DA says she doesn’t recall denying DNA tests BY JIM FITZGERALD The Associated Press
WHITE PLAINS — A lawyer for former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Tuesday that Pirro does not recall denying or even receiving any requests for DNA tests from a man who had been wrongly convicted of murder. The convicted man, Jeffrey Deskovic, was freed last year, after 16 years in prison, when Pirro’s successor, Janet DiFiore, had the crime scene DNA retested and it implicated another man. Deskovic has claimed Pirro turned down his request several times. And a report on the case, requested by DiFiore and released Monday, stated that Pirro “consistently rejected” requests to run the crime scene DNA through state and federal databases. But Pirro’s attorney, William Aronwald, said Tuesday that if the report’s authors had asked her about it, “She would have told them that in fact she has no recollection of ever receiving any correspondence from Deskovic and certainly has no recollection of ever writing back to him or rebuffing any requests that he made for additional DNA testing.” Deskovic “did get a raw deal, but if he got a raw deal it wasn’t at the hands of Jeanine Pirro,” Aronwald said. A telephone call to retired Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder, an author of the report, was not immediately returned Tuesday. On Monday, she answered questions by saying, “The report speaks for itself.” Aronwald noted that the report, though extensively footnoted, does not document its assertion about DNA requests. And he said he was told that the district attorney’s office has no record of any DNA correspondence from Deskovic. He also noted that Deskovic has not produced any letters to back his claim. A call to the district attorney’s office late Tuesday was not answered. Deskovic, now 34, was convicted in 1990 of raping and killing a high school classmate. He said when he was released that in response to a 1997 letter requesting the DNA test, he got back “a very rude letter” of rejection. Pirro was running for attorney general when Deskovic got out; her campaign said that Deskovic had been convicted by a jury and that there was no new evidence in the case then to consider. Deskovic said Tuesday that the 1997 letter was lost “between prison and home.” He said that Pirro “did deny me, many times,” but that he did not have the correspondence. Both Deskovic and the Innocence Project, which aided in his release, said Pirro’s refusal to consider a DNA test is documented in court papers filed during Deskovic’s appeal of his conviction. Aronwald said, “There’s nothing in the federal case indicating that at all.” In a 2000 brief for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, after a lower court had rejected the appeal because it was filed too late, Deskovic’s lawyer argued that he should have “the opportunity to further establish his innocence by additional and new DNA testing employing the state of the art of DNA investigation in a science which can be even more certain today.” The district attorney’s answer to that brief — signed by an assistant district attorney under Pirro’s printed name — said the DNA argument and others were “grossly speculative.” The court decided against Deskovic.
Logged
BIGK75
July 5, 2007, 9:36am
Guest User
Didn't remember something? And I bet that she was one that thought that Scooter Libby should be sitting in jail for having a bad memory. Maybe she should be locked up for not remembering something and see how it feels.
Good point BK...guess it all boils down to what party is pulling for ya!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Woman held in killing freed due to DNA data BY CAROLYN THOMPSON The Associated Press
BUFFALO — A mother convicted of killing her teenage daughter was released from custody after 13 years Wednesday after DNA evidence placing a man at the scene persuaded a judge to order a new trial. Lynn Dejac wiped at tears with shackled hands as state Supreme Court Judge John Michalski ordered her freed without bail. She sobbed as a sheriff’s deputy removed the handcuffs and as she embraced her twin 13-year-old sons, who were born soon after she went to prison. Even if Dejac, 44, is convicted again of killing 13-year-old Crystallynn Girard, she would unlikely spend any more time behind bars. She already has served as much time as the manslaughter charge she now faces would carry. Even so, defense attorney Andrew LoTempio said Dejac will fight the charge to clear her name. “In her mind, she needs to be exonerated,” LoTempio said after Dejac and her family rushed from the courthouse into a waiting cab. She did not stop to speak to reporters. Before the hearing, Dejac’s sister, Carol Dejac, said her sister was anxious to visit her daughter’s grave. In deciding whether to set aside Dejac’s 1994 second-degree murder conviction, Erie County Court Judge Michael D’Amico had to weigh whether newly analyzed DNA evidence from the girl’s bedroom and body would have likely changed the outcome of the trial had it been available at the time. Skin cells found in a bloodstain on Crystallynn’s bed sheet, in a blood spatter on the wall and in the girl’s girl private match the DNA profi le of the mother’s ex-boyfriend, Dennis Donahue. LoTempio argued the evidence confirms suspicions that Donahue went to Dejac’s home looking for her and confronted and killed Crystallynn, who was alone there. Her naked body was found on her bed. Donahue was charged earlier this year with strangling another woman, Joan Giambra, in 1993, and has been described as a person of interest in a 1975 strangulation. His lawyer, Joseph Agro, did not return a telephone call seeking comment Wednesday. “We knew from the beginning she never did this,” said Lynn Dejac’s nephew, C.J. Vaughn, one of several relatives in the courtroom to see Dejac freed. Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark said prosecutors would move forward on the manslaughter charge, even though Dejac would not return to prison. “The question of guilt or innocence remains unanswered,” he said. “That’s why we have trials.” He did not oppose Dejac’s release on her own recognizance and estimated a trial would begin in the spring. A jury convicted Dejac based largely on circumstantial evidence and an alleged barroom confession to an acquaintance, Wayne Hudson. Dejac supporters have sought to discredit Hudson, saying the convicted felon cooperated with police to win favorable treatment on a forgery charge. Hudson has said he stands by his account — that Dejac told him she “lost it” and killed her daughter while high on drugs and alcohol. A jury acquitted Dejac of a charge of intentional murder and convicted her of depraved indifference murder. The double jeopardy statute prevents her from being tried again on the intentional murder charge, and she cannot be tried again for depraved indifference, attorneys said. Because of changes in the law, the charge no longer applies to cases like hers. DON HEUPEL/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Lynn Dejac realizes she will be free on bail after listening to Judge John Michalski’s ruling in the State Supreme Court in Buffalo on Wednesday.
Jan 3, 4:20 PM EST Texas inmate convicted of sexual assault freed after DNA tests; served 26 years in prison By JEFF CARLTON Associated Press Writer
DALLAS (AP) -- A man who contended throughout his 26 years in prison that he never raped a woman who lived five houses down from him was freed Thursday after a judge recommended overturning his conviction. Charles Chatman, 47, was released on his recognizance as several of his eight siblings cheered. He was freed on the basis of new DNA testing that lawyers say proves his innocence and adds to Dallas County's nationally unmatched number of wrongfully convicted inmates. "I'm bitter. I'm angry," Chatman told The Associated Press during his last night in jail Wednesday. "But I'm not angry or bitter to the point where I want to hurt anyone or get revenge." He became the 15th inmate from Dallas County since 2001 to be freed by DNA testing. Dallas has freed more inmates after DNA testing than any other county nationwide, said Natalie Roetzel of the Innocence Project of Texas. Texas leads the country in prisoners freed by DNA testing, with at least 30 wrongfully convicted inmates since 2001. Mike Ware, who heads the Conviction Integrity Unit in the Dallas County District Attorney's office, said he expects that number to increase. One of the biggest reasons for the large number of exonerations in Texas is the crime lab used by Dallas County, which accounts for about half the state's DNA cases. Unlike many jurisdictions, the lab used by police and prosecutors retains biological evidence, meaning DNA testing is a viable option for decades-old crimes. District Attorney Craig Watkins also attributes the exonerations to a past culture of overly aggressive prosecutors seeking convictions at any cost. Watkins has started a program in which law students, supervised by the Innocence Project of Texas, are reviewing about 450 cases in which convicts have requested DNA testing. Chatman was 20 when the victim, a young woman in her 20s, picked him from a lineup. Chatman said he lived five houses down from the victim for 13 years but never knew her. At the time the woman was assaulted, Chatman said he didn't have any front teeth; he had been certain that feature would set him apart from the real assailant. "I'm not sure why he ended up on that photo spread to begin with," Ware said. Chatman, who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault in 1981 and sentenced to 99 years in prison, said his faith kept him from giving up.
Confession tactics overturn conviction MELVILLE — A retired police detective is defending a tactic that prompted a Long Island teenager to confess to killing his parents — a confession he quickly recanted. The confession helped send Martin Tankleff to prison for more than 17 years, until an appeals court overturned his conviction last month. The court said jurors would probably reach a different verdict if they considered how the confession was obtained and other evidence now available. Tankleff confessed after then-Suffolk County Detective K. James McCready falsely told him his father had awoken from a coma and implicated him as the killer. Mc-Cready tells Newsday he “thought it was a good idea, and it worked.” One of Tankleff’s lawyers, Barry Pollack, says McCready’s maneuvers treaded “the outer reaches of legality.” Prosecutors said this week they won’t retry Tankleff.
DNA nice start but no cure-all Wrongful conviction and execution can’t be eliminated with certainty BY JEFFREY DESKOVIC For The Sunday Gazette
My name is Jeff Deskovic, and at 17 years of age I was wrongfully convicted of murder and rape. I served 16 years in New York state prison, based upon a coerced, false confession and other fabricated evidence before being cleared on Nov. 2, 2006, as a result of DNA showing the guilt of the real perpetrator. Since my release, I have given many presentations at colleges, high schools, churches and other community organizations on the subject of wrongful convictions. I have written numerous articles, and given many television, print and radio interviews. I lobby lawmakers, and sometimes testify at hearings. My life is now dedicated to raising public awareness about wrongful convictions, and to systemic reform to slow down the rate at which they occur. I believe that public education is the first step toward legislative changes. That is what brings me to want to share a few things in response to what Mr. Vito Spinelli’s Jan. 6 letter stated: “David Kaczynski’s Dec. 23 frontpage opinion column contained the same old bromides concerning the death penalty. The likelihood that innocent people would be executed has been eliminated with the development of DNA testing.” WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW My own first-hand experience with wrongful convictions has placed me in a position to have learned much on the subject, even beyond the issues in my own case. I would like to point out some things: New York is currently third in the nation with 23 wrongful convictions exposed as such by DNA; as a nation we are now up to 210. DNA testing, however, is no panacea. First, DNA evidence is only available in 10 percent of all serious felony cases. The same systemic errors that cause wrongful convictions — false confessions, eyewitness misidentification, witnesses being given better plea bargain deals in exchange for testimony, bad lawyering, junk science and police misconduct — are present in non-DNA as well as DNA cases. The recent exoneration of Martin Tankleff after 18 years, through the diligent work of an investigator who found witnesses pointing to the guilt of a third party, illustrates this. But what about those cases where there is no DNA to test, or the wrongfully convicted, having scant financial resources, is unable to obtain quality legal assistance? Second, even if DNA is present, it is not a guarantee that someone will not be wrongfully convicted. I was convicted, for example, despite DNA showing that semen found in the victim did not match me. It was only when, 16 years later, through the DNA Databank, I got lucky and the DNA matched the real perpetrator. If his DNA had not been in the databank through his being incarcerated on an unrelated crime, I would still be in prison. Capital punishment poses a risk of executing innocent people. If I had been 18 years old rather than 16 when this crime happened — just two years older than what I was — I have no doubt I would have received a death sentence. It was a brutal crime and there was community outrage, and I was convicted of a rape along with murder, an aggravating circumstance that can make a murder a capital rather than noncapital case. My appeals were exhausted in 2001, and I was not cleared until 2006. Conceivably, I would not have been alive to have been cleared. ERRORS ALWAYS POSSIBLE No systemic reforms at all have been passed; therefore, the risk of executing innocent people is high, as the 10 murder convictions that have been overturned in New York since 2000 illustrates. But even if all of the reforms in the world were enacted, it would not guarantee that there would be no wrongful convictions. The system is run by human beings, and we all sometimes make mistakes under the best of circumstances. Being wrongfully imprisoned is bad enough; having a threat of execution hanging over one’s head, thereby placing a clock on how quickly one must prove one’s innocence, would make it infinitely worse.
DNA links parolee to college student’s death The Associated Press
BOULDER, Colo. — A Wyoming prison parolee has been arrested in the 1997 rape and beating death of a University of Colorado senior after he was linked to the case by a DNA match and other evidence, police said Sunday. Diego Olmos-Alcalde, 38, was being held on $5 million bail on charges of first-degree murder, seconddegree kidnapping and first-degree assault for the rape and killing of 23-year-old Susannah Chase of Stamford, Conn., police said. “The department is ecstatic over this,” police Chief Mark Beckner said. Chase’s family praised investigators in a statement issued at the Sunday news conference. “As you might imagine our emotions have run the gamut since we first heard of the DNA match with Susannah’s case. We are delighted that a suspect has been identifi ed and apprehended,” the family said. Chase was walking home alone early Dec. 21 after an argument with her boyfriend when she was beaten with a baseball bat and left for dead in an alley a block from her home. Police believe the intended motive of the attack was sexual assault. Police never gave up on the case, and interviewed more than 100 people to try to find Chase’s killer, Beckner said. DNA taken from seminal fluid found on Chase’s body that was entered into a national DNA database, apparently recently, matched Olmos-Alcalde’s, Beckner said. He said investigators had other information linking Olmos-Alcalde to the attack, but declined to say what information. Boulder County Jail offi cials did not make Olmos-Alcalde available for comment by telephone. A jail official did not know whether Olmos-Alcalde had an attorney, and the prosecutor’s office was closed Sunday. Olmos-Alcalde, who is from Chile, went to prison in Wyoming for a kidnapping in 2000 and was released to immigration officials in July 2007, police said.
Olmos-Alcalde, who is from Chile, went to prison in Wyoming for a kidnapping in 2000 and was released to immigration officials in July 2007, police said.
so it's not the immigrants, sex offenders, drunk drivers etc that are the problem it's the lack of the whipping that is missing.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Mom Exonerated After 13 Years In Prison By CAROLYN THOMPSON
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- A woman who spent 13 years in prison after being convicted of strangling her 13-year-old daughter has been exonerated by forensic evidence showing she died of a cocaine overdose, a prosecutor in the case said Wednesday. But even as the district attorney announced that the death of Crystallynn Girard was not a homicide and could not be prosecuted, her now 44-year-old mother, Lynn DeJac, insisted that a former boyfriend was responsible. "It's not going to stay like this. My daughter was not a drug user ... My daughter was murdered. There's no question my daughter was murdered," she said, adding she has not yet considered whether to sue anyone over her conviction. She was released from prison and her second-degree murder conviction overturned in November after newly analyzed DNA evidence placed DeJac's former boyfriend, Dennis Donahue, in the bedroom of her daughter around the time the girl died. Prosecutors had been planning to retry her this spring, saying the DNA found in her daughter's body and bed did nothing to refute the circumstantial evidence that led a jury to convict DeJac of killing the girl after a night of heavy drinking. It was in reviewing evidence for the ming trial that the prosecution's forensics experts made the stunning find that the girl died of "acute cocaine intoxication" and was not slain, Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark announced. Cocaine was found in the girl's system at the time of her death, he said, but it was ignored at trial because prosecution and defense lawyers thought the amount too small to be relevant. All charges against DeJac will be dismissed, Clark said. Donahue remains in custody awaiting trial in the strangulation of a woman in 1993 and has been described as a person of interest in a 1975 strangling. He couldn't have been prosecuted in Crystallynn's case anyway because he had immunity for testifying against DeJac in 1993.
Forensics twists clear mother in girl’s death BY CAROLYN THOMPSON The Associated Press
BUFFALO — A mother who spent 13 years in prison for her teenage daughter’s murder was formally cleared of charges Thursday following a startling reversal by prosecutors over how the girl died. “I’m just very grateful that the charges have been dropped against me and I’m looking forward to getting on with my life with my children,” Lynn DeJac said after a state Supreme Court judge dismissed her case. DeJac, 44, was awaiting retrial on charges she strangled 13-year-old Crystallynn Girard in 1993 when Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark recently announced that a review by forensics experts showed Crystallynn actually died of a cocaine overdose. “There are now three forensic pathologists … who have ruled out strangulation as the cause of death of Crystallynn Girard,” Assistant District Attorney Thomas Finnerty told the judge. Finnerty said prosecutors, in preparing for the retrial, asked two independent forensics experts to examine the 1993 autopsy findings and photos to try to better pinpoint the time of death. Instead, both experts volunteered a different cause of death, to the shock of prosecutors. “This opinion was neither sought nor expected,” Finnerty said. The change in the cause of death was not the first strange twist in the case. DeJac was released from prison and her second-degree murder conviction was overturned last November after newly analyzed DNA evidence placed her former boyfriend, Dennis Donohue, in Crystallynn’s bedroom around the time she died. Despite the finding, Clark had planned to retry DeJac, saying the man’s DNA found in her daughter’s body and bed did nothing to refute the circumstantial evidence that led a jury to convict DeJac of killing Crystallynn after a night of heavy drinking. DeJac has maintained all along that Donohue is responsible for her daughter’s death and has denied her daughter abused drugs. Even while thanking the district attorney’s office for its “speedy action” in setting her free, she said she hoped someday to have answers to how Crystallynn died. “I hope we do. Someday I hope we do,” she said. DeJac will sue the state for wrongful imprisonment, her attorneys said, without specifying an amount. Clark, the district attorney, declined to speculate on what DeJac may be entitled to. “She certainly spent close to 14 years in jail and that was time out of her life,” he said. DON HEUPEL/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Lynn Dejac, right, waits for the elevator with husband Chuck Peters after her charges were officially dropped in State Supreme Court in Buffalo on Thursday.
Wrongly accused man ‘not bitter’ LOS ANGELES — For more than two decades behind bars, Willie Earl Green worked hard on his education, married his pen pal and never stopped trying to prove he was innocent in the executionstyle murder of a single mother. The sole prosecution witness came forward four years ago, saying he wasn’t sure he had identified the right man. Last week, a judge tossed out Green’s conviction. Even though he spent nearly half of his life in prison, the 56-year-old, soft-spoken man is at peace with himself. “I was wrongly accused, I’m out now, I’m not bitter, I’m happy. This is the best thing that ever happened to me right here,” Green said as he left the courthouse. Green, a former chauffeur from Canton, Miss., said he was proud of his achievements in prison, including earning an associate degree and teaching math to fellow inmates at San Quentin.
Mother exonerated by DNA still fighting Daughter’s death still haunts woman freed of murder rap BY CAROLYN THOMPSON The Associated Press
BUFFALO — Jurors didn’t look kindly on Lynn DeJac. She was a tavern manager in blue-collar south Buffalo, a single woman with long hair and long nails who’d been pregnant by 15 and had a couple of children and her share of boyfriends. When prosecutors told those sitting in judgment at her 1994 murder trial that after a night of bar hopping, DeJac used her bare hands to choke the life out of her 13-year-old daughter, they’d obliged with a guilty verdict. The night Crystallynn Girard died, “She’s running around drinking her brains out with three different guys,” her own lawyer had said in his closing remarks. DeJac spent 13 1 /2 years in prison for Crystallynn’s murder before being exonerated last month by an implausible chain of events. Now 44 and back home in Buffalo, she is settling into a new life with teenage twin sons who were just 4 months old when she went to prison. She married their father, Chuck Peters, while behind bars, but the couple has had little cause to celebrate, even now. DeJac may be free, but she is fi ghting mad — and not just over lost time. Because as bad as it was for her — prison, separation from her infant twins and another son, the public scorn all those years ago — hearing her dead daughter’s name sullied now is worse. “She was an innocent little girl,” DeJac says, tears of frustration rising with her voice. “She doesn’t deserve this.” When DeJac was released from prison in November, she became the first woman among more than 200 men since 1989 who have been freed nationally by newly analyzed DNA evidence. But ultimately, it was not the DNA that cleared her of charges. While that was enough for a judge to set aside DeJac’s conviction, it was not enough for District Attorney Frank Clark to drop the charges. He finally relented only after forensics experts preparing for the retrial stumbled upon a finding that would remove all doubt about DeJac’s innocence. It is the very finding DeJac will not accept: Crystallynn overdosed on cocaine. “It’s not going to stay like this,” DeJac said on a day she called “bittersweet.” “My daughter was not a drug user … My daughter was murdered,” she said. “There’s no question my daughter was murdered.” The killer, she said, must have transferred the tiny bit of cocaine found in Crystallynn’s blood from his finger. DeJac has believed from the start that killer is the man whose DNA was found in Crystallynn’s bed and body, a former boyfriend named Dennis Donohue, a man who can never be charged. YOUTH CUT SHORT Crystallynn Girard was an honor roll student with her mother’s hair and a sunny smile. At 13, she was 5 feet 6 inches, already two inches taller than her mother and a few pounds heavier. She was a “godsend” the way she helped get her younger brother to bed at night and off to school in the morning, her mother said. Her mischievous side showed when it came time to do the dishes, a job Crystallynn despised. More than once did DeJac find the sink not so mysteriously clogged with a dishtowel. One night, after DeJac scolded her daughter for not helping more with the housework, she came home to a spotless house and a rose on her pillow with a note of apology from Crystallynn. “To me, she was an angel. She was my best friend,” DeJac said, her long hair graying now, a reminder of the years spent away. The night before she was found dead on Valentine’s Day 1993, Crystallynn and a girlfriend enjoyed a double-date dinner with two young boys. But there had been dark times, too. Her stepfather was sentenced to fi ve to 15 years in prison for molesting Crystallynn before she’d turned 10. DeJac admits she made mistakes as a parent but bristles at the description of her as the hard-drinking, absentee mother painted at trial. “Was I a perfect mother? By no means,” she said. “I’m not even claiming to be. But was I the worst mother? No, I’m not claiming that either.” SHOCKING FINDINGS Dr. Michael Baden stood at a podium in the district attorney’s offi ce to explain how, in 2008, he reached such a startlingly different conclusion about how Crystallynn died than the “manual strangulation” finding a county medical examiner reached in 1993. “Forensic science can be misinterpreted,” said the respected pathologist after listing an “accidental cocaine overdose” as the cause of death. Baden examined the crime scene photographs and autopsy report at the request of the district attorney’s office. The first medical examiner, Baden explained, may have misinterpreted a mark on Crystallynn’s neck made by her chin as a thumbprint. The frothing from her mouth and nose seen in photos — a strong indicator of a drug overdose — may have been wiped away by the time the autopsy was done. Crystallynn had bruises on her head and a table in her bedroom was overturned, adding to the appearance of a struggle, but Baden suggested Crystallynn could have fallen into the table and hit her head while high on cocaine. The hyoid bone in Crystallynn’s neck was not fractured, a telltale sign of strangulation, and there was fluid in her lungs typically seen in drug overdoses, he said. At the news conference, the county’s current medical examiner, Dr. James Woytash, concurred with Baden’s finding. Within days, Woytash would change Crystallynn’s death certificate to reflect his belief that a “combination of cocaine and head injury” killed the girl. What mattered, Clark said, was that both experts agreed Crystallynn was not strangled. COLD CASE OFFICER Detective Dennis Delano is a modest man, a bear of a cop who gained hero status in Buffalo last spring after helping get an innocent man named Anthony Capozzi out of prison after 22 years. Delano fought relentlessly for Capozzi, even before DNA eventually proved the rapes he was serving time for had been committed by someone else. When one day last year, the sister of a 1993 murder victim named Joan Giambra approached Delano at church and asked the cold case offi cer to look into that unsolved crime, he pulled the file. Immediately, his mind jumped to two other cases whose files he’d kept near his desk at Buffalo police headquarters for the past several months: Crystallynn Girard and a woman named Carol Reed, whose 1975 murder had gone unsolved. A bartender named Dennis Donohue had come up during both of those investigations, but he had never been charged. Even though Crystallynn’s mother had been convicted in that death, both cases felt unfinished to Delano on those occasions when he would flip through the files. The Giambra case had a familiar feel. “All three were female. All three were found face up. All three were found nude. All three were strangled,” the veteran officer said. The way Crystallynn was found bothered him. For one thing, she was naked except for a pair of red socks. “I’m not saying a mother would not kill her daughter… but this way that it happened, something was wrong. If on a long shot a mother was going to undress her daughter to make it look like something else, she would have taken the socks off.” A note in Joan Giambra’s file said she had gone out with a bartender named Dennis, but no last name was known. Cold case officers soon focused on Donohue and were able to match his DNA to evidence preserved from the Giambra crime scene. Donohue was charged in September with Giambra’s murder. Later that month, DeJac’s attorney, Andrew LoTempio, said new analysis of evidence from the Girard case placed Donohue at the crime scene. Not only was Donohue’s DNA found in a blood spatter on Crystallynn’s wall, authorities found, it was inside Crystallynn’s body. “He confronted her, strangled her, stripped her and mutilated her body,” LoTempio charged at a hearing to have DeJac’s conviction overturned. “Give me another logical explanation as to why a 40-year-old man’s DNA is in a dead, naked little girl’s blood on her bed and on the wall and in her private parts,” he said later. Soon came another revelation: Donohue had been given immunity in Crystallynn’s case after passing a lie detector test and testifying before the grand jury that indicted DeJac. He could never be charged. DELVING DEEPER Donohue was angry with DeJac that Valentine’s Day eve. They had gone to a wedding together but DeJac didn’t want to spend any more time with him. She had him drop her off at the corner of her street about 11 p.m. and began walking home. The two fought in front of Crystallynn when Donohue followed DeJac into her house. He knocked the telephone out of her hand and stormed out when she called 911 to report “an unwelcome guest.” After about a half hour, DeJac left for the Babcock Grill, the bar her mother owned on the corner, while Crystallynn stayed home. Donohue soon arrived at the bar and DeJac asked the bartender to have him leave. Then she left with a man she said she’d known for 16 years, with Donohue following her to the car. She and Michael Nichter went to a bar named LaBoom and then to Nichter’s house, where they found Donohue waiting. He grabbed Nichter from behind and put a Swiss army knife to his throat. Then he left. DeJac stayed the night at Nichter’s house. When he brought her home the next afternoon, Crystallynn was dead. “I opened up her door and I noticed her table was knocked over and she was laying on her bed and I called her name,” DeJac said in a statement to police. “I could not see very well from coming in and the sun and it was dark in her room. I finally adjusted my eyes and seen she was naked. I called her name. I was screaming. She did not respond.” A NIGHTMARE RECALLED For eight months, the murder went unsolved. Then, in the fall of 1993, an old family acquaintance offered police the break that would lead them to arrest DeJac — a confession from DeJac herself. Wayne Hudson, a felon with convictions for DWI and shooting a man in the groin, was facing forgery charges and a potentially lengthy jail sentence when he relayed a conversation he said he’d had with DeJac months earlier. “I can’t take it anymore. I did it,” Hudson said DeJac told him as the two sat in her mother’s bar on a Friday or Saturday evening in May. “I hurt my daughter. … I choked my daughter,” he said DeJac confessed. At trial, Hudson testified he told police about the confession five months later, only after his most recent arrest. Eventually, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor on the forgery charge and was placed on probation, but he denies he was seeking favorable treatment when he told police about his conversation with DeJac. Hudson stands by his account today. DeJac believes he made the whole thing up. “He couldn’t tell you what I was wearing, what time of day it was, what day it was, where it took place,” she said. But it was DeJac’s shortcomings that prosecutors focused on, calling many witnesses who spoke of an irresponsible, alcohol-fueled lifestyle. “All of us felt that I was convicted on my lifestyle, not the actual crime itself,” DeJac said. “We know you were convicted on that,” her husband adds as he listens to DeJac in the dining room of their modest Buffalo home, about a mile from where Crystallynn died. He calls the prosecution’s tactic “character assassination.” MOTHER JAILED On June 7, 1994, then 30-year-old DeJac stood before Erie County Judge Michael D’Amico’s bench, looking small and scared as he sentenced her to the maximum 25 years to life in prison for what prosecutor Joseph Marusak called the “callous, brutal, heinous” murder of her daughter. “But I didn’t do this,” she pleaded again and again. “I didn’t do this.” DeJac was taken away in handcuffs to the maximum security Bedford Hills Correctional Facility north of New York City, 400 miles from her newborn twins and her 9-year-old son, Eddie. Not only had DeJac lost Crystallynn, she was now losing the rest of her family and her freedom. At times it would feel like she was losing her mind, too. In prison, she spent time under suicide watch, and in a hospital for the criminally insane. Killing herself offered a chance to reunite with Crystallynn, she thought, but her Catholic faith made her worry she’d be stuck in purgatory. Plus, suicide would make her look guilty, she thought, though that hardly mattered. “I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know how to explain the pain,” she said. “I just wanted to die and go be with her because I literally lost my best friend.” She and Peters recounted one particularly painful Mother’s Day visit when the twins, still in a stroller, burst into tears at the sight of her. “They didn’t know her and they started crying right away and that was it for her,” said Peters, who had brought the children by bus. “She went right over the edge.” “That devastated me,” DeJac said, “and I ran into a bathroom crying.” SEEKING JUSTICE DeJac plans to sue for her wrongful imprisonment but says what matters even more is finding justice for Crystallynn. Both she and the cold case detective, Delano, remain convinced Crystallynn was murdered, despite the district attorney’s assertion that no crime was committed. DeJac wants the cause of death on Crystallynn’s death certificate changed back to strangulation, even if no one is ever charged. “This is about a little girl wronged,” DeJac said. “We already fixed mine, now it’s time to fix this, because it’s wrong. It’s absolutely, 100 percent wrong.” For his part, Donohue has pleaded not guilty to Giambra’s murder and is being held without bail while awaiting trial. He is considered a person of interest in the Carol Reed murder.
Apr 29, 2008 Dallas man freed by DNA testing after 27 years in prison By SCHUYLER DIXON Associated Press Writer
DALLAS (AP) -- A Dallas man who spent more than 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit was freed Tuesday, after being incarcerated longer than any other wrongfully convicted U.S. inmate cleared by DNA testing.
James Lee Woodard stepped out of the courtroom and raised his arms to a throng of photographers. Supporters and other people gathered outside the court erupted in applause.
"No words can express what a tragic story yours is," state District Judge Mark Stoltz told Woodard at a brief hearing before his release.
Woodard, cleared of the 1980 murder of his girlfriend, became the 18th person in Dallas County to have his conviction cast aside. That's a figure unmatched by any county nationally, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions.
"I thank God for the existence of the Innocence Project," Woodard, 55, told the court. "Without that, I wouldn't be here today. I would be wasting away in prison."
Overall, 31 people have been formally exonerated through DNA testing in Texas, also a national high. That does not include Woodard and at least three others whose exonerations will not become official until Gov. Rick Perry grants pardons or the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals formally accepts the ruling of lower courts that have already recommended exoneration.
Woodard was sentenced to life in prison in July 1981 for the murder of a 21-year-old Dallas woman found raped and strangled near the banks of the Trinity River.
He was convicted primarily on the basis of testimony from two eyewitnesses, said Natalie Roetzel, the executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas. One has since recanted in an affidavit. As for the other, "we don't believe her testimony was accurate," Roetzel said.
Like nearly all the exonorees, Woodard has maintained his innocence throughout his time in prison. But after filing six writs with an appeals court, plus two requests for DNA testing, his pleas of innocence became so repetitive and routine that "the courthouse doors were eventually closed to him and he was labeled a writ abuser," Roetzel said.
"On the first day he was arrested, he told the world he was innocent ... and nobody listened," Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas, said during Tuesday's hearing.
He even stopped attending his parole hearings because gaining his release would have meant confessing to a crime he didn't do.
"It says a lot about your character that you were more interested in the truth than your freedom," the judge told Woodard after making his ruling.
Blackburn and prosecutors hailed Tuesday's hearing as a landmark moment of frequent adversaries working together.
Since the DNA evidence was tied to rape and Woodard was convicted of murder, Innocence Project attorneys had to prove that the same person committed both crimes. They said they couldn't have done that without access to evidence provided by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins' office.
"You've got to have very good lawyers with a lot of experience and skill ... working on both ends of this case, hard," Blackburn said. "And you've also got to have government power behind what you do."
Under Watkins, Dallas County has a program supervised by the Innocence Project of Texas that is reviewing hundreds of cases of convicts who have requested DNA testing to prove their innocence.
While the number of exonerations on Watkins' watch continues to grow, he said this one was a little different.
"I saw the human side of it, and seeing the human said of it just gives you more courage to advocate for issues like this," said Watkins, who had breakfast with Woodard on Tuesday morning. "It gives me that resolve to go even further to find out who (the killer) is so that we can get him into custody."
Woodard said his family was "small and scattered," although he pointed out a niece in the courtroom. He said his biggest regret was not being with his mother when she died.
"I can tell you what I'd like to do first: breathe fresh, free air," Woodard said during a news conference in the courtroom after the hearing. "I don't know what to expect. I haven't been in Dallas since buses were blue."
Logged
