As I continue to tell my own story, I am amazed and appalled daily by the number of cases that I find about wrongful convictions destroying lives in this country all in the false name of "justice".
I have found the professionals with the "Wrongful Convictions Blog" are one of the best groups to put things into perspective in an academic and legal tone.
"From the quantitative and qualitative analysis, Gould and his team determined that prevention begins at the police station starting with the interrogation and investigation of alibis. This is followed by several opportunities along the way to identify the innocent before they are wrongfully convicted. For example, if forensic testing was conducted earlier and the results became available sooner to investigators innocent suspects could be freed. But faulty identifications, absence of early forensic test results, and inadequate investigation of alibis leads to what Gould characterizes as a “perfect storm” of errors made worse by collective tunnel vision."
10 Factors Identified in Wrongful Convictions - I can directly relate to a number of the factors this study lists and many others...
- State death penalty culture/state punitiveness-there is a terrible environment in the armed forces revolving around any sexual assault and a genertion of weak commanders not willing to stand up and stop cases in fear of Congessional oversight and the sake of their own career. You are guilty until proven innocent under UCMJ...this is not a play on words...we are adminstratively "flagged" - think scarlet letter - everything is stopped in your career until you are proven innocent.
- Strength of prosecution’s case - actually the Army's case was very weak (over a dozen attorney's have reviewed the Record of Trial)
- Prosecution withheld evidence (Brady violation) - One of the most disgusting acts by uniformed Army JAG officers. They withheld evidence about an immunity deal, physical evidence, medical evidence and evidence that the complaining witness was having risky anonymous bareback sex via his own admission, a witness and his personal CDC form.
- Forensic evidence errors - there was ZERO, literally ZERO, forensic evidence in my case...the Army CID unit at Fort Myer, VA did not complete the investigation...they did not investigate my home and the most remarkable act..they did not investigate the complaining witness. They "believed" him.
- Strength of defendant’s case - even with many denied motions by the military judge, we had physical witnesses, medical and physical evidence. We even had the under oath testimony of the complaining witness admitting to stealing passwords from my home, "hacking" into my email and a website, lying to federal investigators, lying to the prosecution and lying to federal agency officials...All at the Article 32 hearing!
- Age of defendant - 45 years old
- Criminal history of defendant - ZERO
- Intentional misidentification-complaining witness admits to Identity theft "hacking" and presenting false information to the prosecution
- Lying by non-eyewitness - witnesses testified truthfully in my case! They testified that the complaining witness knew months before meeting the first of only two times-ever...the he knew I was HIV+. This fact alone is huge, he even tells CID in the initial statement that he knew I was HIV+ before being introduced to him as a mentor. Yet, the military judge believes that he drives 800 plus miles overnight from Alabama to Virginia to have unprotected sex with my whole family in the house! Are you serious?
- Family witness testified on behalf of defendant-This is just sad, but in my case the complaining witness testifies that my entire family was in the house! My mother was "the" lead witness because she was there! Sad that your family is seen as a negative in our justice system.
The facts, both presented and not presented, tell the story...I am Innocent!
The UCMJ system is BROKEN
Sexual Assault allegations MUST be investigated fully
False Allegations are REAL
HIV is NOT a crime
We continue to pray and hope that the appeal process will right this wrong.
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