John T. Floyd Law Firm
Houston Criminal Lawyer
"Serious Criminal Defense Throughout Texas"
Experienced Criminal Defense Lawyer
Trials, Sentencings and Appeals
Federal And State Criminal Defense
Phone # (713) 224-0101
Toll Free 1-866-374-1327
E-mail jfloyd@JohnTFloyd.com
Top Lawyers: Criminal Defense - 2008, 2009 HTexas
WRONGFULLY CONVICTED ISSUES
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December 19, 2009
THE REAL DANGER OF EXTRANEOUS OFFENSE EVIDENCE
Man Convicted on 2 Counts Indecency with a Child Found Actually Innocent After Nearly Two Decades in Prison: Extraneous Evidence False, Expert Testimony Wrong.
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
We have written on numerous occasions about the dangers of “extraneous offense evidence” when allowed into evidence in a criminal trial. What is extraneous offense evidence? more...
December 8, 2009
MORE EVIDENCE OF BAD EVIDENCE
Criminal Defense Attorneys Must Request and Analyze Procedures for Testing, Accepted Protocols and Handling of Forensic Evidence
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John T. Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
A criminal defense attorney’s worst nightmare is that the prosecution will rely upon bad evidence to convict his/her client. Defending against relevant, admissible evidence is difficult enough, but there is no real defense against shoddy law enforcement’s collection, processing, and storage of the evidence the prosecution will rely upon in criminal cases. The Houston City Police Department (“HPD”) has a long, sordid history of destroying, botching, and even manufacturing false evidence in criminal cases. more...
November 29, 2009
TEXAS FORENSIC SCIENCE COMMISSION LACKS CREDIBILITY
Governor’s Sacking of Commission’s Head Stalls Review of Junk Science Convictions
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
The Texas Legislature created the Forensic Science Commission (“FSC”) in 2005 to investigate what the Texas Monthly called “scientific negligence and misconduct.” The legislature acted following the February 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham and the October 2004 decision by Pecos County District Attorney Ori White to free Ernest Willis from capital murder charges. Willingham and Willis had both been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for murders they allegedly committed by setting fires to dwellings in which five people were killed—two women in Willis’ case and Willingham’s three young daughters. The forensic arson evidence used to convict both men was virtually identical. In fact, as Michael Hall wrote recently in Texas Monthly, these two condemned men had a lot in common: more...
October 5, 2009
TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY IMPEDES INQUIRY ABOUT WHETHER TEXAS EXECUTED AN INNOCENT MAN
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. more...
September 17, 2009
DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE DOESN’T CARE IF CYNTHIA CASH IS ACTUALLY INNOCENT
The Philosophy of Convict at any Cost Continues in Harris County
By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
Dr. Patricia Moore is the former associate medical examiner in Harris County. The Houston Chronicle (Sept. 14, 2009) reported that the doctor has been “repeatedly disciplined for failing to follow procedures and for favoring the prosecution in 1998 and 1999” in child death cases. more...
August 12, 2009
SIXTH INNOCENT HARRIS COUNTY MAN FREED
Hall of Shame: Texas Leads Nation in DNA Exonerations
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
That the Houston City Police Department’s Crime Lab was a lawless, rogue unit serving the “convict at any costs” philosophy of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office during the Johnny Holmes and Charles “Chuck” Rosenthal administrations, between 1980 and 2005, is no longer a subject of serious debate. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of innocent people—mostly poor minorities charged with homicides or sex crimes—were railroaded off to Texas prisons based on fabricated (or at best faulty) forensic evidence supplied by the Crime Lab and/or due to mistaken identification secured to corrupt pretrial photo lineup procedures. more...
June 30, 2009
THE DNA FALLOUT CONTINUES
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. more...
June 17, 2009
DNA CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST
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. more...
June 11, 2009
THE HARRIS COUNTY CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Past Abuses, Hopes for Better Future
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
Three recent stories in the Houston Chronicle exposed serious flaws in the Harris County criminal justice system. The first story concerned a 60-year prison term imposed on Andrew Wayne Hawthorne, a serial child molester. Hawthorne molested an eight year old boy in the fall of 2002. A crime for which a wrongly accused man, Ricardo Rachell, was convicted and sentenced to prison. Ricardo Rachell was convicted for this sexual assault and spent more than six years in the Texas prison system before readily available DNA evidence at the time of his arrest was finally tested and established his innocence. more...
May 1, 2009
FALSE FORENSICS: AN ATTORNEY’S WORST NIGHTMARE, INJUSTICE TO US ALL
Gary Alvin Richard; Wrongly Convicted Man Released after 22 Years
By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
They are called “experts.” Prosecutors parade them into court dressed in respectful suit ware and carry resumes packed with a laundry list of degrees. They then testify about the science of “forensic evidence” in ways that more often confuse rather than clarify the issues being tried in a criminal case. Worst yet, many of these “CSI” experts testify falsely, or in misleading fashion, about test results they either did not perform correctly or whose results they manufactured to fit a given prosecutorial objective. Incompetent or unethical “forensic experts” are a criminal defense attorney’s worst nightmare. more...
April 16, 2009
THE CONTINUING SAGA OF THE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED
Factors Contributing to Wrongful Convictions and Unjust Imprisonment
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
In a March 16, 2009 article (“Cold Shoulder from Lubbock Officials in Cole Case”), we wrote extensively about the tragic wrongful conviction of Timothy Cole. A military veteran and college student, this son of a school teacher and Bell Helicopter manager was convicted in 1986 for the December 1985 rape of a Texas Tech student in Lubbock, Texas. Despite vigorous protestations of innocence from Cole and his family, Cole was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison where he died fourteen years later. more...
March 22, 2009
THE RACHELL REPORT
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.” more...
October 29, 2008
DNA EXONERATIONS QUESTION EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
By: Criminal Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Senior Paralegal Billy Sinclair
The Dallas Morning News (October 2008) ran two articles written by Steve McGonigle and Jennifer Emily that linked 19 DNA exonerations to faulty eyewitness testimony. These two investigative reporters opened their series with the tragic story of Wiley Fountain who spent 15 years in the Texas prison system wrongfully convicted of rape: more...
August 22, 2008
DNA FREES ANOTHER INMATE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED OF RAPE
By: Criminal Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Senior Paralegal Billy Sinclair
18 years ago Robert McClendon, then 34 years of age, was convicted and sentenced to 15 years to life in Franklin County, Ohio for allegedly raping a 10-year-old girl. Prosecutors charged that McClendon took a 10-year-old relative from her backyard and drove her to another house where he raped her. There was no physical evidence linking him to the alleged rape. The prosecution relied almost exclusively on the testimony of the child victim. The prosecution’s belief that it had the “right man” was influenced by the fact that McClendon, when he was 19 years of age, had been convicted of “corruption of a minor” involving consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl. more...
March 13, 2007
COURT ALLOWS WRONGFUL CONVICTION LAWSUIT TO PROCEED
By: Criminal Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Senior Paralegal Billy Sinclair
Dennis Patrick Brown, an African-American was convicted in Covington, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana in 1984 for the crime of aggravated rape of a white woman and given a mandatory life sentence without the benefit of parole. Twenty years later he was exonerated by DNA evidence and released from custody. See: Brown v. Miller, 2008 LEXIS 4169 (5th Cir., Feb. 27, 2008) More...
June 22, 2007
HOUSTON CRIME LAB NEEDS SPECIAL MASTER
By: Criminal Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Senior Paralegal Billy Sinclair
Two years ago the “crime lab” for the Houston Police Department was a national scandal. Its shoddy analysis and unprofessional investigation protocol had apparently resulted in the conviction of scores of innocent criminal defendants. Mayor Bob White vowed to clean up the disgraceful mess and restore law enforcement integrity to the crime laboratory. Michael Bromwich, a former U.S. Justice Department inspector, was assigned the task of investigating the crime lab, its procedures, and issue recommendations. Bromwich fulfilled his commission on June 13, 2007 when he issued a 400-page report whose recommendations were not readily embraced by the very city officials who pushed for Bromwich’s investigation in 2005. More...
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