Facts Behind the Fiction
They say truth is stranger than fiction. In these cases, truth is scarier that fiction.
Just so there's no doubt, any individuals named here should be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And, as we'll see, even then guilt may not be certain.
In 2007, Robert Pickton, a pig farmer from British Columbia, Canada, was found guilty on six charges of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Of course, his defense attorneys appealed. This past week, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the convictions and soon afterward the B.C. Supreme Court stayed the remaining charges in 20 other murders.
Now that the due process of law has run its course, other evidence, unheard during Pickton's original trial, has been unsealed and is being revealed.
A couple of facts:
- A Vancouver prostitute claimed Pickton tried to kill her in 1997, five years before his first murder charge.
- Meat found in Pickton's freezer was contaminated with human DNA.
Should the jury in Pickton's original trial have been allowed to hear this evidence? Might they have reached a different verdict if they had? Would they have found Pickton guilty of first-degree murder?
It's impossible to know if the outcome would have been any different had additional evidence been presented. Nor is it unusual for evidence to be withheld from a jury if it's not directly related to the charges at hand, and if it may prejudice the jurors one way or the other.
If you were on trial for some crime, would you want the jury to know about every other misdeed you may have committed in your life?
We've all seen courtroom dramas where the prosecutor asks the victim or another witness if the assailant is in the room. Without hesitation, the witness points to the defendant. It can be a devastating blow for the defense. Yet, eyewitness testimony may also exonerate an accused.
Unfortunately, eyewitness testimony -- regardless of who it favors -- is notoriously unreliable, based on imperfect memories. Now, a recent study by Cornell University suggests that those memories may be even less reliable than perviously thought, particularly when the subject is under stress.
During the study, researchers exposed both children and adults to negative stimuli while they performed memory tests. The findings indicate that negative emotions -- such as one might experience during a violent crime -- lead to low true memory levels and high false memory levels. Further, adults tended to be more susceptible than children to this influence.
How studies like this will affect our judicial system remains to be seen. Just remember, even the most credible eyewitness may be mistaken.
In 1981, Raymond Towler was arrested and convicted for the rape of an 11-year-old girl. As so often happens in such cases, Towler insisted he was innocent, but he had no way to prove it. So Towler went to prison, where his sole exposure to the world was through a small television in his cell.
In 2004, with the help of the Ohio Innocence Project, Towler applied for DNA tests. He also had to apply to make sure the physical evidence in his case wouldn't be destroyed. It took about five years, but Towler received permission for his tests, in March of 2009. Another year passed before the court agreed to hear the results of the tests, which proved what Towler had said all along, that he was innocent. Then two more months went by before the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court overturned Towler's conviction, allowing him to finally walk free, no longer viewing the world through a small glass screen.
If Ronnie Lee Gardner gets his wish, he'll meet the end of his life facing a firing squad. Gardner, convicted of murdering an attorney during his 1985 courthouse escape attempt, has requested execution by firing squad, and a Utah judge has given the OK.
Utah has removed the firing squad option, but Gardner first made his request before that decision, so Third District Judge Robin Reese has granted the petition, signing the death warrant for a June 18, 2010 date.
An hour before he was scheduled to be executed for a triple-murder which he claims he didn't commit, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution. Skinner is asking for DNA testing for previously untested evidence. Those tests could not only exonerate him but reveal the identity of the real murderer.
Of course, the stay granted by the Court is only temporary. It will give justices a chance to determine whether they'll review Skinner's appeal. Not review it, mind you, just determine if they will review it.
Given what's at stake, you'd think that would be an easy decision to make.
Did Texas execute an innocent man in 2004, when Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death for murder by arson? Many believe so. More than half a dozen independent arson experts have pointed to faulty evidence used to obtain Willingham's conviction, at the very least raising the possibility that an innocent man was executed.
The State now has an opportunity to avoid repeating the same mistake in the case of Hank Skinner, due to be executed on Wednesday, March 24th. Skinner claims he's innocent, and he's begging for DNA testing that may prove it. So far, Texas Governor Rick Perry has refused to grant a stay of execution so Skinner can get his test.
Why? What is the Governor afraid of?
Joran van der Sloot can't keep out of the public eye.
Twice arrested for the 2005 murder of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba, and twice released, van der Sloot is back in the news after making another confession.
Shortly after Natalee went missing, van der Sloot denied any involvement in her disappearance. But apparently he enjoyed the attention he got by being a suspect. In 2008, he appeared on Dutch television in a video in which he tells a friend that after leaving a nightclub with Natalee, he had sex with the 18-year old girl on a beach. She "started shaking" and lost consciousness. Van der Sloot says he panicked and called a friend to help him. The two men put Natalee's body in a boat, and the friend dumped her in the ocean the next day.
But that was a lie. Van der Sloot admitted making the comments, but said he only told his friend what he wanted to hear; it wasn't true.
Van der Sloot's current story skips the friend with the boat. In the new version, van der Sloot himself dumps Natalee's body in a swamp.
Police aren't buying it. Prosecutor Peter Blanken says that he and Aruba police tried to verify the story, speaking to witnesses and checking facts. But they've determined it couldn't be true.
So why would van der Sloot make another false confession? Blanken responds, "You should ask him. Maybe he wanted to be on camera or make some money."