wheezer
03-05-2008, 02:29 PM
NORWALK - David Shephard walked out of prison in 1994 after serving more than nine years of a 30-year term for a rape he didn't commit.
Shephard, who was freed based on DNA evidence with the help of the nonprofit Innocence Project, spoke to criminal justice students yesterday at Norwalk Community College.
After being exonerated, Shephard founded the Northeast Council of the Wrongly Convicted to help exonerated people re-enter society; the group is now helping 75 exonerated people nationwide and works with the Innocence Project to pass laws mandating monetary compensation for wrongful convictions.
"People who get parole get more than these guys. Some are released with $20 and a bus ticket. Some get suits," Shephard said.
Like 28 other states, Connecticut has no compensation statute for exonerated people.
"We don't have a statute in effect, whether we get one further down the road, that would be nice," Karen Goodrow, attorney and director of the Connecticut Innocence Project, said in a separate interview yesterday.
New Jersey requires that exonerated people to be paid $20,000 per year in prison, or double the inmate's income at the time of incarceration, whichever is greater.
Founded 31Ú2 years ago, the Connecticut branch of the Innocence Project is now investigating more than 120 cases, Goodrow said.
The state group won its first exoneration in 2006 after Goodrow and attorney Brian Carlow helped free an East Hartford man more than 18 years after he began a 45-year prison term on a rape and kidnapping conviction.
James Tillman was awarded a $5 million settlement by a special act of the legislature after advanced DNA testing on the accuser's clothing proved he was not the perpetrator.
The Connecticut Innocence Project existed as a voluntary organization under the public defender system until the legislature provided funding for four designated positions last summer, but more needs to be done, Goodrow said.
A bill submitted by the public defender's office would ensure fair identification procedures when eyewitnesses review lineups, she said.
To cut down on false identifications, the bill would require that individuals in a lineup be presented one by one, that they are presented by a blind administrator, and that witnesses are instructed that it is just as important not to convict an innocent person as it is to convict the guilty.
In Shephard's case, a 1983 incident involving the abduction of a woman from a Hillside, N.J., parking lot, the prosecution relied on the victim's identification of him, in part based on his voice.
His defense was an alibi that went uncorroborated. For years after his exoneration, Shephard kept a paper trail of his whereabouts at the time, including a shoebox full of his old time-stamped bus tickets.
"I was so afraid of being somewhere nobody knew where I was at because of what happened to me. It was a long time before I could throw that stuff in the garbage," Shephard said.
Norwalk resident Gail Howard, who oversees NCC's academic partnerships with area high schools and businesses, said she has seen how abruptly a wrongful accusation can turn someone's life upside down. Howard attended the talk with her stepdaughter Della Wilder, whose husband, David Wilder, is appealing a reinstated aggravated manslaughter conviction by New Jersey's state Supreme Court.
Anyone can find themselves caught up in a wrongful conviction case, said Della Wilder, who maintains her husband's innocence in the 2002 Paterson, N.J., fatal beating.
"If someone would have told me this could happen to me, or that innocent people go to jail, I would never have believed it," Wilder said. "If someone was to tell me five years ago I would be sitting in this particular predicament, if I bet my life on it, I would have lost."
Though dismayed the Innocence Project cannot take up her husband's case because it does not include physical DNA evidence, Wilder said she was hopeful after meeting Shephard and still has faith in the justice system.
Howard urged that jury members think critically when they are weighing someone's life and liberty.
"If you ever serve on a jury, make sure it's the best work you've ever done," Howard said. " I used to be like everyone and think, 'Oh, I hope I don't get called for jury duty.' But now I'm hoping they call me. I would put my heart into it, it's so important."
The national Innocence Project has freed 214 wrongfully convicted prisoners using DNA evidence since it was established in 1992 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law by civil rights attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld.
In 80 of those cases, the true perpetrator has been identified through DNA testing, said Innocence Project staff attorney Vanessa Potkin, and many perpetrators committed further crimes after others were wrongly convicted.
In many cases, it is a fight to win the right to test DNA, she said.
"In Louisiana we have been fighting for 13 years to get testing of a rape kit that is just sitting on a shelf. It defies any sense of decency or common sense," Potkin said.
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-nor.innocence8mar05,0,2386046.story
Shephard, who was freed based on DNA evidence with the help of the nonprofit Innocence Project, spoke to criminal justice students yesterday at Norwalk Community College.
After being exonerated, Shephard founded the Northeast Council of the Wrongly Convicted to help exonerated people re-enter society; the group is now helping 75 exonerated people nationwide and works with the Innocence Project to pass laws mandating monetary compensation for wrongful convictions.
"People who get parole get more than these guys. Some are released with $20 and a bus ticket. Some get suits," Shephard said.
Like 28 other states, Connecticut has no compensation statute for exonerated people.
"We don't have a statute in effect, whether we get one further down the road, that would be nice," Karen Goodrow, attorney and director of the Connecticut Innocence Project, said in a separate interview yesterday.
New Jersey requires that exonerated people to be paid $20,000 per year in prison, or double the inmate's income at the time of incarceration, whichever is greater.
Founded 31Ú2 years ago, the Connecticut branch of the Innocence Project is now investigating more than 120 cases, Goodrow said.
The state group won its first exoneration in 2006 after Goodrow and attorney Brian Carlow helped free an East Hartford man more than 18 years after he began a 45-year prison term on a rape and kidnapping conviction.
James Tillman was awarded a $5 million settlement by a special act of the legislature after advanced DNA testing on the accuser's clothing proved he was not the perpetrator.
The Connecticut Innocence Project existed as a voluntary organization under the public defender system until the legislature provided funding for four designated positions last summer, but more needs to be done, Goodrow said.
A bill submitted by the public defender's office would ensure fair identification procedures when eyewitnesses review lineups, she said.
To cut down on false identifications, the bill would require that individuals in a lineup be presented one by one, that they are presented by a blind administrator, and that witnesses are instructed that it is just as important not to convict an innocent person as it is to convict the guilty.
In Shephard's case, a 1983 incident involving the abduction of a woman from a Hillside, N.J., parking lot, the prosecution relied on the victim's identification of him, in part based on his voice.
His defense was an alibi that went uncorroborated. For years after his exoneration, Shephard kept a paper trail of his whereabouts at the time, including a shoebox full of his old time-stamped bus tickets.
"I was so afraid of being somewhere nobody knew where I was at because of what happened to me. It was a long time before I could throw that stuff in the garbage," Shephard said.
Norwalk resident Gail Howard, who oversees NCC's academic partnerships with area high schools and businesses, said she has seen how abruptly a wrongful accusation can turn someone's life upside down. Howard attended the talk with her stepdaughter Della Wilder, whose husband, David Wilder, is appealing a reinstated aggravated manslaughter conviction by New Jersey's state Supreme Court.
Anyone can find themselves caught up in a wrongful conviction case, said Della Wilder, who maintains her husband's innocence in the 2002 Paterson, N.J., fatal beating.
"If someone would have told me this could happen to me, or that innocent people go to jail, I would never have believed it," Wilder said. "If someone was to tell me five years ago I would be sitting in this particular predicament, if I bet my life on it, I would have lost."
Though dismayed the Innocence Project cannot take up her husband's case because it does not include physical DNA evidence, Wilder said she was hopeful after meeting Shephard and still has faith in the justice system.
Howard urged that jury members think critically when they are weighing someone's life and liberty.
"If you ever serve on a jury, make sure it's the best work you've ever done," Howard said. " I used to be like everyone and think, 'Oh, I hope I don't get called for jury duty.' But now I'm hoping they call me. I would put my heart into it, it's so important."
The national Innocence Project has freed 214 wrongfully convicted prisoners using DNA evidence since it was established in 1992 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law by civil rights attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld.
In 80 of those cases, the true perpetrator has been identified through DNA testing, said Innocence Project staff attorney Vanessa Potkin, and many perpetrators committed further crimes after others were wrongly convicted.
In many cases, it is a fight to win the right to test DNA, she said.
"In Louisiana we have been fighting for 13 years to get testing of a rape kit that is just sitting on a shelf. It defies any sense of decency or common sense," Potkin said.
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-nor.innocence8mar05,0,2386046.story