Prosecutors have agreed that the murder conviction of Cleveland Wright, 55, should be dismissed due to DNA testing that exonerated his co-defendant in 2012. In 1978, Wright and his childhood friend Santae Tribble were accused and charged for murdering two…
The Department of Justice and Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced more than 30 members of the newly formed National Commission on Forensic Science. The commission aims to strengthen the validity and reliability of forensic…
The Department of Justice recently agreed to waive procedural bars to re-open and review more than 2,000 criminal cases between 1985 and 2000 in which the FBI conducted microscopic hair analysis of crime scene evidence. This comes after three men were exonerated…
Northern California Innocence Project client George Souliotes walked out of a Stanislaus County Jail Wednesday a free man, after his attorneys from NCIP, Morrison & Foerster, LLP and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP successfully negotiated an agreement to secure his…
NCIP and Orrick, Herrington, Sutcliffe client George Souliotes, whose conviction was overturned last month after he demonstrated “actual innocence,” will be retried, Stanislaus County prosecutors announced Monday. Read the LA Times story here.
The California Supreme Court refused to overturn the conviction of William Richards, 63, even though the forensic evidence used to convict him of murdering his wife has been discredited. Richards, who is serving a life sentence, was convicted using a…
Kristine Bunch was recently released on $5,000 bail after she was granted a new trial earlier this month. (Read more here.) Bunch was convicted in 1996 of setting a fire that killed her 3-year-old son. However, new fire science suggested…
Kristine Bunch will get a new trial in the death of her three-year-old son after the Indiana Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court decision. Bunch was convicted in 1996 after prosecutors argued that she used kerosene to start…
At the request of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas is examining over one thousand arson cases to weed out any that might be based on the same bad forensic science…
The St. Paul Police Department crime lab recently came under intense scrutiny after two public defenders, Lauri Traub and Christine Funk, uncovered major problems with the lab’s work. Traub and Funk, unsatisfied with one-page reports they were getting for their…