Word: lawfulness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Innocence Project is operating in a shrinking field. The vast majority of its docket consists of old cases, prosecuted when DNA testing was still rare. Now that law enforcement is integrating DNA into its investigative procedures (see box), there should be fewer people convicted despite exonerating biological evidence. But the broader problem addressed by the project--that innocent people are going to jail--shows no sign of ending. Why is the criminal-justice system making so many mistakes...
...also confirming a point legal scholars have long made: that eyewitnesses are often wrong. "There's a myth that the image is burned in a witness's mind and never forgotten," says Yale Law School lecturer Stephen Bright. "In fact, science says just the opposite." And eyewitness testimony is only as reliable as the eyewitness. Two men sentenced to death for a Chicago murder and then freed by DNA evidence in 1996 were convicted largely on the testimony of a woman with a sub-75 IQ, who later said prosecutors promised to release her from jail if she testified...
...most important lessons from the Innocence Project's work is that the system does get it wrong, and more often than people think. One person who doesn't need to be convinced is Dennis Fritz. Now that he's free, he's planning to go to law school--and to start a new career as a defense attorney...
Witnesses have put Swango at the bedside of some victims moments before they died. Colleagues report his fascination with violence and the serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. Stocks of poisons and hypodermic needles were found in Swango's living quarters. Yet the best the law could do was convict him of falsifying a job application and sentence him to 42 months in a federal prison. He is scheduled for release in July...
...Allison, 27, of Hosmer, S.D., recently landed an associate's job at the prestigious New York City law firm of Dewey Ballantine. It was something of a surprise, since, although he was editor of law review at Notre Dame, for most of his education, Allison didn't go to school--at least not to a formal one. Neither did Tad Heuer, 22, of Holliston, Mass., who won a Marshall Scholarship to the London School of Economics following his graduation from Brown University...