Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

A home contractor hired a black woman with an accent to paint a home in Conway, an unincorporated suburb of Orlando, FL.  When the contractor failed to pay her, she reacted by going through the house and splashing it with paint, causing thousands of dollars in damage.  The contractor later told Orlando police Detective Jose Varela that he knew the woman as “Marlene,” and he gave him her cell phone number.  Varela dialed it and got a woman who answered to “Marlene” and who confessed to the crime but would not come down to the police station.

Varela found out from the woman who owned the damaged house that she had seen a black man driving a truck slowly in the neighborhood.  This behavior raised her suspicions enough to write down the tag number.  Varela traced the tag number to a man with a last name of Joseph.  He then went fishing through the motor vehicle records for a black woman named “Marlene,” who might be a relative of the truck owner.  He came up with a Malenne Joseph.  He got a photocopy of her driver's license picture and showed it to the owner of the house and her sister.  Both identified Malenne as the painter who worked at the house.

Malenne, a Haitian woman, had an accent like that ascribed to the painter.  She was brought to trial in June 2010.  Although she said she was not a painter and had never met any of the people who accused her, she was identified in court as the perpetrator.  Over defense objections, Detective Varela testified that she confessed to the crime over the phone.  Malenne was convicted of felony criminal mischief and sent to jail.

When new lawyers took over her case they found out the cell phone number Varela had dialed belonged to a woman named “Merline” whose last name was not Joseph.  Like their client, the woman was Haitian and shared some facial similarities with her.  The lawyers also found work records which showed Malenne was working elsewhere on two of the days she supposedly was painting.  When they informed the contractor that their client was 5'2" tall, he said he knew she could not be the painter as he was 5'6" and remembered the painter as being slightly taller than himself, about 5'7".  He signed an affidavit reversing his trial identification.  Malenne was released from jail after being incarcerated for 77 days.  A motion was filed to overturn her conviction.  Prosecutors decided not to charge the other “Marlene” with the crime as the statute of limitations for it had run out.  (Orlando Sentinel) (TIJ Blog)  [12/10]

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]

Cuyahoga County, OH

Anthony Michael Green

May 29, 1988

Anthony Michael Green was convicted of raping a terminally ill nurse who was receiving treatments for liver cancer.  The crime occurred at the Cleveland Clinic Center Hotel.  The perpetrator had told the victim his name was Tony.  Green had worked at the hotel for a short time, but was fired in March 1988 for getting into a fight with another employee.  Green's clinic ID badge was among a group of badges shown the victim.  The victim identified him at trial.  The trial also featured faulty and falsified forensics.  DNA tests exonerated Green in 2001.

Following Green's release, the Plain Dealer newspaper wrote an article series about Green's ordeal.  The real perpetrator, Rodney Rhines, who had become a Christian and was living at the City Mission, happened to read the series.  He had not known that anyone had been convicted for his crime.  After reading the series, Rhines, feeling remorse, confessed to mission personnel that he had done the crime and wanted to turn himself in.  The Rev. Brent Reynolds told him, “You won't be coming back out once you walk into that police station.”  “Yes, I know,” said Rhines.  Rhines had once worked for the Cleveland Clinic in the hotel kitchen.  Even though the victim identified Green, Green does not resemble Rhines.  Rhines's skin and eyes are darker and his face wider.  Green was awarded $2.6 million in 2004 for 13 years of wrongful imprisonment.  (Plain Dealer) (IP)  [5/08]

Joyce Ann Brown was sentenced to life in prison for the robbery and murder of Rubin Danziger, a Dallas fur-store owner.  The crime occurred in Danziger's store, Fine Furs By Rubin, in Preston Center on Northwest Highway.  After the getaway car used by the two female robbers was discovered, police found a car rental agreement in it signed by a Joyce Ann Brown.  However, the car had been rented to a different Joyce Ann Brown.  Police and prosecutors discovered the error before trial, but proceeded with the prosecution anyway.  The victim's wife, Ala, had identified Rene Michelle Taylor, as the robber who shot her husband, and Brown as her accomplice.  Taylor later revealed that another woman, Lorraine Germany, was her accomplice.  Germany reportedly has a startling resemblance to Brown.  Investigation also showed that a jailhouse witness, Martha Jean Bruce, had lied to convict Brown.  Brown was featured on a 60 Minutes episode and was freed in Nov. 1989.  (CM) (CWC) (Google)  [5/08]

James Curtis Giles was convicted of participating in a gang rape with two other men.  Police knew before Giles' trial that the real perpetrator was a teenager with an almost identical name, James Earl Giles.  He lived across the street from the rape victim.  Police withheld two sworn statements identifying him.  James Earl Giles died of cancer in 2000.  James Curtis Giles was released in 1993 and is on parole until 2013.  He must register as a sex offender.  In early 2007, prosecutors are joining with defense attorneys to get the wrong James Giles cleared.  (Dallas Morning News)  [3/07]

Gilbert Amezquita was convicted of aggravated assault after Kathy Bingham was severely beaten at the Houston plumbing company where he worked and which her family owned.  Shortly after coming out of a 10-day coma, the still-hospitalized Bingham whispered to police that it was “Gilbert” who had assaulted her.  Amezquita was a U.S. Army reservist with no prior criminal record.  His appellate attorney, Roland Moore, found that prosecutors had failed to consider that a second Gilbert - Alonzo Gilbert Guerrero - also worked at the plumbing company.  Moore discovered that Bingham and Guerrero had argued a few days before the attack and that Guerrero had Bingham's cell phone after the beating.  Guerrero, who is now serving a seven-year prison sentence for burglary, did not have a good explanation for how he came to possess Bingham's phone.

In 2007, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended a pardon based on innocence for Amezquita.  News of the Board's action did not please Bingham, who maintains that Amezquita attacked her. Governor Perry subsequently pardoned him.  (Chronicle)  [6/07]

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.

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David Sanders, a Franciscan Brother and schoolteacher, was convicted in 2008 of molesting an altar boy more than 20 years earlier.  The victim who knew his molester as “Brother David,” picked Sanders out of a photo array and remembered him as the man who taught him First Communion rites at St. Vincent's parish.  The victim also said he visited his molester in Delaware.  Sanders 1980s address was in the address book of the victim's family.  At trial Sanders' defense argued that Sanders had never administered the victim's First Communion nor, as far as anyone could prove, had ever been to Delaware. Sanders had worked at a number of Milwaukee area parishes as a music teacher, but never at St. Vincent's.

Following Sanders' conviction, the victim's grandmother found a letter written by a different “Brother David,” named David Nickerson, which implicated that man in the assault.  When confronted, Nickerson admitted he molested the victim.  Sanders was subsequently exonerated after 5 months of imprisonment.  Authorities were debating whether to charge Nickerson, in part, because the victim is far from an ideal witness.  In 2008 the victim was 30 years old and was himself in prison for molesting a child.  (WIP) (MJS)  [11/08]

Omar Raddad was convicted of the murder of Ghislaine Marchal.  Marchal, 65, was a wealthy widow who lived alone in the affluent village of Mougins, near Cannes on the French Riviera.  One morning when Marchal was relaxing by her pool, her neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Koster, called over the fence and invited her to lunch at 1 p.m.  Marchal readily accepted.  She later telephoned a friend at 11:48 a.m.  At 1:30 p.m., when Marchal had not shown up at the Kosters for lunch, Mrs. Koster telephoned Marchal, but there was no answer.

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