The feel-good story of the day...and do we ever need one.

He was serving a life sentence for a murder he did not commit and was ready to end it all. But [Christopher]Ochoa didn't follow through. And on Friday, he will have a new life awaiting him when he graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School -- the same institution that rescued him from his worst nightmare.

....Ochoa, who grew up in El Paso, hopes to one day become a prosecutor so he can control investigations. He calls American justice the best system in the world, but says corrupt investigators and prosecutors have broken it.

Ochoa was the first person exonerated by the Wisconsin Innocence Project. His confession was coerced, and someone else later confessed to the crime. DNA also proved him innocent.

The Earl Washington case stands out in my mind as one of the most egregious wrongful conviction cases. Washington is retarded, and his confession to rape and murder consisted of details supplied by the interrogating officer. While ultimately DNA cleared Washington of involvement in the rape and murder, as Richard Cohen pointed out in this 2001 Washington Post article, the case is less about how he was saved by DNA than how he was almost murdered by police.

Yesterday, a jury awarded Washington $2.25 million in damages from the interrogating cop's estate, finding he had fabricated Washington's confession.

Earl Washington Jr., who came within nine days of being executed, had sued the estate of the state police investigator, Curtis Reese Wilmore, who died in 1994. Jurors awarded Washington damages upon finding that Wilmore deliberately fabricated evidence that led to his conviction and death sentence.

by TChris

Clyde Kennard was railroaded. He was sentenced to seven years in a Mississippi prison for possessing $25 worth of stolen chicken feed. The only witness against him later recanted his testimony. His real crime was his attempt to enroll at the University of Southern Mississippi after four years in the service.

His temerity drew the ire of segregationist leaders who were determined to fight integration at USM.

Kennard died years ago, but those who want to set the record straight were hoping that Gov. Haley Barbour would award him a posthumous pardon. Not gonna happen.

"The governor hasn't pardoned anyone, whether they be alive or deceased," Barbour spokesman Pete Smith said Thursday.

After all, mere innocence -- not to mention race discrimination -- shouldn't stand in the way of preserving a criminal conviction. Law and order guys like Barbour don't want to set a precedent. Next thing you know, all the other wrongly convicted prisoners would think they deserve a pardon too.

Death penalty proponents like to say that it has never been established that an innocent person has been executed in the United States. That may no longer be the case. Arson experts have found that Texas executed a man whose crime may not have been a crime at all. The fire for which he was executed appears to have been an accidental one. Junk science and inadequately trained experts are the culprit.

Update: Don't miss JR's comment below. S/he is the son of one of the experts in the case and provides a lot more information.

by TChris

Herman Atkins had never been to Lake Elsinore, but he was convicted of robbing and raping a woman he found working in a Lake Elsinore shoe store. His father was in the highway patrol, and he'd heard of wrongful convictions, but he never thought it would happen to him. Two women identified his photo, and his blood type was the same as that of the person whose semen was found on the victim's sweater. He served more than a decade in prison before DNA testing exonerated him.

Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful conviction, said Gerald Uelmen, a law professor and executive director of the state Senate-created Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.

What's Atkins doing now? After failing to find a job, Atkins went to college, then opened a vending machine business. Now he's working as a social worker and pursuing a graduate degree in psychology. Atkins started the LIFE Foundation, a program that assists the wrongfully convicted with basic necessities after their release. As TalkLeft reported, Atkins recently participated in the Faces of Wrongful Conviction conference.

by TChris

A number of states have enacted laws making it easier for the wrongly convicted to take advantage of improved DNA testing to demonstrate their innocence. A bill is pending in Florida that would rescind a deadline for presenting new DNA evidence to a court. Its passage should be a no-brainer, but the "tough on crime" crowd is making the predictable argument that post-conviction attempts to prove innocence are an "abuse" of the criminal justice system. They seem less concerned about the abuse that occurs when an innocent accused is sent to prison.

All this rhetoric about ''court system abuse'' is getting old anyway. Whatever costs are associated with clearing people's records are negligible compared to the costs of keeping an innocent person in jail -- from the financial burden on tax payers, to the moral burden of thwarting justice while real criminals go unpunished.

As Jenny Greenberg, director of the Florida Innocence Initiative, said: "I'm fixing the mistakes. I'm not making the mistakes.''

Conservatives in the state House are pushing last minute amendments that would weaken the bill. Their colleagues should Just Say No to new legislative barriers that might prevent an innocent prisoner from regaining his or her freedom.

by TChris

Whether a foreign citizen has a meaningful remedy when a state or local government fails to comply with the Vienna Convention, which requires the government to notify him of his right to seek assistance from his consulate, is a question the Supreme Court will soon resolve. This unusually insightful Washington Post editorial argues that the notification issue is less important than the actual innocence of Mario Bustillo, one of the men who brought the issue to the Court.

At UCLA this weekend, attendees at the Faces of Wrongful Conviction Conference, got to hear first hand from those whom the system in California failed.

One by one they ascended the stage and introduced themselves, each an embodiment of the legal system's fallibility in California. My name is Herman Atkins," a tall ponytailed man said. "The state of California stole 12 years of my life for a rape and robbery I did not commit in Riverside."

"Good morning, my name is Gloria Killian," a well-spoken middle-aged woman said. "The state stole 22 years of my life for a robbery and murder I did not commit in Sacramento." "Good morning. My name is Ken Marsh," a third speaker said. "The state took 21 years of my life for a murder I did not commit in San Diego in 1983."

Seventeen people in all reiterated the point to a packed ballroom at UCLA on Saturday: that although they now were free, countless other innocent people are imprisoned in the state. ...They took part in the event, called "The Faces of Wrongful Conviction," to dramatize the flaws in the state's criminal justice system.

by TChris

Jessie Misskelley and two others were convicted of the gruesome murders and mutilations of three 8 year old boys in West Memphis in 1993. A reporter and a lawyer are raising serious questions about their guilt.

[Attorney Daniel] Stidham contends Misskelly had the I.Q. of a 5-year-old and was told by police what to say though hours of interrogations. "It's not really difficult to get someone mentally handicapped to confess to something they didn't do," says Stidham.

by TChris

Chuck Plinton killed himself after he was kicked out of the University of Akron for drug dealing. The case was built on the word of a paid informant and on a police officer's belated claim that Plinton had provided an unrecorded confession. Plinton's tragic story illustrates the danger of relying on paid snitches.

The informant, Richard Dale Harris, 35, was a career criminal and a paid operative of the Summit County Police Department. Among the long list of people he had fingered was his own sister. He claims he ratted on her to save her children from her.

The police paid Harris $50 for every drug buy he claimed to make. He told the police he'd purchased from Plinton twice, but Plinton's work records at the University showed that he was signed in at his job on the other side of the campus when the buys allegedly occurred.

Gregory Wallis left a Texas jail Monday after serving 18 years for an attempted rape and burglary he didn't commit.

"You should not be incarcerated - not a moment longer," District Judge John Creuzot said before granting him a personal recognizance bond while his attorneys pursue a legal process that would have him officially declared innocent and pardoned.

"I don't know how to apologize," said Judge Creuzot, who was not involved in the first trial. "I don't know where to start, but I'll start with me and 'I'm sorry.' "

The cause of the conviction: erroneous eyewitness identification.

"I don't know how she picked me," he said. "I was sitting at home, and they came and arrested me. The next thing I know, I'm standing trial."

by TChris

TalkLeft has frequently written about Wilton Dedge, the wrongfully convicted Florida man who spent 22 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit. While Florida recently compensated Dedge for his unjust imprisonment, his story shouldn't end there. Florida Today continues to call for an investigation of the official misconduct that caused such a miscarriage of justice.

What should come next is an outside investigation of how Brevard County prosecutors in the state attorney's office used jailhouse snitch, murderer and recently convicted child-rapist Clarence Zacke to help keep Dedge behind bars.