CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Criminal Law Blog by Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

October 5, 2009

TEXAS GOV RICK PERRY IMPEDES INQUIRY ABOUT WHETHER TEXAS EXECUTED AN INNOCENT MAN

Filed under: Death Penalty Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , , — johntfloyd @ 11:46 am

Governor’s abrupt Dismissal of Chairman, Two Members of Texas Forensic Science Commission on Eve of Hearing Smacks of Political Cover-up

By: Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

It is one thing for a governor to have possibly presided over the execution of an innocent man but quite another for that governor to effectively shut down an official investigation into whether the forensic evidence used convict the man was reliable.

That’s precisely what Texas Gov. Rick Perry did on September 30, 2009 when he abruptly replaced three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission two days before the commission was scheduled to hear testimony from a renowned forensic expert who has cast serious doubts on the forensic evidence that sent Cameron Todd Willingham to his death on February 17, 2004 under Perry’s watch.

The governor has denied any ulterior personal or political motives for the firing of commission chairman Sam Bassett, an Austin attorney, and two other commission members. Bassett was instrumental earlier this year in securing the services the highly touted Maryland fire scientist and expert named Craig Beyler. The commission charged Beyler with the very specific task of determining whether the forensic evidence used to convict Willingham was reliable and satisfied nationally recognized scientific standards for the use of such evidence in arson cases. Beyler was not charged with the task of making a determination of whether or not Willingham was actually innocent.

“He [Beyler] appears to be one of the pre-eminent people in the fire and arson investigation field,” Bassett was quoted as saying in a January 27, 2009 Chicago Tribune article. (more…)

July 17, 2009

CHILD ADVOCATES OR HIRED GUNS?

Filed under: Child Abuse Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 1:34 am

Criminal Defense Attorneys Must Be Prepared To Aggressively Challenge Child Assessment Center, Child Abuse Experts

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

The “Mission” statement of the Houston Children Assessment Center “is to provide a professional, compassionate, and coordinated approach to the treatment of sexually abused children and their families and to serve as an advocate for all children in our community.” In its 2008 Annual Report, Yolanda Green, President of the Board of Directors of CAC, added that CAC “is an agency where children whose lives have been torn apart are given hope and the opportunity to begin the road to recovery.”

The CAC, which was founded in 1991, has morphed into more than a child advocacy and protection center. It has become a quasi-official arm of law enforcement and supplies professional witnesses for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in child sexual assault cases. Virtually every criminal defense attorney in Harris County who has tried a child sexual abuse case faced a CAC “expert” brought into court to testify for the prosecution about these cases. The agency has a history of misrepresenting the facts in these cases to Harris County juries, sometimes at the behest of the District Attorney’s Office.

For example, in April 2004 former Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal was forced to admit that “faulty physical exams” performed by a former nurse at CAC had put in jeopardy some 170 child sexual abuse cases and had possibly resulted in the wrongful conviction of some people.

Children suspected of being the victims of sexual abuse are given physical examinations, counseling and other services at CAC. The District Attorney’s office then uses the center’s “experts”, such as the former nurse who conducted the faulty physical exams in 2004, to testify about the impact on the abused children. Despite the 2004 fiasco, the District Attorney’s office continues to utilize CAC “experts” in child sexual abuse cases, knowing full well the center’s propensity to distort data in this sensitive field. (more…)

July 6, 2009

SHOULD EVIDENCE OF PRIOR FALSE ABUSE ALLEGATIONS BE ADMISSIBLE IN SEXUAL ASSAULT CASES?

Filed under: Sexual Assault Crime Attorney — Tags: , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 1:06 pm

Inadmissible Evidence under 608(b) of the Texas Rules of Evidence May be Admissible under 613(b), Rule 412 or Confrontation Clause

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

A Harris County federal jury recently awarded $5 million to George Rodriquez for the 17 years he spent in the Texas prison system after being wrongfully convicted of the rape of a 14-year-old girl. And a Harris County district court judge last December ordered Ricardo Rachell released after he spent six years in the Texas prison system after being wrongfully convicted of sexually molesting an eight-year-old boy.

These two cases are just a series of wrongful convictions in sex offense cases that have been uncovered in Harris County and throughout the State of Texas. It is easier to wrongfully convict a person of a sex offense than any other crime. There are few crimes that carry such a heinous social stigma. Just the mention of a child sex crime often creates a presumption of guilt (Just look to Michael Jackson). It is one of the few crimes that require only the word of the alleged victim to establish the guilt of the person accused. These are generally “she said/he said” kinds of facts scenarios. Just last year, this Firm successfully defended, at two separate trials, a corrections officer who had been charged with child sex crimes based solely on the word of the female inmates. Although our client was acquitted of the false rape accusations, he and his family were put through an ordeal of financial sacrifice, shame and embarrassment, and the loss of his career in law enforcement.

Beyond intentionally submitted false forensic evidence and mistaken identification, why is it so easy to wrongfully convict defendants charged in sex offense cases? The primary reason is that the evidentiary rules of evidence are stacked against the defendant in favor of protecting the alleged victim from further emotional “trauma” associated with sexual assault. For example, in Texas, a defendant does not have a per se right to impeach a sexual assault victim about prior false sexual assault allegations made by the victim.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (“CCA”) made this abundantly clear in 2000 in the case of Rudolfo Lopez. 1/ Lopez was convicted of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy (forcing the boy to perform oral sex on him over a period of several months) and sentenced to twelve years in prison. At his trial Lopez had sought to introduce evidence that two years earlier the boy had made a false allegation of physical abuse against his mother; namely, that his mother had thrown him against a washing machine. Lopez sought to use this false allegation the boy had made to the Department of Human Services, but the trial court refused to allow the evidence under Rule 608(b) of the Texas Rules of Evidence. Although a state appeals court would later rule that the evidence should have been admitted, the CCA reversed the appeals court ruling and upheld the trial court decision not to admit the false allegation evidence. 2/ (more…)

June 30, 2009

THE DNA FALLOUT CONTINUES

Filed under: Sexual Assault Crime Attorney — Tags: , , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 6:04 pm

District Attorney’s Office of the Third Judicial District v. Osborne; U.S. Supreme Court Blocks Ability for Wrongfully Convicted to Prove Innocence

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

George Rodriquez spent 17 years in the Texas prison system for a crime he did not commit. He was 26 years of age in 1987 when he was wrongfully convicted by a Harris County jury for the rape of a 14-year-old girl. The jury based its decision on a critical piece of forensic evidence; a pubic hair found in the victim’s underwear. A serologist with the Houston City Police Department’s Crime Lab determined that the pubic hair did not belong to another suspect in the rape case, Isidro Yanez. The serologist testified at Rodriquez’s trial, saying that while his forensic testing ruled out Yanez, it did not rule out Rodriquez.

Seventeen years later DNA testing established that the pubic hair in fact belonged to Yanez and not to Rodriquez. Rodriquez was released from prison in 2004. The Harris County District Attorney’s office refused to declare Rodriquez “actually innocent” of the crime. That official refusal to acknowledge his innocence precluded him from receiving a pardon and being awarded state compensation for his wrongful confinement. He filed a federal civil rights suit against the City of Houston and a federal court jury on June 25, 2009 awarded him $5 million dollars in damages for the 17-year wrongful imprisonment.

The Rodriquez case has not been the only Texas DNA case is the news lately. Two men convicted in the infamous 1991 Austin “yogurt shop” murder case were recently released on bond from jail. The convictions of the two men, Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, were reversed several months ago on appeal after DNA tests on the state’s evidence indicated the presence of an unknown suspect. Attorneys for the two men say the presence of DNA evidence of the unknown suspect exonerates their clients. Prosecutors do not agree. They believe the new evidence only indicates that yet another person was involved in the crime; therefore, prosecutors plan to continue their prosecution of Springsteen and Scott for the murders of the four teenage girls killed during the robbery of the Austin yogurt shop.

These two Texas cases illustrate the potentially devastating impact of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in an Alaska case that held state prisoners do not enjoy a constitutional right to post-conviction access to the State’s evidence for DNA testing. 1/ (more…)

June 17, 2009

DNA CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST

Filed under: Sexual Assault Crime Attorney — Tags: , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 3:11 am

City of Houston Sued; Disgraced Crime Lab on Trial After Wrongfully Convicted Man Exonerated After 17 Years in Prison

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

George Rodriquez was a 26-year-old young man in 1987 when he was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl in Harris County. A critical piece of evidence that led to his conviction was a pubic hair found in the girl’s underwear. A serologist with the Houston City Police Department’s crime lab, who we now know had a history of fabricating evidence to suit local prosecutorial and law enforcement needs, determined that the hair did not belong to a suspect named Isidro Yanez but the serologist did not eliminate Rodriquez as the owner of the hair. Seventeen years later DNA, which was not used as evidence in criminal trials in 1987, established that the hair in fact belonged to Yanez and not to Rodriquez.

At age 43 Rodriquez was released from the Texas prison system to be embraced by three daughters who had grown up while he was wrongfully imprisoned. He was able to visit the grave site of his deceased father who had not survived long enough to see his son vindicated. It was indeed a hard 17-year ordeal. There is no comfort for innocent men in prison—not even from their fellow inmates, especially if they have been convicted a sex offense against a child. The “sex offender” stigma places these individuals at the bottom of the prison subculture. The only real support they have are family members who refuse to accept the validity of the “criminal conviction” imposed upon their loved one.

It’s now payback time. George Rodriquez is now appearing before a local federal court where his attorney Barry Scheck, co-director of New York’s Cardozo School of Law’s Innocence Project, is demanding that the City of Houston to pay his client “tens of millions” of dollars in damages for the 1987 wrongful conviction. In his opening statement in U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa Gilmore’s courtroom, Scheck told jurors: “We will prove a false and misleading serology report violated [Rodriquez’s] constitutional right to a fair trial.”

Scheck announced his intention to call former Harris County District Attorney Johnny Holmes and former Houston Police Chief Lee Brown as witnesses. Attorney Robert Cambrice, who is representing the City of Houston, did spare the rod of accountability for Holmes or Rodriquez’s defense attorney. The Houston Chronicle reported (June 17, 2009) that Cambrice laid the blame for Rodriquez’s wrongful conviction “on bad lawyering by the prosecutor and Rodriquez’s late defense attorney that led to the false conviction, not an unquestioned lie by a city employee.” (more…)

March 22, 2009

THE RACHELL REPORT

Filed under: Sexual Assault Crime Attorney — Tags: , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 1:09 pm

Harris County District Attorney’s Office Discloses “Cascading, System-Wide Breakdown” Led to Wrongful Conviction and 6 Years Imprisonment of Innocent Man

By: Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

On December 14, 2008, we posted a blog titled The Conflicting Faces of Crime. One of those faces involved the wrongful conviction of Ricardo Rachell in 2003 for the aggravated sexual assault of an eight year old boy. Rachell was released from custody in December 2008 after he was exonerated by DNA evidence. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office and the Houston Police Department undertook a joint investigation to determine what went wrong in the Rachell case. On March 12, 2009, the two law enforcement agencies released the “Rachell Report” (“report”) which concluded that Rachell’s wrongful conviction was the result of a “cascading, system-wide breakdown.”

The “breakdown” in the Rachell case actually began outside the system. The report states that on Sunday, October 20, 2002, the eight year old boy “was observed running down Griggs Road, waving his hands in the air and crying.” An elderly man went to the child’s aid by taking him to Wyatt’s Cafeteria. Two women then took the boy home. The child did not convey to any of these people that he had been sexually assaulted. “He just stated that a man had a knife and was trying to kill him,” the report said. He did not provide a description of the attacker to these witnesses either.

Once home, patrol officers from the police department were summoned. The boy told these officers that a man had tried to kill him. The report does not indicate if the boy told these patrol officers the man had either tried or had actually sexually assaulted him. The report only stated that:

“The details he gave officers that night was that he was offered ten dollars to pick up trash and the man took him on the man’s bicycle. The location where he was abducted was the 3700 block of Southlawn. Those first officers did speak with the Complainant’s six year old friend who was with him just before the suspect took Complainant on his bike. The six year old also conveyed that the Complainant was offered ten dollars to pick up trash and was on a bicycle. The only description of the suspect in the offense report is that he was an unknown black male, age 30.” (more…)

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