, hair, lips, and feet.  Six additional witnesses from North Carolina also testified that the defendant was Payne Boyd and stated he had only lived in Winston-Salem and Roanoke, North Carolina.  The defendant also testified, denying that he had ever been in Mercer County before, or had ever been in a coal mine, or had ever met anyone who knew Cleveland Boyd.  Documents were also produced showing that a Payne Boyd of North Carolina had filled out a draft registration card before the date of the murder and had enlisted in the Army a month and a half after the date of the murder.  Despite this strong defense, the retrial jury convicted the defendant.

The defendant’s second conviction was overturned and his third trial was moved to Cabell County.  A fingerprint expert at the Huntingdon Police Department became interested in the case.  He took the defendant’s fingerprints and compared them to those of the Payne Boyd on record in the War Department.  He found an exact match.  Other information was also received that corroborated the defendant’s story.  At the third trial in Oct. 1925, the defendant, Payne Boyd, was acquitted and released after spending a year and a half in custody.  (CTI)  [11/07]