Kerry Max Cook 2

I found an update for the Kerry Max Cook case; the judge who heard his claim of actual innocence recommended that it be denied. For a case that’s dragged on and been tried and re-tried repeatedly since 1977, that sucks. The judge did admit that while a jury seeing all of the evidence may have found Cook innocent, the evidence produced was not enough to prove his innocence post-conviction.

            It’s up to the Court of Criminal Appeals to finalize the decision. Cook has been fighting to prove his innocence for damn near 50 years; I doubt he’ll quit now.

http://www.newswest9.com/story/32528395/judge-denies-kerry-max-cooks-actual-innocence-claim

No post

No post tonight guys; computer issues.

False Positives

There hasn’t been much in the news besides the Dallas shooting, but I did stumble across this NY Times story on the notoriously unreliable roadside drug tests used by police across the nation; apparently false positives are so common that the tests are not even admissible in court which, as Reason.com points out, isn’t a big deal for the justice system as over 90 percent of the cases plea out.

            Interestingly enough, the illustrative case in the article is a woman who was pulled over in Houston, Texas.

“Based in part on the information gathered by Marie Munier, the former prosecutor Anderson hired to examine the drug convictions, we determined that 301 of the 416 variants began as arrests by the Houston Police Department, with the rest coming from surrounding municipalities, and that 212 of those 301 arrests were based on evidence that lab analysis determined was not a controlled substance, or N.C.S.”

            As has been posted many times before, no physical evidence was used to convict Carlos Coy; the case against him was put together completely on the (changing) testimony of his supposed victim and her mother by a police department, district attorney’s office and court system that has shown the most careless, cavalier attitude towards justice in the past decade and a half. It boggles the mind to think of how many innocents have served, or are currently serving, prison sentences because they were not lucky enough to have physical evidence fabricated against them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/magazine/how-a-2-roadside-drug-test-sends-innocent-people-to-jail.html?_r=0

http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/11/tens-of-thousands-wrongly-convicted-base

Linda Carty

…aaaaaaand another one from Harris County. Lindy Carty was sentenced to death in 2002 for a murder and kidnapping; her post-conviction appeal, currently being heard, is based on yet more accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. From the article:

"…prosecutors Connie Spence and Craig Goodhart were accused of destroying case notes and emails, of hiding at least 18 recorded witness statements from Carty's original defense team, and of coercing testimony to ensure Carty got a death sentence. A retired DEA agent testified that he was threatened by Spence. A star prosecution witness claims the pair instructed him to lie in a series of private meetings.

Both prosecutors still work for the Harris County District Attorney's Office as supervisors."

It’s a long, very informative article that deals not just with Carty’s case, but also touches on the environment in the Harris County DA’s office in the early 2000s. I don’t know if Linda Carty is guilty or innocent, but if the prosecutors performed even half the shenanigans they are accused of then she should receive a new trial. Unfortunately, given what we’ve seen from the Harris County DA’s office during that era, the accusations are all too easy to believe.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Prosecutors-accused-of-hiding-evidence-inventing-8340431.php