The True Story of How a Series of Lies Sent an Innocent Man to Prison
In my previous post, It’s Even Harder for Innocent Defendants Now, I pointed to an article from a Houston defense attorney about how difficult the situation has become for innocent individuals who have been accused of sex crimes, especially those against children, now that Texas has adopted two Federal rules of evidence (413 and 414). …
Piles of Paper During our early discussions (circa 2007-2008) Steve had given me a basic idea of what his accuser, Hanna Penderfield, claimed, but I found it impossible to believe. She said there had been 80 to 90 incidents of sexual assault, sometimes occurring in front of Steve’s wife and children, and sometimes in public …
The Responsibility of Judges Do judges have any responsibility to comment or interrupt or notify the attorneys, or even to strike a venireperson on their own [which is called sua sponte, “of his own accord”] if they spot an irregularity during a jury voir dire? Judge Hawes founded the Deep Springs chapter of CASA. He …
A Conversation About Steve’s Appeals Steve usually calls me every Saturday, and we talk for a half hour or so. Recently, we spent much of our conversation talking about the two posts before this one (read Part 1 here and Part 2 here). Here is an abridged version of part of our conversation. I’ll pepper …
Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. What the Court Got Wrong Much of the following is directly quoted from court records (with names changed, of course). Just to recap, Argument 2 concerned Steve’s marijuana conviction. Steve thought it shouldn’t have been admitted because of its age (24 years before). Argument 3 charged that …
Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. Two Arguments the Court Got Wrong In Steve’s first appeal (to the 19th Court of Appeals, in Keegan, Texas), he made four arguments, all of which the court ruled against. I’m only going to deal with Arguments 2 and 3 in this post, but here’s a quick …
There’s legal stuff in this post, so bear with me. I’ll try to make it clear; but, there’s a caveat: I am not a lawyer, so any thoughts I offer in this post, no matter how strongly I may believe it, should not be taken as legal advice. After Steve had been convicted, Emma Barrens, …