Injustice

Texas Death Row
Preston Hughes III, An Injustice

Preston Hughes III was arrested in the early morning hours on September 27, 1988, for the brutal stabbing death of Shandra Charles, age 15, and Marcell Taylor, age 3. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection. He has been on Texas Death Row since May 1989 for a crime he did not commit.

At around 2:15 a.m. the Houston police knocked on Preston's door, came in, looked around for a few minutes, then asked Preston if he would come down to police headquarters. In spite of the fact that Sergeant Gafford would not answer his question, "What is this all about?", Preston agreed to go because he knew he had done nothing wrong. By 6:40 a.m., after being yelled at, lied to, slapped in the face and punched in the chest, Preston, fearing for his very life, signed the last page of Sergeant Gafford's typed false confession to the murders of these two young children.

There was no evidence collected by the Houston Police Department that tied Preston to these murders not even the knife that was seized from Preston's apartment which was tested, not in the lab, but in the courtroom before the judge, the prosecuting and defense lawyers just before the "forensic expert" was to testify. The "rumored" results - positive for animal blood not human blood and the judge allowed it to be introduced at trial as the murder weapon. (See attached article) Preston was definitely tried in a Kangaroo Court with the chief characters being his defense lawyer, the Assistant District Attorney, the "forensic expert", several sergeants at the HPD, and even the judge.

For more detailed information about this case Click Here.
 

Innocent in Prison
Betty Wilson, An Injustice

In May of 1992, the citizens of Huntsville, Alabama, were in shock when they heard the news that one of their beloved citizens, Dr. Jack Wilson, had been found brutally beaten and stabbed to death in his home.

His wife, Betty Wilson, and her twin sister, Peggy Lowe, were arrested for supposedly hiring a delusional, alcoholic conman to kill Betty’s wealthy husband. Betty was tried first, convicted, and sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Peggy was tried and acquitted.

The State of Alabama had no case against the twins so the killer was offered a deal. In exchange for his helping in convicting the twins, he would receive life with the possibility of parole instead of the electric chair.

The twins were tried on the same weak circumstantial evidence and the same lying testimony. Why was Betty convicted and Peggy acquitted? Betty was an evil twin who slept with a black man in Alabama. Peggy was a saintly twin.

For more information about this case Click Here.
 

Innocent in Prison
Joe Giarratano, An Injustice

In early February 1979, Joe Giarratano, in a drugged haze, stumbled off a bus in Jacksonville, Florida. According to the police report, Joe walked up to a police officer and said he thought he had killed two people in Norfolk and wanted to turn himself in.

In the next two days Joe was heavily medicated with a potent tranquilizer to help stave off the withdrawal of narcotics and alcohol. During this time he gave five police-written confessions to the stabbing death of Barbara Kline and the sexual assault and strangulation of her fifteen year old daughter Michelle, whose bodies were discovered in their apartment in Norfolk, Virginia, on February 5, 1979. These police-written confessions contradicted one another and contradicted the physical evidence in the case.

Leading experts in the field of false confessions have concluded that none of Joe’s police-written confessions showed any actual knowledge of the crime scene that would have been known only to the true killer. Instead they showed the kind of ignorance of the crime facts that would be expected from an innocent, false confessor. Investigation has clearly shown that not a single piece of independent evidence links Joe to the crime. There is not a single piece of evidence to support Joe’s false confessions. Not a single shred of the known physical evidence, the bloody foot prints, the finger prints, the sperm, the hairs, link Joe to the murder of his friends and was denied to Joe’s defense.

Joe was fed large doses of a powerful psychotropic drug, shuffled into court for a four-hour non-jury trial, where no defense was attempted or presented, and swiftly sentenced to death.

All of the information and evidence uncovered after Joe’s brief trial clearly indicates that in all likelihood an innocent man was wrongfully convicted of a capital crime.

In 1991, it was determined that Joe was innocent enough not to be put to death in Virginia’s electric chair; and it was determined that the case against him was seriously flawed enough to warrant a new trial BUT...... For more information Click Here.

Texas Death Row
Darlie Lynn Routier, An Injustice

In 1996 Darlie Routier was tried and convicted of savagely murdering her two young sons. She was sentenced to death.

Her case was a very high profile case and there were many things that were wrong with her trial but you can be the judge. Click Here.

Innocent in Prison
E. Howard Whisenant, An Injustice

This is a case of a vindictive wife hell bent on getting even with her husband, who was divorcing her and she would be left with virtually nothing from the Whisenants' sizable estate. The reason he was divorcing her was because he found out that she had been lying about her employment as a flight attendant at American Airlines.  When she was away at "work" she was actually at a strip joint and shacking up with her lover whom she was lavishing with expensive gifts.

She got her lover to beat her up so she could file assault charges against her husband.  When that didn't work, she shot herself in the leg with a gun she and her lover purchased and accused her husband of doing it.

On February 16, 2001, the day that Howard showed up at the courthouse to finalize his divorce, he was arrested. The District Attorney pulled some shenanigans and Howard's lawyer had nothing to offer him in the way of a defense other than a plea bargain which Howard refused to go for because he knew he was innocent. On June 6, 2001, Howard was convicted and sentenced to seventy years in prison.

How could this injustice happen?  Click Here to find out more.

Question. When a State becomes aware that its prosecutors have convicted an innocent person, will the State, by and through its prosecutors and judges, go to any extreme to see that that innocent person remains in prison or is executed to avoid a potential multi-million dollar law suit for wrongful conviction?

For more information on other innocents in prison check out Justice Denied or Patriots Toolbox for State Listings.