A lawsuit filed against the city of Louisville by a man exonerated after serving 14 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit will go forward. U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson ruled that the man, Kerry Porter, had “compelling evidence” that police possessed information that someone else, Juan Leotis Sanders, had murdered truck driver Tyrone Camp— […]
Embattled Orange County Prosecutor Tony Rackauckas will not prosecute a police officer who shot an unarmed 18-year-old. Rackauckas announced in a letter last month that there’s insufficient evidence that Santa Ana Detective David Prewett committed a crime in the January shooting of Steve Salgado. This is the second time Prewett has been cleared in a fatal shooting […]
In 1998, Vance Haskell was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole for the shooting of Darrel Cooley. Nearly four years prior, Cooley was gunned down with a semiautomatic weapon at a steakhouse in Erie, Pennsylvania. Haskell matched the profile of a suspect based on the reports of multiple witnesses, but it was the […]
The office of Marin County District Attorney Ed Berberian is fighting to keep a man locked up in prison even though an appellate court has ordered a new hearing in his case to determine whether he should have been tried as a juvenile. Max Wade, now 22, was sentenced in 2014 to 21 years to life imprisonment […]
Last year, Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler successfully ran on a platform that championed police reform as a major priority. But since he took office, Wheeler has repeatedly drawn the ire of local criminal justice reform activists and organizers. On Monday, Wheeler took a step that could begin to heal his relationship with concerned Portlanders by appointing Danielle Outlaw, a 19-year veteran […]
The Christian County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office has been removed from handling a murder case after a judge found that Commonwealth’s Attorney Lynn Pryor had a conflict of interest from previously dating the lead detective. Pryor, who took over as top county prosecutor in January 2007, and her entire office are now off the murder case of Jarred Tabor Long […]
Norfolk County (Massachusetts) prosecutors announced on Monday that they do not intend to retry Fred Weichel, a South Boston man who spent 36 years behind bars for a murder the existing evidence suggests he did not commit. Yet the district attorney’s office took pains to clarify that the decision not to re-prosecute falls far short […]
Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey will be departing at the end of his term in 2018, ending a 26 year tenure as the elected prosecutor for Texas’ 10th largest county. Healey, a Republican, was originally appointed to office in 1992 and has been reelected six times. He faced a general election challenger only once; in […]
The Illinois Supreme Court has smacked down a prosecutor who created his own private police force with civil asset forfeiture dollars. Former LaSalle County State Attorney Brian Towne created the task force in 2011. According to Forbes, “Using the state’s civil forfeiture laws, which allow law enforcement to seize — and keep — property even if the owner has never been criminally charged, […]
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is urging the state of New York to create a independent commission to look into what he has called a “wrongful convictions crisis” in Brooklyn. Since 2014, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU) has investigated at least 70 convictions; 23 have been overturned. The CRU, which was started by the […]
The Iowa Court of Appeals overturned a conviction after finding that a Scott County prosecutor’s removal of the only two black people from a jury pool was motivated by race. In 2015, Marquise Miller, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to up to five years in prison. Police had said Miller and two others fled a Dillards […]
A Hawaii judge has blasted Honolulu prosecutors for bringing charges against a woman who’d previously filed a sex discrimination suit against a major donor. Judge Karen Nakasone dismissed all charges against Laurel Mau, an architect who worked for Mitsunaga & Associates, an influential architectural and engineering firm that had been one of the top donors to the […]