Green was convicted of rape in 1983 and sentenced to 75 years in prison. But last Wednesday, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Texas announced that new DNA testing proved that Green was not involved in the assault. Green said he can’t help but be angry about the time that he lost. The process Green faces [...]
Tag Archive 'DNA'
Allen Porter free after 19 years!
Posted in Cold Cases in the News, Forensics, Miscarriages of Justice
He spent half of his life in prison for a rape and robbery he did not commit. But last Friday, at the age of 39, Allen Porter is finally a free man. Porter’s case stemmed from a robbery and sexual assault at an apartment in southwest Houston on June 18, 1990. Three masked robbers burst [...]
Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for a fire that killed his three daughters. Prosecutors argued that Willingham deliberately set the 1991 blaze — but three reviews of the evidence by outside experts have found the fire should not have been ruled arson. The last of those reports was ordered by the Texas Forensic [...]
Ceausescu’s body exhumed for tests
Posted in Forensics
A medical team exhumed the body of former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu last Wednesday to try to ensure that the remains are really his, Romanian state media reported. Ceausescu was executed on Christmas Day 1989 in the only post-Berlin-Wall-fall of a Communist regime in Eastern Europe that got really bloody. His remains were “quite well [...]
Lapointe hearings to resume in August 2010
Posted in Cold Cases in the News, Forensics, Lapointe, Miscarriages of Justice, Unsolved Homicides
Questions about how long a fire burned at Mrs. Martin’s apartment and possibly tainted DNA evidence on a pair of gloves found at the crime scene were brought up last Thursday during a hearing for Richard Lapointe. Mrs. Bernice Martin was raped, stabbed and strangled in her apartment in Manchester on March 8, 1987. Lapointe was convicted [...]
LOUISVILLE, KY - After 11 years in prison before being paroled in 1994 for being convicted of rape and other charges in 1982, Michael VonAllmen’s record is now clear. On July 15, 2010, a judge finally ruled to dismiss all charges with prejudice, which means the charges can never be brought back. “I think this is a [...]
Amber Nicklas, a California girl who had been missing for almost seven years was found last Wednesday by police in Phoenix, Arizona, authorities said. The girl had just turned a year old when she was abducted in September 2003. She had been in the care of foster parents in Norwalk, California, when she was snatched [...]
Fox, Hobbs III, Rivera and Lapointe
Posted in Cold Cases in the News, Forensics, Lapointe, Miscarriages of Justice, Unsolved Homicides
Lisa Black and Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune have written an excellent piece about what makes people confess falsely. False confessions are not so uncommon as you would think. I understand that right now you shake your head and question Vidocq’s sanity…justifiably so! Why would a parent confess to raping their own three year old [...]
Arrest in 1993 murders of sailors Keith Combs and Eugene Ellis
Posted in Cold Cases in the News, Forensics, Solved, Unsolved Homicides
SAN DIEGO – Authorities say DNA evidence led to an arrest in the 1993 killings of two enlisted sailors whose bodies were found in a field in San Diego County. Leopoldo Castro Chavez II was arrested last Wednesday on suspicion of gunning down the two men in an Otay Mesa field nearly 17 years ago. [...]
Lapointe hearing July 7-8-9, 2010
Posted in Forensics, Lapointe, Miscarriages of Justice, Unsolved Homicides
Christopher Cosgrove, Lapointe’s public defender during the criminal trial, and Henry Theodore Vogt, who sought a new trial for Lapointe in the late 1990s, testified during the latest hearing seeking a new trial for Lapointe. Paul Casteleiro, Lapointe’s current lawyer, focused on what Cosgrove and Vogt didn’t do when they handled the case in court. [...]