Oregon Criminal Defense News for Week of February 27, 2012
by: Sduclos • March 2, 2012 • no comments
In his recent blog article, David Protess, Director of the Chicago Innocence Project, provides some thought-provoking insight into cross-racial identification and public perception of the issue. According to Protess, false witness testimony plays a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. 40% of these cases relied on cross-racial identifications that proved to be inaccurate. Protess discusses racial sensitivities that may keep this issue from being publicly acknowledged.
On March 22, 2012, a federal court in Jackson, Mississippi, will enter a consent degree, the first of its kind in the nation, to ban the practice of subjecting minors convicted as adults to solitary confinement. The decree will also require the state to move minors from a privately run prison to a stand-alone facility that operates according to juvenile justice standards. To read more, see the ACLU's [http:// http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/groundbreaking-decree-mississippi-bans-solitary-confinement-kids-convicted recent article ]by Margaret Winter.
Oregon's new mental health hospital offers better facilities for patients who were found guilty except for insanity. Meanwhile, in Oregon State Penitentiary, inmates with severe mental health issues are housed in a highly confined cellblock initially designed to punish the State's most violent inmates. To read more about conditions for mentally ill inmates in Oregon State Penitentiary, read the OPB article by Chris Lehman.
What happens when your client gives a false confession? Where do they come from, and how do police practices tend to produce them? David Shipler's recent New York Times article explores false confessions and some of the police practices that enable a factually innocent person to sign his own guilty verdict.
