Word: schecks
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...pardon for innocence" for James Lee Woodard, released last year after serving 27 years in prison for a murder and rape he did not commit. Woodard was exonerated on the basis of DNA testing urged by the New York City-based Innocence Project, led by noted defense attorney Barry Scheck. (Read "Texas: The Kinder, Gentler Hang 'Em High State...
...Scheck's group is also pressing the case that is at the heart of Perry's moves at the forensics commission: that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put to death in 2004 for the murder of his three children in a 1991 house fire in Corsicana, Texas. In September, Willingham's story was detailed in a New Yorker investigative report by David Grann. It details the conclusions of two noted experts that the fire was accidental and that the arson evidence presented at Willingham's trial was not based on science. "The New Yorker's investigation lays out this...
...case, Perry has not only dropped forensics chairman Bassett but two other members of the body, Fort Worth prosecutor Alan Levy and forensics expert Aliece Watts, both of whom had written letters to Perry in support of Bassett continuing as commission head so their work could continue without interruption. Scheck compared Perry's failure to reappoint the three to the infamous Saturday Night Massacre of 1973 when President Nixon fired the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal. But Perry's office said the changes were "business as usual" and the governor added, "Those individuals' terms were...
...exonerate him, but we couldn't do the testing," Neufeld says. The sample from the crime scene was too small, so the attorneys had to use conventional defense methods. The investigation, however, helped Scheck and Neufeld realize the importance that DNA forensic testing could have in exonerating those who had been wrongly convicted. In 1989, the first DNA exoneration in the U.S. took place, and Scheck and Neufeld followed the case closely. By the spring of 1992, the team had founded the New York-based Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people...
...beginning, Scheck and Neufeld had modest goals. But with a staff of six, the team wasn't prepared for the onslaught of interest from convicts. "We never realized we would be getting thousands of requests each year," Neufeld says. As the full-time staff grew - today the team has 38 people, including attorneys, an intake department and a policy department - so did the exoneration rate. Between 1992 and 2002, the project oversaw 100 exonerations; since 2002, it's taken half that time to exonerate 100 more. "Ultimately, the criteria are very simple," Neufeld says of the cases the project chooses...