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Christopher Parish and Keith Cooper were charged with robbery and attempted murder.  Two intruders allegedly shot and robbed Michael Kershner in apartment F on the third floor of an apartment building located at 729 Monroe Street in Elkhart.  At the time of the shooting five other people were reportedly in the apartment with Kershner.  However, despite testimony that Kershner bled profusely in the car which took him to the hospital, investigating officers found no evidence the apartment was the scene of a crime.  Cooper, identified as the alleged shooter, was acquitted of the attempted murder, but convicted of the robbery and sentenced to 40 years in prison.  Parish was convicted of both charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The trial presented a conflict between identification witnesses and alibi witnesses.  There were problems with the identifications.  Prior to getting Kershner's initial identification, police got two non-critical witnesses to identify Parish.  Although Parish was 20 at the time of the crime, Kershner identified him from an array of six photos in which Parish's photo as a 13-year-old was placed alongside photos of much older men in their 20’s and 30’s.  This lineup suggests that police believed the shooter was especially young and that were deliberately trying to get Kershner to identify Parish.  By the time of trial, the prosecution lost the photo array and a supplemental report written about Kershner's identification.  That it "lost" these items suggests Kershner's initial identification was dubious.

Eddie Love, a reported apartment occupant at the time of the crime and an initial target of the shooter, identified Cooper at his trial, but refused to testify at Parish's trial.  Instead Detective Steve Rezutko gave a hearsay account of Love's supposed identification of Parish.  When interviewed later by defense investigators, Love, who was 15 at the time of the crime, said Rezutko had intimidated and coerced him into signing a statement identifying Parish as well as falsely identifying Cooper as one of the assailants at Cooper's trial.

The assailant who was the shooter reportedly left behind behind a hat.  This hat was identified as belonging to Cooper.  The prosecution performed DNA tests on the hat which excluded it from belonging to Cooper.  Nevertheless, the prosecution withheld the DNA test results from the defense.

During trial, a prosecution witness, Jermaine Bradley, pulled a stunt that was possibly suggested to him by an experienced member of the prosecution.  Bradley claimed on the witness stand that Parish verbally threatened him in the courtroom prior to his testimony.  The claim was dubious because:  (1) Bradley did not report it until he resumed testimony the following day.  (2) The prosecution witnesses were kept segregated and were not milling about in the courtroom.  (3) No one else in the courtroom heard the alleged threat.  The claim served to prejudice the jury that Parish was a violent person.  It was cited by the prosecutor during his closing argument and by the judge at Parish's sentencing.  A defense investigator later found two courtroom witnesses who escorted Bradley to the witness stand on the day of the alleged threat.  The two stated under oath that Parish did not say anything to Bradley.

Parish had twelve alibi witnesses who could testify that he, his wife, and children were 110 miles away, visiting relatives in Chicago, during the hours surrounding the shooting.  Most, but not all were family members.  However, Parish's lawyer, Mark Doty, only produced seven of these witnesses at trial, all family members, and subjected them to unnecessary cross-examination by failing to tell them to report the alibi to the police right away.  Doty publicly admitted fault for this negligence.  Doty also failed to use available evidence to challenge that a crime had even occurred at the victim's apartment.

There is some evidence that Kershner and his friends fabricated the location of the shooting.  Two witnesses later said that Kershner was shot in a laundromat parking lot across from the apartment complex.  Eddie Love, also, corroborated their account.   Parish presumably did not know the reason for the deception, if true, when he wrote the Justice Denied article referenced below.  In its support, Kershner was on home detention at the time of the shooting and presumably did not want the police to know that he was outside his apartment.  However, Kershner's family who moved away in 1999 were unaware of case developments until 2008 when contacted by a law clerk handling a civil case against the city of Elkhart.  According to Kershner's sister, Chris Smallwood, their family strongly denies the location was fabricated and she presents a plausible story.  In her support, it does not appear likely that numerous prosecution witnesses would have perjured themselves on this point.

In 2005, an appeals court overturned Parish’s conviction was and granted him a new trial.  In 2006, Cooper was given early release from prison.  Also in 2006, prosecutors dropped charges against Parish citing evidence that its witnesses lied at the first trial, making a second trial problematic.  (JD30 p7) (Parish v. Indiana) (Elkhart Truth) (Smallwood Emails)  [8/08]

Jeffers was convicted of the abduction, rape, and murder of 23-year-old Sherry Lee Gibson.  At first this crime went unsolved, but two years later, Jeffers, then 17, confessed to it while at a juvenile detention facility.  Jeffers first confession was inconsistent with the known facts of the crime.  However, over time his confession evolved, growing consistent with the facts of the crime -- apparently because of information he gathered during interrogation sessions.  Because of his evolved confession, a judge accepted his guilty plea and Jeffers was sentenced to 34 years in prison.  Jeffers died in prison five years later.

In 2001, a participant in the crime, Ella Mae Dicks, walked into an Atlanta, Georgia police station and confessed.  She named her former husband, Wayne Gulley, as her co-participant.  Based on the detailed facts known by Dicks, she and Gulley were indicted.  When asked why Jeffers confessed, his brother Mark stated, "He had a need to feel important."  (NWU)  [1/06]

Mayes, a black man, was convicted of the rape and robbery of a 19-year-old white gas station cashier.  The victim described one of her two assailants as having a gold tooth, which Mayes had, but she was unable to identify Mayes in two live lineups.  Eventually she picked his photo when presented with a photo array.  Collected fingerprints could not be linked to Mayes and conventional serology of collected semen did not yield useful results.

When new prosecutors on the case contacted the victim, she revealed that the police had hypnotized her prior to her identification of Mayes from the photo lineup.  DNA tests revealed Mayes innocence and he was released after serving 21 years of an 80-year sentence.  Mayes was the 100th American to be exonerated by DNA testing.  In 2006, Mayes was awarded $9 million.  (IP100)  [6/05]

Roman and Lynnette Finnegan were charged with abusing and neglecting their child, Jessica Salyer, following her death at age 14.  Jessica was born with tricuspid atresia, a heart defect that causes the right ventricle to be underdeveloped. She had her first heart surgery at age 2, and was on medication to treat her heart condition and seizures for much of her life.  In 2005, Jessica died from sudden cardiac arrest caused by a prescription error.  Her dose of Coumadin was inexplicably increased to many times the safe limit while she was taken off her seizure medication altogether.  During her autopsy, Jessica suffered a skull fracture.  It was alleged that this fracture had existed prior to her death.  Authorities never explained why it began at the autopsy saw line, why there was no blood in the fracture, or why Jessica never complained of a head injury.

Lynnette was charged in April 2007 with neglecting a dependent resulting in serious injury, a Class B felony.  Both Lynnette and Roman were charged with neglecting a dependent, a Class D felony.  The Indiana Department of Child Services in Pulaski County removed Lynnette's other two daughters from her Francesville home when the investigation began in Nov. 2006. Her son, who was old enough to live on his own, moved out.  Roman Finnegan, who worked as a corrections officer for the Medaryville Facility, was suspended from work because he was charged with a felony.  Lynnette could not work because she suffers from epilepsy.  A bank eventually foreclosed on their home.  By Nov. 2007, the couple got their daughters back and charges against them have been dropped.  Roman even got his job back.  (TIJ)  [11/07]

While investigating a sexual assault, police determined the perpetrator left the crime scene on a bicycle.  Alexander happened to ride by the crime scene later on a bicycle and was stopped.  He was arrested in connection with four sexual assaults in the South Bend area, but was tried for only three, because DNA tests on the fourth assault exonerated him despite the fact that both the victim and her fiancé were certain that Alexander was the perpetrator.

After his arrest, the assaults continued despite the fact that he was imprisoned.  In one of these later assaults, his photograph was accidentally placed in the photo lineup showed to the victim, and she identified him as the perpetrator.  Of the three tried assaults, Alexander was convicted of two.  In 2001, a man named Michael Murphy confessed to committing one of the assaults for which Alexander was convicted, providing details that could only be known to the perpetrator.  An advanced DNA test was then performed which exonerated Alexander and implicated Murphy.

In light of this exonerating evidence, prosecutors came to believe that Alexander did not commit the second assault for which he was convicted.  The modus operandi of the second assault was so similar to the assault for which another man, Mark Williams, was convicted that prosecutors thought that the same person must have committed both assaults.  A prosecuting attorney joined with Alexander's appellate attorney in filing a joint motion to have his convictions vacated.  Alexander was officially cleared of all charges and released after serving more than 5 years in prison.  (IP101) (TV)  [6/05]

David L. Scott was convicted of murdering 89-year-old Loretta Keith.  Keith had been bludgeoned to death in her bed with a hydraulic jack.  Scott was convicted largely because of a covertly taped statement in which he said he participated in the crime.  Scott’s sister said the taping was a setup and that Scott was tricked into making the statement.  Scott was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Four months after Scott’s trial, another man, Thomas Abram, came forward and implicated Kevin Mark Weeks as the murderer of Keith.  Abram’s detailed story made no mention of Scott.  Based on the evidence, Scott was granted a hearing for a new trial, but a new trial was denied.  In Jan. 2008, after Scott served more than 23 years of imprisonment, he was exonerated of the crime and released.  DNA test results showed that Weeks was the person who killed Keith.  (AP News) (TribStar)  [03/08]