This'n'That

Many of you have been contacting me, asking if I've spoken with Coy, and how he's doing. I'm sorry to say that I haven't heard from him, but last time we spoke he was doing well. It looks like TDCJ still has him listed at the Ramsey unit.

Trae the Truth did an interview with Vladtv.com, in which he mentions SPM briefly around the 9:20 mark. You can see that here: http://www.vladtv.com/article/216145/trae-tha-truth-details-facing-40-years-as-a-teen-brothers-life-sentence Thanks to commenter Mike from ATX.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is fucking around with the junk science writ intended to allow convicts to appeal convictions based on science we now know to be flawed, as per Grits for Breakfast. Given that this was an avenue I believed might have offered a chance for Coy's retrial, it's disappointing. It's one step forward and two steps back in Texas, but I want to remind you that the situation never hopeless.

I never thought to see so much interest in wrongful convictions, but the last couple of years have provided numerous cases with unbelievable publicity. Don't give up hope; keep talking about it, thinking about, writing about it. We'll get where we need to be eventually.

Grits Interview

There's an excellent podcast/interview up at Grits with Sandra Guerra Thompson, one of the board members guiding Houston's move to an independent crime lab. They talk a bit about her new book, as well as some of the problems locally and nationally with relying on police-run crime labs. You may remember multiple scandals from the Houston Crime Lab in the days of Chuck Rosenthal and before, as we've talked about a few of them here.


http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2016/01/thompson-on-forensic-flaws-and-harris.html#more

No post

I'm having some connectivity issues, so no post this week.

Making a Murderer

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that the Netflix documentary series ‘Making a Murderer’ has become fairly popular over the last couple of weeks. It follows the most recent legal troubles of Stephen Avery, an exoneree out of Wisconsin. After serving 18 years for a rape he did not commit, Avery was released and then convicted of the rape and murder of another young woman.

The series focuses on the antics of the justice system and how Avery was convicted; it’s a welcoming intro to the justice system for a lot of people who otherwise may not have gotten involved. I have yet to see the series myself, but it’s been recommended very highly. If you have Netflix, check it out. If not, the news media is covering it at an unprecedented rate, so just googling it will bring up a ton of information.