The biggest issue for me for this Sum it Up! are the Cameron Todd Willingham hearings. The 3rd Court of Appeals, an Austin based appellate court, ruled last Tuesday that state District Judge Charlie Baird abused his discretion in handling an inquiry into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. The 3rd Court of Appeals found that Baird, who sits in Travis County, should not have held a hearing about the case in October after Navarro County District Attorney R. Lowell Thompson, whose office prosecuted Willingham, accused Baird of bias and asked him to recuse himself. “Judge Baird abused his discretion by failing to either recuse himself or refer the motion to the presiding judge of the administrative judicial district,” Chief Justice Woodie Jones wrote in the court’s opinion. Read more here and here. A comprehensive overview is best read the Innocence Blog in their Willingham Resource center.
Due to the Willingham case, the Houston Chronicle came with an editorial January 1, 2011, endorsing the abolition of the death penalty in Texas. “Events of the past year have convinced us that defendants have been executed on the basis of invalid evidence. They may or may not have been guilty, but the fact that we have convicted people based on faulty evidence leads inexorably to a horrible likelihood — that we have executed innocent people. The high number of death row prisoners eventually exonerated makes a strong case that other innocent but less fortunate prisoners have been wrongfully put to death. We don’t lose sleep over the execution of guilty murderers. But the possible or probable execution of the innocent should trouble every Texan.”
Not only Clouseau used the Holiday Break to tinker with a new theme, my friend Bob McAuley did the same for his company’s site so please check it out and let Bob know what you think.
Cruelty to the extreme hit me when I saw this newspaper article. Filipino Councilman Reynaldo Dagsa was taking a picture of his family on New Year’s Day. And while they posed near their car, and Reynaldo looked into the lens right before pressing the button, he saw his killer taking aim at him! Dagsa was killed and thanks to this photograph, his killer was arrested last Monday. The accomplice was arrested as well. The murder appears to be an act of revenge. DCC extends its condolences to the Dagsa family.
Many cold cases are in the news. Just a few:
- DNA solved the 1974 murder of Barbara Hall, Pomona, CA.
- An arrest was made in 20 year cold sexual assault cases in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. “Using DNA evidence Bankstown police received breaks in the cases when the Cold Case Justice Project re-examined forensic evidence in March 2010 and they were able to identify a man involved in both assaults. A 44-year-old man was arrested on Monday in Bowen, north Queensland.”
- The cops of the Wood County Sheriff’s Office hope to heat up the 1981 cold case of Victor Florea, who was found beaten to death inside his home. Investigators are requesting those with information regarding the homicide to contact the sheriff’s office at 1-419-354-9087 or the prosecutor’s office at 1-419-354-9250. Tips may also be called into the Wood County Crime Stoppers at 1-419-352-0077 or 1-800-54-CRIME.
- Three homicides in the greater LA area have been solved by DNA. It concerns the cases of Richard Murillo (2001), Carrie Waltier (2001), and Richard Graves (2002). Juan Pablo Camacho was identified by DNA as a suspect and subsequently arrested. Anyone with additional information about the Richard Murillo or Richard Graves case is urged to contact Long Beach Police Homicide Detective Bryan McMahon at 1(562) 570-7244. Anyone with information regarding the Carrie Waltier case is asked to contact Sheriff’s Cold Case Homicide Detective Domenick Recchia at 1(323) 890-5500. Anonymous tips regarding these cases or any other criminal activity may be called in to “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), or by texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or via the website, http://lacrimestoppers.org/.
- DNA also solved the 20 year old rape of a at that time 12 year old girl. The perpetrator, now identified as Marshall Wolfe, made his way into the victim’s bedroom while she was still asleep. He then threw the bed covers over her head and began to sexually assault her. Last year, police received the golden tip!
Kenneth Richey, who escaped the death penalty in Ohio, USA, cannot seem to find his way in the free world. After a series of troubles in the UK, he got into trouble back in the USA. This week, charges were dropped after his family refused to testify against him. Richey had been arrested in 2010 for allegedly battering his own son with a baseball bat. Let’s hope that this will be the last time Richey is arrested. It is sad to see him spiraling downwards after all the efforts made to keep him out of the execution chamber!
If you are following the UK Yeates murder case be sure to check out Alistair Sloan’s latest post on “the Media and Police Investigations.”
Adrian Mark Baron over at the Nutmeg Lawyer has a great post “Is blogging worth the effort?” Aside form the text, of course, I love the image of Presley blogging.
The surprise of the week: I was reading about El Paso’s oldest cold case. It concerned the 1966 murder of Ruby Lois Stephens, 18, who was found strangled by her husband, August 31, 1966. El Paso police still hope to solve this case. The same case was described in the El Paso Times: “Police said Stephens was strangled with a telephone cord that had been wrapped so tightly around her neck that a firefighter had difficulty removing it. According to El Paso Times archives, Stephens’ partly nude body was found by her husband, Army Spc. James Stephens, after he returned home from working an all-night shift at Fort Bliss. Ruby Stephens, a native of Cloudcroft, was last seen alive the previous evening, when friends visited the couple’s home. Those friends, who were also in the Army, were later cleared after taking lie detector tests.”
While reading further and scrolling down, I saw two comments underneath this article. They alerted me to a much older cold case: the 1957 disappearance of Margaret & William Patterson of El Paso. They left their home on March 5, 1957. The condition of the house and interior indicated they did not plan to leave forever. After reading those comments Vidster was hooked and started web searching. “The case was quietly reopened in 1984 when an undocumented worker, Reynaldo Nangaray, told police what he could not years ago when he was an illegal immigrant.” Nangaray later became a US citizen. Unfortunately “Nangaray died in a car accident two years after giving his statement to the Sheriff’s Department. Sgt. Jim Belknap of the sheriff’s Crimes Against Persons unit confirmed that Nangaray’s statement is on file.” Read more about the Patterson’s disappearance here. I checked NAMUS. The file for William D. Patterson is here. The file for Margaret Patterson is here.
Last, mind mapping. Call it doodling, “playing while you should be paying attention” or a different way of looking at matters. But no matter what you call it; mind mapping is all over Twitter! I like to blame my friend Michelle Hynes-Mcilroy. She started talking about mind mapping a while ago but has now more posts about it on her blog. After reading her blog, I went over my old law school notebooks (YES, I STILL have those!) and guess what…my best grades were in subjects where I was mind mapping. I just don’t think we called it mind mapping back then. Any way, Robert Richards joined the conversation and pointed me towards this article “Argument Mapping and Storytelling in Criminal Cases” by Floris Bex. I recommend reading it.