IAPE Evidence Blog

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
BYLINE: MITCH MITCHELL; mitchmitchell@star-telegram.com

Texas

More than a decade after his death and nearly 25 years since his arrest, the Texas Board of Par­dons and Paroles is rec­om­mend­ing clemency for a Fort Worth man who died in prison after being wrong­fully con­victed on rape charges.

The board sent a let­ter to Tim Cole’s attor­ney at the Inno­cence Project of Texas on Fri­day say­ing that it had voted to rec­om­mend clemency and for­warded its deci­sion to Gov. Rick Perry for his signature.

It would be the state’s first posthu­mous par­don, and Perry has indi­cated that he would sign an order clear­ing Cole’s name if rec­om­mended by the board.

“Gov. Perry looks for­ward to par­don­ing Tim Cole pend­ing the receipt of a pos­i­tive rec­om­men­da­tion from the Board of Par­dons and Paroles,” Perry spokes­woman Alli­son Cas­tle wrote in an e-mail to The Asso­ci­ated Press on Saturday.

Cory Ses­sion, who has been fight­ing to clear his brother’s name for years, said he antic­i­pates that the gov­er­nor will sign Cole’s par­don in March dur­ing a cer­e­mony in Fort Worth.

“To say that the wheels of jus­tice turn slowly would be an under­state­ment,” Ses­sion said Saturday.

“The ques­tion is: How many more Tim Coles are out there?”

As a Texas Tech Uni­ver­sity stu­dent, Cole became the tar­get of a ser­ial rape inves­ti­ga­tion in Lubbock.

While Cole main­tained his inno­cence, in 1985 he was sen­tenced to 25 years in prison.

He died in 1999, at age 39, from com­pli­ca­tions of asthma.

Jerry Wayne John­son, serv­ing life in prison for a series of rapes, was linked to Cole’s case by DNA test­ing in 2008, but only after writ­ing let­ters for years, while Cole was still alive, to Lub­bock County pros­e­cu­tors and judges con­fess­ing to the crime. Johnson’s let­ters were ignored.

The Inno­cence Project pressed for the DNA tests after John­son mailed a con­fes­sion to Cole’s fam­ily in 2007.

State Dis­trict Judge Char­lie Baird in Austin pro­nounced Cole not guilty dur­ing an exon­er­a­tion hear­ing last year, say­ing he had “suf­fered the great­est mis­car­riage of jus­tice imag­in­able in our crim­i­nal jus­tice system.”

His brother’s ordeal has lead Ses­sion to become an advo­cate for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform in Austin and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Ses­sion said orga­ni­za­tions he works with esti­mate that 2 to 5 per­cent of peo­ple con­victed in Texas have been con­victed wrongfully.

At the end of fis­cal 2007, the Texas Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice reported that about 750,000 peo­ple — 1 in every 22 Tex­ans — were in prison or jail or on parole or probation.

“I hope that it makes peo­ple under­stand that just because some­one comes into your court under­funded and under­rep­re­sented, it does not nec­es­sar­ily mean that they are guilty,” Ses­sion said. “And I hope that it never takes another fam­ily this long to clear the name of an inno­cent fam­ily member.”

Last year, the Texas Leg­is­la­ture passed the Tim Cole Act, increas­ing the lump sum com­pen­sa­tion to vic­tims of wrong­ful impris­on­ment from $50,000 to $80,000 for each year of imprisonment.

Cole’s fam­ily is eli­gi­ble but has not filed a claim.

“Most of the time, every one of these cases sig­ni­fies that the sys­tem has gone wrong badly and that some­where in this state there’s some guilty guy won­der­ing around com­mit­ting more crimes,” said Jeff lack­burn, chief coun­sel for the Inno­cence Project.

“That’s a point that I wish most pros­e­cu­tors and police would under­stand. The inno­cent should be freed, and the guilty should be caught and pun­ished. It’s crazy that a group of over­worked lawyers and wide-eyed law stu­dents should have to do that. The state should be doing this work.”

This report includes mate­r­ial from The Asso­ci­ated Press .

MITCH MITCHELL, 817 – 390-7752

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

Los Ange­les Times

Seat­tle, WA

Feb­ru­ary 26, 2010 | 2:12 p.m.

SEATTLE (AP) — DNA evi­dence has led Seat­tle police to arrest an Everett man in what may be one of the department’s old­est cold cases.

A detec­tive arrested 73-year-old Sam Pietro Evans on Thurs­day for inves­ti­ga­tion in the 1972 rob­bery and shoot­ing death of Jack­son Sch­ley and the kid­nap­ping and rape of his wife. Work at a State Patrol crime lab gave police enough infor­ma­tion to make an arrest.

Detec­tive Mike Ciesynksi told The Seat­tle Times that even though the sus­pect is old and infirm, he’s still dan­ger­ous. Evans is sched­uled for a Fri­day bail hear­ing in King County Supe­rior Court.

Inves­ti­ga­tors also are inves­ti­gat­ing Evans in con­nec­tion with an unsolved killing of a man dur­ing a 1968 rob­bery in Seat­tle and the slay­ing of a woman in the early 1970s in Pasco.

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Infor­ma­tion from: The Seat­tle Times, http://www.seattletimes.com

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

Tar­geted News Ser­vice
BYLINE: Tar­geted News Service

Wis­con­sin

Offend­ers No Longer in Cus­tody Or on Super­vi­sion Must Sub­mit Spec­i­mens Attor­ney Gen­eral Van Hollen Advises

The Wis­con­sin Attor­ney Gen­eral issued the fol­low­ing news release:

Attor­ney Gen­eral J.B. Van Hollen sent a let­ter today to Richard Raemisch, Sec­re­tary of the Wis­con­sin Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions, explain­ing the legal oblig­a­tions of con­victed offend­ers to sub­mit DNA for inclu­sion in the databank.

The let­ter also dis­cussed options for obtain­ing DNA from those who are no longer in DOC cus­tody or on DOC super­vi­sion and rec­om­mends statu­tory changes to strengthen the law gov­ern­ing DNA submissions.

Con­clu­sions of the let­ter include:

* The oblig­a­tion to sub­mit a bio­log­i­cal spec­i­men does not expire. Even if the Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions did not take a sam­ple when an offender was in prison or require the sub­mis­sion of a sam­ple when the offender was on super­vi­sion, offend­ers ordered or under a statu­tory require­ment to sub­mit a sam­ple are under a legal duty to pro­vide a
sam­ple at the office of the county sheriff.

* If the offender is not under DOC con­trol, DOC may attempt to secure an offender’s vol­un­tary com­pli­ance by direct­ing the offender to the county sher­iff for sub­mis­sion of a bio­log­i­cal specimen.

* The inten­tional fail­ure to pro­vide a bio­log­i­cal spec­i­men con­sti­tutes a mis­de­meanor. See Wis. Stat. 165.765. Because this crime is a con­tin­u­ing offense, the statute of lim­i­ta­tions should not impede pros­e­cu­tions of offend­ers pre­vi­ously required to sub­mit a bio­log­i­cal spec­i­men but who have failed to do so.

* DOC may com­pel the pro­duc­tion of DNA from an offender while the offender is in DOC cus­tody or under DOC super­vi­sion for an offense giv­ing rise to a duty to sub­mit a bio­log­i­cal spec­i­men, and may also use appro­pri­ate sanc­tions for the ongo­ing fail­ure to sub­mit DNA if the offender is on pro­ba­tion for an offense that does not inde­pen­dently give rise to the oblig­a­tion to sub­mit DNA.

Van Hollen’s let­ter noted that the col­lec­tion of a bio­log­i­cal spec­i­men is best per­formed at the onset, when an offender is in Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions’ cus­tody or under its super­vi­sion for an offense that gives rise to the oblig­a­tion to pro­vide it. At that point, Van Hollen writes, the State’s author­ity to com­pel the sub­mis­sion of a bio­log­i­cal spec­i­men is most effec­tive. When the offender is no longer on super­vi­sion and has failed to sub­mit DNA, the state’s options are more lim­ited. Encour­ag­ing vol­un­tary coop­er­a­tion is appro­pri­ate, Van Hollen concludes.

Absent vol­un­tary coop­er­a­tion, the state may crim­i­nally pros­e­cute offend­ers or seek a con­tempt sanc­tion. Nei­ther option nec­es­sar­ily results in the pro­duc­tion of a sam­ple and both are poten­tially resource-intensive. Van Hollen stated that it would be desir­able for the law to cre­ate a non-criminal mech­a­nism to obtain an order to com­pel DNA sub­mis­sions with­out the need for fur­ther crim­i­nal process. He has been work­ing on these pro­posed changes that would revise and strengthen Wis­con­sin law relat­ing to the col­lec­tion of DNA.

A copy of the let­ter may be found at:

http://www.doj.state.wi.us/news/files/RaemischLetter2-25 – 10.pdf.

Addi­tional Background

The Depart­ment of Jus­tice oper­ates the state’s crime lab­o­ra­to­ries, which includes the State’s DNA data bank.

Cer­tain con­victed offend­ers, such as those in prison for a felony on or after Jan­u­ary 1, 2000, are required by statute or court order to sub­mit DNA sam­ples to the state crime lab­o­ra­to­ries for inclu­sion in the DNA data bank. Bio­log­i­cal spec­i­mens of offend­ers are taken by the Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions or a county sher­iff. Spec­i­mens are gen­er­ally obtained through a buc­cal swab. Those sam­ples are then sent to the state crime lab­o­ra­to­ries, where a pro­file is gen­er­ated (gen­er­ally through a con­tract lab), the work is reviewed, and then the pro­file is uploaded into the DNA con­victed offender data bank. Pro­files con­tained in a foren­sic data­base (com­prised of DNA from crime scenes) and pro­files gen­er­ated from indi­vid­ual case inves­ti­ga­tions are com­pared against the pro­files in the DNA data bank. A “hit” to the con­victed offender data bank links the case with the con­victed offender, and thus the data bank is a pow­er­ful tool to iden­tify suspects.

Con­tact: William A. Cosh, 608/266‑1221

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org