This week, former Wake County prosecutor, Colleen Janssen learned the outcome of the disciplinary hearing to review the level of her misconduct in a criminal case. Though she deliberately withheld critical evidence from the defense and manipulated others to go along with her scheme to hide exculpatory evidence, she did not even lose her law…
Exonerations are at an all time high as more wrongful conviction cases continue to surface. While some are due to mistakes, an overwhelming number of them involve abuses of power — fraud and corruption — coerced witnesses, jailhouse snitches, junk science, fabricated evidence, perjury, prosecutorial misconduct and unfair judges. In two Wake County, North Carolina…
Originally posted on Stop Wrongful Convictions:
Russ and Betsy Faria Russ Faria was wrongfully convicted for the murder of his wife, Betsy in November 2013 in Troy, Missouri. Police failed to investigate a key alternate suspect — Pam Hupp and the judge suppressed critical information that would have pointed toward Hupp’s possible involvement in the…
Undoubtedly the most important evidence in the investigation was the human remains found in the fire pit behind Steven Avery’s trailer. There’s an expectation that the evidence would be handled with the utmost respect and care, but that was not the case. The timing and circumstances surrounding the discovery of the evidence is odd. Special…
Making a Murderer exposes the systemic corruption that occurred throughout a thirty year span in the Steven Avery case in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Viewers get a rare look at what goes on behind the scenes of an investigation in which police and prosecutors disregard the rights of the accused to ensure a conviction. I am particularly…
Wow! I honestly can’t believe how easily the defense was permitted to present evidence that information was planted on the defendant’s computer. In a controversial case in Missouri, Russ Faria is being tried a second time for the murder of his wife, Betsy Faria. Faria was convicted in November, 2013 and sentenced to life in…
Update (10/26/14): Yesterday when I first noticed the Edmonton Journal article about this case, I posted a response and pointed out the multiple inaccuracies. They quickly removed all comments to the article and the ability for one to post new comments. I guess they do not want people to know the truth Update: (10/27/14): The…
By now it’s obvious to many that Brad Cooper was deprived of his right to a fair trial. The NC Court of Appeals agreed and ordered a new trial in September, 2013. The trial has yet to be scheduled. Through the many articles published at this blog I have tried to break down all of…
I haven’t spent any time covering this but have recently taken some time to review all of the testimony about the van sightings and I thought it may be helpful to spend some time summarizing all of the different descriptions as well as the time and dates provided by each witness. There were four witnesses…
I wrote an article about the importance of third party verification of digital evidence a while back. It is the only way to know for sure that the evidence — the files or search terms or whatever is pertinent to the case were actually searched for by the accused. It is standard procedure in civil…
Since the trial, I’ve been bothered by that phone call. I remember when I first listened to it. My initial instinct was that something was wrong, that it didn’t make sense for someone to be hysterical at that point in time — when her friend had really only been missing for a couple of hours. …
One of the biggest contributing factors to wrongful convictions is police tunnel vision. This occurs in a fairly high percentage of the cases that have been studied – post DNA exonerations. It occurs when police narrow in on a suspect from the very beginning and then fail to consider other possibilities, suspects or scenarios. They…
I’ve been thinking about what Ann Peterson said during oral arguments, how the defense was thwarted again and again at trial and how no one seemed interested in getting to the Truth. I thought it might be interesting to create a list of all the obstacles faced along the way, beginning long before the trial…
Finally, there is progress! We’ve all been anxiously awaiting this. The trial was two years ago and we finally got to hear oral arguments on the appeal. Here is the video of the arguments and it is well worth the time to watch this. I thought it went really well. I was very impressed with…
Brad Cooper Case 