INNOCENCE FACT OF THE DAY: Before exoneration, 54 DNA exonerees claimed ineffective defense counsel. Appeals courts threw out 81% of those claims.

–courtesy of the Innocence Project

With 697 people awaiting execution in our fair state, California has the largest death row population in the nation.

Despite this pile up of the condemned, the CDCR’s attempt to restart executions after a four year hiatus, was temporarily derailed on Tuesday by a Marin County judge because, the judge said, the state’s new lethal injection procedures were still problematic and may constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

(I’ve written a bit about this issue in the past on WLA. Suffice it to say that we—along with various other states—used to use a cocktail of drugs that American veterinarians have long eschewed as too cruel.)

Attorney General Jerry Brown will challenge the ruling.

Now, as we wait to see if the courts will permit capital punishment to be jump started here, the LA Weekly’s cover story on Chet Atkins, one of California’s Innocence Project exonerees, seems like just the right thing to be reading simply as a reminder of what can happen when the judicial system misfires and mistakenly convicts the innocent.

The story is by Charlotte Hsu .

Here’s how it opens:

Herman Atkins Sr. keeps every receipt. About this, he is meticulous. For every bottle of water, every pack of gum, he will ask the cashier for a sales slip. Each day, he brings the slips home to his wife, Machara Hogue, who files them away in chronological order, a separate folder for each month.

When Atkins is out of the house and realizes that he has not bought anything for a few hours, he sometimes swings by a mini-mart to make a purchase so he can get a receipt. If the store has a surveillance camera, Atkins will make sure to walk past it.

If he is on the road and cannot stop somewhere, he will call Hogue. The cell phone statements are not as good as receipts, which pinpoint a person’s location at a specific time on a specific date. But they are better than nothing.

Atkins is building an alibi for a crime he has not committed.

“Herman is never driving in the car without talking to someone on his cell phone,” Hogue says. “He understands that he has to have a record of every minute of every day of his life, because when he couldn’t prove that he was somewhere else at a certain minute of the day, his freedom was taken away from him.”

Twenty-two years ago, when he had no receipts or bills or surveillance cameras to establish his whereabouts, a jury sent Herman Atkins to prison for rape and robbery in Lake Elsinore, a place he had never been.

He received a sentence of 45 years and served about a fifth of it before a DNA test proved his innocence and he was released.

“A lot of people will tell him, ‘That’s bull, it doesn’t happen like that,‘ ” Hogue says. “But you can’t tell a man who’s been through it that it doesn’t happen like that.”

For the innocent who are locked away, no apology, no amount of money, can replace the lost years. While they’re imprisoned, the world outside moves on. Children grow. Loved ones die. Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, funerals, births, graduations — all are missed.

When an innocent man is freed, the world sees his release as a resurrection. The media is obsessed with recounting his good fortune. He is driven, intent on reclaiming his life. Opportunities open to him seem limitless.

But the reality of exoneration is ugly and complicated. After the media frenzy comes a reality the public doesn’t see: The trauma of a wrongful conviction isn’t only the years it claims. It’s also the way it changes you forever.

Spend time with Atkins and you see that he is struggling. He is nervous, suspicious, leery of women as well as law enforcement and strangers of all kinds. He describes himself as distrustful.

“People tell me, ‘Herman, you’re too hard. You’re not approachable.’ I don’t want to be approached,” he says. “Even today, I admit that I’m not so open-minded with dealing with people. I don’t like people.”

Atkins says he prefers not to dwell on the past. He has seen the way that some exonerees allow bitterness to consume them. He won’t be like that.

He insists he will not be devoured by history, obsessed with transgressions impossible to reverse. But the truth is, the past stalks him anyhow….

Read on.

Writing a special guest blog post for LA Observed, my pal, the award-winning former LA Times editor and reporter, Frank Sotomayor, calls for the release of all the unredacted files pertaining to the death of well-known LA journalist Ruben Salazar, who died on August 29, 1970—40 years ago this weekend.

Sotomayor wants to know why, after all this time, has the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department still declined to release to the press the eight boxes of department materials relating to Salazar’s case?

It is an important question that demands an answer. What possible reason can there be to stonewall after four decades? No issues of national security are at stake. If the files show wrongdoing on the part of law enforcement figures, so be it; all the more reason the paperwork on the case should see the light of day. If those boxes full of material reveal that Salazar’s death was simply a tragic accident, that too needs to be known so that long-held suspicions that he was deliberately targeted may be laid to rest.

Below you’ll find the beginning of Sotomayor’s essay. . But read the whole thing because it is loaded with back story and context that is an essential part of LA’s history.

Two Mexican cousins are killed by Los Angeles police in a case of mistaken identity. A prominent journalist is cautioned by two LAPD officers about his coverage of the shootings. A short time later, the journalist meets with staffers of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and tells them he is being followed. He gives his Rolodex of news sources to a colleague and clears his desk. Days later, at the age of 42, he is dead. Killed by a 10-inch-long tear-gas projectile fired by a Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputy.

Is this the plot for a crime thriller? It could be. But it is just part of the tragic mystery surrounding Ruben Salazar. The Los Angeles Times columnist and KMEX news director was killed 40 years ago Sunday under very disturbing circumstances. Law enforcement officials had a chance to resolve the matter at that time but dropped the ball. A new generation of law enforcement officials now has a chance to come clean by releasing all records relating to the case. For the sake of history and transparency, they must not fumble this opportunity….

Exactly.

Earlier this month, in an editorial, the LA Times also called for the release of the Salazar files.

In truth, we should all be asking for the release of these files—and asking loudly.

Photo by photographer Raul Ruiz, was reportedly taken of an unidentified officer just seconds before Deputy Tom Wilson shot the projectile that would hit and kill Ruban Salazar, who was reportedly sitting on a bar stool behind the three men in the bar’s doorway.

The US Supreme Court gave death row inmate Troy Davis a rare chance to prove himself innocent of the murder of the 1989 murder of off-duty Savannah police officer, Mark McPhail. For more than 20 years, Davis has contended he is innocent of the crime and has begged for a chance to present the evidence. On Tuesday, a Federal Judge ruled that his evidence was not convincing.

Here’s what the AP said:

The NAACP, Amnesty International and dignitaries such as former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI have rallied behind Davis. A year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Davis a federal hearing to put his innocence claim to the test — a chance afforded no other American in at least 50 years.

U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. said the evidence presented by Davis’ attorneys at a June hearing wasn’t nearly strong enough to prove he’s innocent.

“Ultimately, while Mr. Davis’s new evidence casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction, it is largely smoke and mirrors,” the judge said.

The ruling sets the stage for Georgia officials to resume planning Davis’ execution, though his attorneys vowed to appeal.

NOTE: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has a terrific analysis of the judge’s ruling, for those interested in such things.

NOTE 2: For background on the original Supreme Court ruling on Davis and links to his story as a whole, go to this earlier WLA post on the matter.

Despite alarming incidents of drug-cartel-fueled violence near the Mexican border, the crime rate in the state of Arizona is the lowest it has been in 40 years—as is true in many areas of the country.

At the same time, the Hispanic immigrant population has risen precipitously.

Anyone who bothers to spend five minutes on the computer doing research, has access to those two facts.

Nevertheless, those with political axes to grind have loudly attributed most of Arizona’s social ills—-particularly crime (and most particularly drug-related crime)—to immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

The “crime wave” hysteria was a large part of what fueled the passage of SB 1070.

However, a study just released by well-regarded researchers Mike Males and Dan Macallair, both of Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, digs even deeper into the issue, and lays out for us, in hard numbers, the relationship between crime and immigration—legal and not—in Arizona.

The study, which is rather prosaically titled “Scapegoating Immigrants: Arizona’s Real Crisis Is Rooted in Residents’ Soaring Drug Abuse,“ finds the following:

Claims that Hispanic immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are creating a crime and drug wave are contrary to the best information available from Arizona and national law enforcement, public health, and drug abuse monitoring agencies. By the best evidence, Hispanics, regardless of status, constitute the leading edge of Arizona’s rapidly declining crime rate and a decreasing proportion of Arizona’s rapidly increasing drug abuse crisis. The large influx of Hispanic immigrants has promoted decreased crime, violence, and drug abuse compared to trends among Arizona’s existing resident populations.

Read the rest of the details here.

AND SPEAKING OF NUMBERS, crime may be down, but this year border deaths in Arizona are expected to break records.

“We can keep the public safe without locking children up forever for crimes committed when they were still considered too young to have the judgment to vote or drive.”
- Elizabeth Calvin, children’s advocate, Human Rights Watch

The Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, SB 399, may or may not be passed into law this week in the California State Assembly. If passed, it would to allow courts to take a second look at cases involving juveniles sentenced to life without parole, (or hugely long sentences that amount to life), after that kid has spent 15-years behind bars. The bill guarantees nothing, but it at least opens up the possibility that an adolescent who did something terrible as a kid, might one day be given the chance to demonstrate his or her worthiness of release.

The bill was amended for what is believed to be the final time this past Friday. It has already passed through California’s Senate.

Interestingly, the best article over the weekend on the state of the bill ran in an Illinois-based publication—the Belleville News Democratic.

(The LA Times ran an op ed urging passage of the bill last week.)

Here are a few representative clips from the Bellville piece:

A 14-year-old south Modesto boy who killed a young father at a child’s birthday party will likely die in prison. Angel Cabanillas, now 19, stands to serve at least 100 years behind bars. But just 40 miles south in Merced, a boy who was 15 when he committed a fatal drive-by to impress his fellow gang members is set to be sentenced Monday to 31 years in prison. He could be out by the time he’s 42.

The disparity in their sentences reflects a divide in how judges and prosecutors handle violent crimes committed by children. The topic of whether minors can be sentenced to die in prison has recently come under scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court and the California Legislature, and their discussions could change the rules for cases like Cabanillas.’

In May, the Supreme Court ruled juveniles cannot be sentenced to life in prison without parole for non-homicide crimes. Denying children who commit lesser crimes the opportunity to ever get out of prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and runs counter to a worldwide consensus against such harsh sentences for juveniles, the court wrote. But while the decision did not specifically address what can happen to children convicted of murder, legal experts say recent court rulings regarding juvenile justice have shown a trend toward leniency.

[SNIP]

“The court has made clear that juveniles are different than adults,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine.

The California Legislature is heading in that direction, too. On Friday, it moved forward with a bill that would allow courts to take a second look at cases involving juveniles sentenced to life without parole.

It would not prohibit life without parole sentences for juveniles but lets courts review such cases 15 years after sentencing, potentially allowing some young convicts to receive a lesser sentence of 25 years to life.

The existing bill is a watered down version of Yee’s original bill, which would have prohibited life-without-parole sentences for juvenile’s altogether. But the hair of law enforcement groups across the state uniformly burst into flames over the matter of doing away totally with LWOP for kids. Thus a frantic series of amendments were added.

Still SB 399 is a place to start.

That is IF it passes.

The California District Attorney’s Association is still resolutely against it. (We are shocked, shocked.) As is the Republican Caucus. The fear-mongering against the bill has been considerable.

The last round of amendments only passed 34-30—meaning the bill likely has 34 votes locked up. It needs 41 votes to pass.

Let us hope that seven more state assembly persons find their spines and their common sense in time to pass SB 399.

I was just muttering to myself about the whole Clemens/perjury indictment thingy when I happened to read what Scott Henson wrote at his wonderful blog Grits for Breakfast, which said what I was thinking better than I would have.

Here’s Henson:

The post is short, so I’ve pasted it in its entirety:

BECAUSE ALL THE OTHER BIG PROBLEMS HAVE BEEN SOLVED….

Obama’s Justice Department today indicted Texas baseball legend “Rocket” Roger Clemens for perjury related to alleged steroid use, reports USA Today. See the indictment (pdf). The allegations rest primarily on the word of a snitch who turned on Clemens to avoid prosecution himself.

This seems to me like a massive waste of time and resources and an extremely poor exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Making the situation appear even more hypocritical, as I pointed out before Clemens’ ill-advised testimony to Congress, “We couldn’t get Condi Rice to testify under oath about 9/11, and myriad Bush administration officials under the GOP Congress were allowed to appear before Congress without risk of perjury charges if they lied,” but the feds are using Clemens’ Congressional testimony as a perjury trap to go after baseball’s all-time strike leader for no good reason I can identify. Hell, even Henry Waxman who chaired the hearing where Clemens allegedly committed perjury later said he regretted staging the event. The whole fiasco was a bad idea from the get-go and this indictment just makes matters worse.

Perjury is a crime that’s prosecuted very selectively, with many obvious instances routinely overlooked by prosecutors. Federal prosecutors are going after Clemens because of his star power, not because he poses some terrific threat to the public, or for that matter to anyone but a batter on the receiving end of a beanball.

NOTE: I normally don’t snatch whole blog posts, so do me a favor and also go check out the site for other stories, like this amusing vacation post on…um…”graffiti tourism.“)

AND IN OTHER NEWS…..THE CALIFORNIA STATE ASSEMBLY PASSED BILL SAYING CLERGY CAN MARRY (OR NOT MARRY) WHOMEVER THEY WANT

It was the law anyway (See First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), but hopefully this bill will make those jittery about the issue feel better. And maybe it will also jam a stick in the spokes of the gay marriage disinformation machine.

Here’s a clip from the statement released by the folks at California Equality.

The California Assembly today passed the Civil Marriage Religious Freedom Act (SB 906) in a 46-25 vote. The bill, introduced by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and co-sponsored by Equality California and California Council of Churches IMPACT, protects clergy from performing any civil marriage that is contrary to the tenets of his or her faith. The bill also protects religious institutions from losing their tax-exempt status for refusing to perform any civil marriage, and deepens the distinction in state law between religious and civil marriage by defining the latter as a civil contract that requires a state-issued marriage license.

“Opponents of marriage equality have falsely claimed that allowing same-sex couples to marry will force clergy to violate the tenets of their faiths,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. “This bill should alleviate any concerns that restoring marriage equality will require clergy to perform weddings inconsistent with their faith.”

“This bill simply affirms that California is a diverse state, and that we can all co-exist and make space for each others’ beliefs without compromising the tenets of any religious group or individual,” said Senator Leno. “With the recent federal court ruling, we know that marriage for same-sex couples in California is on the horizon. Under the Civil Marriage Religious Freedom Act, churches and clergy members who fear their religious views are threatened by marriage equality will have clear and solid protections under state law. In addition, churches that welcome same-sex couples will continue to fully recognize those families within their faith.”

MITRICE RICHARDSON FINALLY SADLY FOUND

Thursday was the day that the LA County Office of Independent Review delivered a report that the release of likely mentally ill Mitrice Richardson from the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s station in the early morning hours of with no purse, no cash or credit cards, no cell phone, and no one in evidence meeting her—was not improper, according to department regulations.

The deputies’ actions may have been legal. But no one who puts themselves in the emotional shoes of Mitrice’s family and friends could ever imagine that the sheriffs’ choices that night were wise or right.

The truth of that fact also became clear on Thursday when skeletal remains found in the Malibu Hills a few miles from the the Lost Hill’s station, in and old marijuana grove, were identified as the pretty young troubled woman whom we all hoped so much would one day be found alive.

At the press conference yesterday, Sheriff Baca acknowledged in so many back-handed words that the handling of Mitrice’s case was tragically flawed. “Life is fragile. The circumstances of this case are tragic……..’Properly’ doesn’t mean we couldn’t have done something more. The soul searching in the sheriff’s department is certainly being done….I’m very, very disappointed that he’s not alive.” he said grimly. (Here’s a link to audio of the press conference.)

The LA Times makes the point in a Friday editorial.

Mitrice’s father is pressing for Baca plus the deputies who were involved in his daughter’s unwise and tragic arrest and middle-of-the-night release, to take a lie detector test.

The LA Times’ Andrew Blankstein and Carla Hall have done an excellent job in pulling together the whole deeply saddening story.

One of the weird and troubling things that emerged at Thursday’s press conference is that, according to the sheriff’s department, there is no trail in to the place that Mitrice was found. Law enforcement had to be choppered in. So how is it possible that a confused young woman got there on her own?

YOUNGEST G’ITMO TERROR SUSPECT’S TRIAL SUSPENDED WHEN ATTORNEY COLLAPES

Nothing about this trial of Omar Kadr seems to be going smoothly. Here’s the news update on the military-appointed attorney being airlifted out of Guantanamo.

In the meantime, the Toronto Globe and Mail (Kadr is a Canadian citizen) has a interesting article titled: Khadr jury to decide: jihadist or scared teen

Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal is also covering the trial and has a report here.

CROWNING FRANZEN

Time Magazine has dubbed Johnathan Franzen a the Great American Novelist and put him on its cover. Seriously???? I mean, I lovedThe Corrections too, but…..

I guess they really, really, REALLY liked his new novel, Freedom, that’s coming out at the end of this month.

(And, yes, I will be reading it right away, now that I’ve motored through nearly everything else on my summer reading list. And speaking of summer reading, or the record, David Mitchell is probably a genius. His summer book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is nearly Tolstoy-ish in it’s breathtaking narrative inventiveness. But, for pure summer delight, it was lots more fun to read the latest James Lee Burke.)

What books have you loved this summer? (I’ve got more. Let’s talk.)

OKAY, BIG STORY COMING ON MONDAY. JUST IN THE FINAL EDITING STAGES

In the meantime, have a de-lightful weekend. And thanks to those of you who sent me empathetic dog-related notes (or posted dog-related comments). All were very much appreciated.

Now off to check on the progress of some terrific Annenberg grad students who are working on a gang story downtown.

xoxox!

Drawing of Darwin reading is from Origin Graphics

The verdict was reached at around 3:15 p.m. It was announced in LA at around 4:05 p.m.

In this particular instance, Involuntary Manslaughter will mean a sentence of 2-4 years. However, since the jury also found in favor of a gun “enhancement”—meaning a sentencing add on for the use of the gun in the crime—Mehserle will likely do more–specifically as much as 5-14 years.

Mehserle has been taken into custody. (He was free on a $3 million bail.) He will be sentenced on August 6.

A rally and news conference regarding LA residents’ reactions is taking place at Crenshaw Boulevard and Vernon Avenue in Leimert Park.

People are gathering in downtown Oakland.

5:15 p.m.—around 500 people gathering at 14th and Broadway in Oakland. (Live blogging here.)

UPDATE: Jack Leonard and Maria LaGanga’s summary of the case and the verdict is both sober minded, informative and insightful.

And here, from the San Jose Mercury News, is a good account of the largely peaceful demonstrations in Oakland—and the problems.

INTERESTINGLY THE RUMOR OF A PROP 8 VERDICT….

….is also drawing crowds, reports the LA Times.

The man who may be responsible for the longest killing spree in California history was arrested on Wednesday as a consequence of dogged police work and a complex new forensic tool called “familial DNA“—a method used only as a last resort after traditional DNA routes have been tried without success.

Familial DNA allows forensic scientists to use DNA markers to ID possible family members of a perpetrator who has left his or her DNA on the scene, and then to follow all family strands until the killer has been located.

This is precisely what happened in the case of the man believed to be the The Grim Sleeper. (The killer was given this sobriquet by the LA Weekly’s Christine Pelisek, who originally broke the story in 2006 when police were trying to keep the news of the serial murders quiet.)

The alleged killer of at least 11 people, with murders going back 25 years, turned out to be a 57-year-old South LA auto mechanic named Lonnie David Franklin Jr., who was well-liked by his neighbors.

(Once again, the so-called face of evil ends up being all too sadly ordinary.)

The LA Times has some good team coverage of the steps that led to the arrest.

Here’s a clip:

For well over two decades, the killer had eluded police. His victims, most of them prostitutes in South Los Angeles, had lived on the margins of society, and their deaths left few useful clues aside from the DNA of the man who had sexually assaulted them in the moments before their deaths.

A sweep of state prisons in 2008 failed to come up with the killer or anyone related to him. Then, last Wednesday, startling news came to the LAPD: A second “familial search” of prisons had come up with a convict whose DNA indicated that he was a close relative of the serial killer suspected of killing at least 10 women.

Working through the Fourth of July weekend, LAPD detectives drew up a family tree of the prisoner, then began analyzing all the men on it. Were they the right age? Did they live near the murder scenes? Was there anything in their background to explain why the serial killer had apparently stopped killing for 13 years, then resumed in 2003?

From that painstaking process, according to LAPD officials who requested anonymity, the prisoner’s father emerged as a likely suspect. An undercover team was sent to follow him; they retrieved a discarded slice of pizza to analyze his DNA. On Tuesday, they confirmed that it matched the DNA of the suspect in the killings.

(There’s a lot more on the history of the investigation and now the reaction of neighbors, so read the rest.)

A large thank you to all the LAPD officers involved for not giving up.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT—NEUROLAW: BRAINS, GENES AND KILLERS

And just in time, earlier this week NPR’s Talk of the Nation had a story on new research looking at the relationship between brain abnormalities, certain genes and serial killers.

On Friday the jury began deliberations in the case of Johannes Mehserle, the BART officer who fatally shot Oscar Grant as Grant was laying face down on a subway platform in Oakland.

The jury deliberated for a couple of hours before quitting for the long weekend because one of the jurors got sick. When they came back on Tuesday it turned out that another juror had a doctor’s appointment while a third had to leave for a previously planned vacation.

The vacationing juror had to be replaced by a brand new juror so deliberations started from scratch on Wednesday, but didn’t get all that far before the day was over.

They will resume yet again today, Thursday.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more details.

Meanwhile, in a lot of neighborhoods, as the LA Wave points out, people continue to worry about post-verdict reactions.

YOUNG MAN SUCCEEDS DESPITE TIME SERVED IN LA COUNTY PROBATION CAMPS

The LA Weekly has a good story by Sam Slovick that combines a sort-of round-up of the horrid state of things at LA County’s Probation Department together with a tale of a kid who’s doing well, in spite of his awful experiences in one of the county’s camps.