THREE DECADES AFTER Claude Garrett was accused of committing arson to kill his girlfriend, Lorie Lance, a Tennessee judge vacated his conviction, finding him innocent of murder and opening the door to his release. In an order signed on May 6, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins found that Garrett had made a “clear and convincing” case that if jurors had been aware of new scientific evidence at the time of his trial, they would never have convicted him of setting the 1992 fire that sent him to prison for life.
The order comes one month after an evidentiary hearing in Nashville in which leading fire experts testified that the case against Garrett was based on a rush to judgment, a shoddy investigation, and junk science. The hearing followed a reinvestigation of the case by the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office — spurred by The Intercept’s reporting — which concluded last year that it could no longer stand by its conviction. Lawyers from both the Tennessee Innocence Project and the DA’s Conviction Review Unit subsequently asked Watkins to vacate the conviction in light of new scientific evidence that dismantled the state’s original theory of the crime. “If the state had been armed with the information that we now have,” Conviction Review Unit Director Sunny Eaton told the judge, “we would not have indicted this case.”
A couple of high profile cases spring to mind where the same thing has happened here.
People wrongly convicted because of shoddy or unseen evidence, evidence that could have proved innocence .
How do you give someone 30 years of their life back?
No amount of money could ever compensate.
Radley is well known (not well enough unfortunately) in the US for his defense of civil liberties. His wife, who I wasn't aware of, seems to be cut from the same cloth.
THREE DECADES AFTER Claude Garrett was accused of committing arson to kill his girlfriend, Lorie Lance, a Tennessee judge vacated his conviction, finding him innocent of murder and opening the door to his release. In an order signed on May 6, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins found that Garrett had made a “clear and convincing” case that if jurors had been aware of new scientific evidence at the time of his trial, they would never have convicted him of setting the 1992 fire that sent him to prison for life.
The order comes one month after an evidentiary hearing in Nashville in which leading fire experts testified that the case against Garrett was based on a rush to judgment, a shoddy investigation, and junk science. The hearing followed a reinvestigation of the case by the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office — spurred by The Intercept’s reporting — which concluded last year that it could no longer stand by its conviction. Lawyers from both the Tennessee Innocence Project and the DA’s Conviction Review Unit subsequently asked Watkins to vacate the conviction in light of new scientific evidence that dismantled the state’s original theory of the crime. “If the state had been armed with the information that we now have,” Conviction Review Unit Director Sunny Eaton told the judge, “we would not have indicted this case.”
the deity known as the deity known as Maddog wrote:
THREE DECADES AFTER Claude Garrett was accused of committing arson to kill his girlfriend, Lorie Lance, a Tennessee judge vacated his conviction, finding him innocent of murder and opening the door to his release. In an order signed on May 6, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins found that Garrett had made a “clear and convincing” case that if jurors had been aware of new scientific evidence at the time of his trial, they would never have convicted him of setting the 1992 fire that sent him to prison for life.
The order comes one month after an evidentiary hearing in Nashville in which leading fire experts testified that the case against Garrett was based on a rush to judgment, a shoddy investigation, and junk science. The hearing followed a reinvestigation of the case by the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office — spurred by The Intercept’s reporting — which concluded last year that it could no longer stand by its conviction. Lawyers from both the Tennessee Innocence Project and the DA’s Conviction Review Unit subsequently asked Watkins to vacate the conviction in light of new scientific evidence that dismantled the state’s original theory of the crime. “If the state had been armed with the information that we now have,” Conviction Review Unit Director Sunny Eaton told the judge, “we would not have indicted this case.”
