21 October 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Gary McKinnon wins extradition battle

originally by: Computerworld
published: 16 October 2012

Gary McKinnon, indicted in 2002 on charges of hacking into U.S. government computers, will not be extradited to the U.S., the U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May said on Tuesday. The risk to McKinnon’s health posed by extradition to the U.S. was simply too great, according to May.

McKinnon has fought a decade-long battle in the U.K. courts to avoid extradition to the U.S., seeking instead to face trial in the U.K. He has Asperger’s syndrome and is at high risk for suicide, according to a statement issued Monday by his attorney Karen Todner.

2 October 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Angola death row inmate who gave false confession released after 15 years

originally by: nola.com
published: 28 September 2012

A Marrero man who spent 15 years on Louisiana’s death row for his wrongful conviction of raping and strangling to death 14-year-old Crystal Champagne under the Huey P. Long Bridge in 1996 walked out of the Angola prison a free man Friday.

Damon Thibodeaux, 38, was cleared, attorneys announced, confirming what he has said since his arrest on July 20, 1996: He caved after nine hours of interrogation by Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives and confessed to a crime he did not commit.

16 May 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Wrong man was executed in Texas

originally by: Yahoo! News UK
published: 15 May 2012

He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour.

Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report out Tuesday found. Even “all the relatives of both Carloses mistook them,” and DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman.

Liebman and five of his students at Columbia School of Law spent almost five years poring over details of a case that he says is “emblematic” of legal system failure.