 |
The New York State Police Troop C scandal involved the fabrication of evidence by members of the New York State Police, which was used to convict suspects in Central New York.
| |
The New York State Police Troop C scandal involved the fabrication of evidence by members of the New York State Police, which was used to convict suspects in Central New York.
Trooper Craig D. Harvey was charged with fabricating evidence about suspect John Spencer in April, 1993. Harvey admitted he and another trooper lifted fingerprints from items Spencer touched while in Troop C headquarters during booking. Harvey attached the fingerprints to evidence cards and later claimed that he had pulled the fingerprints from the scene of the murder. The forged evidence was presented at Spencer's trial, resulting in a conviction and sentence of 50 years to life in prison. [1] The original 1987 conviction was overturned, but Spencer was convicted again at a 1994 retrial. [2]
One fabrication involved the 1989 murders of the Harris family of Dryden, New York. In their home, Warren and Dolores Harris, their daughter, Shelby, 15, and their son, Marc, 11, were bound and blindfolded, Shelby was raped and sodomized, all four were shot in the head and the house was doused with gasoline and set on fire. State police investigators say that evidence led them to Michael Kinge, and that officers killed him when he pointed a shotgun at them during the execution of a search warrant. [3] His mother, Shirley Kinge, admitted to using a credit card stolen from the Harris home, which led investigators to consider her a potential accomplice. New York State Police had also previously obtained a sworn statement from a resident on the same road of the Harris home (approximately four miles west from the Harris home and one mile east of the parking lot where the Harris van had been found following the murders). In the sworn statement, the witness stated that "on December 23, 1989, at approximately 6:50 a.m., he was exiting his driveway when he saw a slow-moving van approaching his driveway from the east." [4] The witness "identified the driver of this van as a light-skinned black male wearing a stocking cap, and further stated that he was accompanied by a female passenger, also light-skinned but darker than the driver, who appeared older than the driver. He indicated that his description of the occupants of the van matched the composite sketches of the suspects which had been publicized by the news media." [4] The witness later withdrew his statement. [4] Officers Harding and Lishansky, of Troop C, also claimed that they found fingerprints on gasoline cans found at the Harris home. Kinge was convicted of burglary and arson and received a sentence of 17 to 44 years in prison. She served two and a half years before Harding and Lishansky admitted that the fingerprint evidence had been fabricated by retrieving fingerprints of Ms. Kinge from her job and asserting they found them on the cans. Her conviction was later overturned. [5]
After being released, Kinge brought suit against the State of New York, claiming damages of over $500 million. [6] The Court of Claims eventually ruled in favor of Kinge on the claims of (1) malicious prosecution and (2) negligent supervision and awarded her $286,312, [7] noting as follows:
"In sum, the actions of Senior Investigator McElligott, or in this case, an unjustified and complete lack of supervision and control, allowed Investigator Harding the time and opportunity to fabricate fingerprint evidence which ultimately became the only significant evidence placing claimant at the Harris home. There can be no dispute that such fabricated evidence played a key role in her conviction for these crimes. Without such evidence, this court finds that probable cause did not exist to prosecute claimant for any of the crimes which occurred at the Harris family home. Claimant has established her malicious prosecution cause of action. In retrospect, and based on these findings, this claim should have been a relatively easy one on which to determine the issue of liability. Claimant, however, obviously did not appear before this court with 'clean hands,' and she has not engendered any great sympathy from this court. Claimant's own admitted criminal conduct in possessing, utilizing, and forging the signature of Dolores Harris on a credit card brought the focus of the investigation upon her. Despite her testimony to the contrary at this trial, the court finds that claimant was a willing participant with her son in this scheme to use credit cards belonging to the Harris family. Even if the court accepts her testimony that she was completely unaware of what transpired at the Harris home, her willingness to participate has been established by her actions in forging a signature to a credit card, and then using that card, which was indisputably obtained from the Harris home, to purchase personal items for her own benefit within hours of the burglary, murders, and arson." [4]
The scandal became known when Trooper David L. Harding was interviewed for a job at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was asked if he was willing to break the law for his country. He answered "yes", then explained how he had worked to convict people he felt sure were guilty by fabricating evidence. He assumed the CIA would be pleased with his answer, but instead they notified the United States Department of Justice. There was a 14-month delay between the discovery of the misconduct and any action taken. [5]
Bruno Richard Hauptmann was a German-born carpenter who was convicted of the abduction and murder of the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The Lindbergh kidnapping became known as "The Crime of the Century". Both Hauptmann and his wife, Anna Hauptmann, proclaimed his innocence until he was executed in 1936 by electric chair at the Trenton State Prison.
John Grosvenor Rowland is an American politician, author, and convicted felon who served as the 86th Governor of Connecticut from 1995 to 2004. He served two nonconsecutive prison terms on various corruption charges. A Republican, Rowland previously served in the United States House of Representatives from 1985 to 1991, representing the state's 5th district. In 2004, Rowland resigned from office during a corruption investigation, and later pleaded guilty in federal court to a one-count indictment for conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, mail fraud and tax fraud. He was the first Connecticut governor to be elected to three terms since 1784. Wilbur Cross was elected to four consecutive terms in the 1930s.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
The New York State Police (NYSP) is the state police of the state of New York in the United States. It is part of the New York State Executive Department, and employs over 5,000 sworn state troopers and 711 civilian members.
Michael Stone is a British man who was convicted of the 1996 murders of Lin and Megan Russell and the attempted murder of Josie Russell, and who is a suspected serial killer. He was sentenced to three life sentences with a tariff of 25 years for the Russell killings.
Thomas A. Constantine served as Administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) between March 1994 and July 1999.
Joyce Gilchrist was an American forensic chemist who had participated in more than 3,000 criminal cases in 21 years while working for the Oklahoma City Police Department, and who was accused of falsifying evidence to help prosecutors. Her evidence led in part to 23 people being sentenced to death, 12 of whom have been executed. After her dismissal, Gilchrist alleged that she was fired in retaliation for reporting sexual misconduct.
The New Jersey State Police (NJSP) is the official state police force of the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is a general-powers police agency with statewide jurisdiction, designated by troop sectors.
Harry Jackson was the first person to be convicted in the United Kingdom via fingerprint evidence.
False evidence, fabricated evidence, forged evidence, fake evidence or tainted evidence is information created or obtained illegally in order to sway the verdict in a court case. Falsified evidence could be created by either side in a case, or by someone sympathetic to either side. Misleading by suppressing evidence can also be considered a form of false evidence ; however, in some cases, suppressed evidence is excluded because it cannot be proved the accused was aware of the items found or of their location. The analysis of evidence may also be forged if the person doing the forensic work finds it easier to fabricate evidence and test results than to perform the actual work involved. Parallel construction is a form of false evidence in which the evidence is truthful but its origins are untruthfully described, at times in order to avoid evidence being excluded as inadmissible due to unlawful means of procurement such as an unlawful search.
Frederick Salem Zain was an American forensic laboratory technician in West Virginia and Bexar County, Texas, who falsified serology results to obtain convictions.
Carlton Michael Gary was an American serial killer who was convicted of the murders of three elderly women in Columbus, Georgia, between 1977 and 1978, though he is suspected of at least four more there. Gary was arrested in December 1978 for an armed robbery and sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park off the George Washington Parkway in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1993. His death was ruled a suicide by five official investigations.
Annie Dookhan is an American convicted felon who formerly worked as a chemist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Drug Abuse lab and admitted to falsifying evidence affecting up to 34,000 cases.
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.
Night Club Scandal is a 1937 American thriller film directed by Ralph Murphy and written by Lillie Hayward. The film stars John Barrymore, Lynne Overman, Louise Campbell, Charles Bickford, Harvey Stephens, J. Carrol Naish and Evelyn Brent. The film was released on November 19, 1937, by Paramount Pictures. It was based on a play by Daniel Nathan Rubin.
Louis N. Scarcella is a retired detective from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) who initially came to prominence during the "crack epidemic" of the 1980s and 1990s, earning frequent commendations before many convictions resulting from his investigations were overturned during his retirement. As a member of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad, he and his longtime partner Stephen Chmil built a reputation for obtaining convictions in difficult cases. Since 2013, Scarcella has received extensive and sustained publicity for multiple allegations of investigative misconduct that resulted in false testimony against crime suspects, meaning that innocent parties could have served long prison terms and guilty individuals could have gone free because of wrongful procedures.
Alissa Leanne Bjerkhoel is an American litigation coordinator at the California Innocence Project (CIP), a law school clinic that investigates cases of factual innocence while training law students. Bjerkhoel was born in Truckee, California, and later graduated from California Western School of Law (CWSL) after previously obtaining a B.A. degree She has been an attorney with CIP since 2008. Bjerkhoel has served as counsel for CIP on numerous criminal cases, and achieved the legal exoneration of a number of convicted prisoners. Bjerkhoel serves as CIP's in-house DNA expert and also serves as a panel attorney with the nonprofit law firms Appellate Defenders, Inc. (ADI) and Sixth District Appellate Program (SDAP). She is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Bjerkhoel has won a number of awards.
On the night of September 11, 2001, Michele Anne Harris of Spencer, New York, United States, left the restaurant where she worked as a waitress in nearby Waverly after finishing her shift, and shared drinks with two coworkers in the parking lot. She then went to see a boyfriend in Smithboro and left shortly after 11 p.m. This was the last time anyone is known to have seen her. The next morning, her car was found on the road near the home she shared with her children and estranged husband, Cal. He was later tried for her murder four times and convicted twice before being acquitted.
The first evidence-tampering scandal in state police history has cast a shadow over criminal trials in central New York State, making prosecutors' jobs more difficult, lawyers and law-enforcement officials say. The scandal broke last fall, when a state police investigator with Troop C, David L. Harding, admitted fabricating fingerprint ...
Concluding a four-year investigation into the worst scandal in state police history, a special prosecutor said today that troopers were able to plant evidence routinely in criminal cases across a broad swath of rural New York because they had no fear of detection by supervisors, who maintained a willful ...
In a widening scandal that has rocked the New York State Police, a lieutenant who supervised criminal investigations in seven upstate counties admitted yesterday that he had faked fingerprint evidence in three cases. The lieutenant, Craig D. Harvey, also said in court in Delhi, N.Y., that he had been assisted in fabricating evidence by another lieutenant, Patrick O'Hara, who works out of state police headquarters in Albany supervising drug and organized-crime investigations.