Harvey v. Horan, 278 F. 3d 370, is a federal court case dealing with felons' rights of access to DNA testing. The Eastern Virginia District Court originally found that felons were entitled access to DNA testing on potentially exculpatory evidence, but this finding was later overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nevertheless, the case paved the way for the Innocence Protection Act, which ensures that convicted offenders can try to prove their innocence by requesting DNA testing on evidence in government's possession that was used in their case.
Kevin Cooper is an American man currently imprisoned at San Quentin State Prison's death row. Cooper was found guilty of four murders in the Chino Hills area of California in 1983. Cooper's conviction has garnered repeated attention from both Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times and Erin Moriarty on the CBS News program "48 Hours." There have been accusations that Cooper received an inadequate defense, as well as prosecutorial misconduct such as destruction of evidence, withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense, planting of evidence, brainwashing to witnesses, and perjured testimony by the Sheriff's Department. There have also been practical questions raised, such as how Cooper, at 155 pounds, and allegedly acting alone, overpowered a 6-foot, 2-inch ex-military policeman and his athletic wife, both of whom had loaded firearms close at hand. It has also been questioned why a single perpetrator would use 3 or 4 different weapons to commit the murders, and why none of the victims were able to run away while the others were being attacked.
Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled by 6 votes to 3 that a claim of actual innocence does not entitle a petitioner to federal habeas corpus relief by way of the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Betty Lou Beets was a murderer executed in the U.S. state of Texas. She was convicted of shooting her fifth husband, Jimmy Don Beets, on August 6, 1983.
Napoleon Beazley was an American convicted murderer executed by lethal injection by the State of Texas for the murder of 63-year-old businessman John Luttig in 1994.
Actual innocence is a special standard of review in legal cases to prove that a charged defendant did not commit the crimes that they were accused of, which is often applied by appellate courts to prevent a miscarriage of justice.
Roger Keith Coleman was a convicted murderer and rapist from Grundy, Virginia, US, who was executed for the rape and murder in March 1981 of his sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy. That day, he had been laid off from work.
Henry Watkins Skinner was an American death row inmate in Texas. In 1995, he was convicted of bludgeoning to death his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and stabbing to death her two adult sons, Randy Busby and Elwin Caler. On March 24, 2010, twenty minutes before his scheduled execution, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution to consider the question of whether Skinner could request testing of DNA his attorney chose not to have tested at his original trial in 1994. A third execution date for November 9, 2011, was also ultimately stayed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on November 7, 2011.
House v. Bell, 547 U.S. 518 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case challenging the permissibility of new DNA forensic evidence that becomes available post-conviction, in capital punishment appeals when those claims have defaulted pursuant to state law. The Court found that admitting new DNA evidence was in line with Schlup v. Delo (1995), which allows cases to be reopened in light of new evidence.
Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930 (2007), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, ruling that criminal defendants sentenced to death may not be executed if they do not understand the reason for their imminent execution, and that once the state has set an execution date death-row inmates may litigate their competency to be executed in habeas corpus proceedings. This decision reaffirmed the Court's prior holdings in Ford v. Wainwright, and Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Ellis Wayne Felker was an American convicted and executed in 1996 in Georgia for the 1981 murder of Evelyn Joy Ludlam, a young woman who was working as a waitress while she attended college.
Troy Anthony Davis was a man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King restaurant and was intervening to defend a man being assaulted in a nearby parking lot when he was murdered. During Davis's 1991 trial, seven witnesses testified they had seen Davis shoot MacPhail, and two others testified Davis had confessed the murder to them. There were 34 witnesses who testified for the prosecution, and six others for the defense, including Davis. Although the murder weapon was not recovered, ballistic evidence presented at trial linked bullets recovered at or near the scene to those at another shooting in which Davis was also charged. He was convicted of murder and various lesser charges, including the earlier shooting, and was sentenced to death in August 1991.
William Henry Hance was an American serial killer and soldier who is believed to have murdered four women and molested 3 of the woman in and around military bases before his arrest in 1978. He was convicted of murdering three of them, and not brought to trial on the fourth. He was executed by the state of Georgia in the electric chair.
Skinner v. Switzer, 562 U.S. 521 (2011), is a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the route through which a prisoner may obtain biological DNA material for testing to challenge his conviction; whether through a civil rights suit or a habeas corpus petition. A majority of the Court held that the civil rights path was the appropriate path.
In law, post conviction refers to the legal process which takes place after a trial results in conviction of the defendant. After conviction, a court will proceed with sentencing the guilty party. In the American criminal justice system, once a defendant has received a guilty verdict, they can then challenge a conviction or sentence. This takes place through different legal actions, known as filing an appeal or a federal habeas corpus proceeding. The goal of these proceedings is exoneration, or proving a convicted person innocent. If lacking representation, the defendant may consult or hire an attorney to exercise his or her legal rights.
Ryan W. Ferguson is an American man who spent nearly 10 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a 2001 murder in his hometown of Columbia, Missouri. At the time of the murder, Ferguson was a 17-year-old high-school student.
Eric Charles Nenno was a convicted sex offender who was executed for the 1995 rape and murder of seven-year-old Nicole Benton. He was executed in 2008 in Huntsville, Texas, becoming the 1128th murderer to be executed in the United States since 1976. He was the 13th murderer executed in Texas in 2008 and the 418th murderer executed in Texas since 1976.
Capital punishment is a legal punishment in Tennessee.
Rodney Rodell Reed is an American death row inmate who was convicted on May 18, 1998, by a Bastrop County District Court jury for the April 1996 abduction, rape, and murder of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old resident of Giddings, Texas.
