Innocence Blog

DNA evidence uncovered in Dallas murder case

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:45:00 EST

DNA evidence uncovered in Dallas murder case, test 060407,

This is a long title for my test entry

Wed, 30 May 2007 00:00:00 EST

here's some body text

G blog

Thu, 03 May 2007 16:00:00 EST

blah blah

Capozzi case brings renewed calls for a New York innocence commission

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 15:30:00 EST

At a hearing today in Buffalo, New York, a judge vacated the sentence of Anthony Capozzi, who has served 20 years in prison for two rapes he didn't commit. DNA test results received by attorneys in recent weeks have proven that another man - who is currently incarcerated - committed the rapes.

Read the full story. (NY Newsday, 04/02/07)

Capozzi, who is expected to be released later this week, will become the 23rd New Yorker to be exonerated by DNA evidence. His exoneration has renewed calls statewide for an innocence commission. A bill to create such a commission is currently pending before the legislature.

Read today's Buffalo News editorial supporting the creation of an innocence commission.

Read the Innocence Project press release in support of a New York innocence commission.

Six states have created innocence commissions and several others are considering this vital reform. Learn more here.

Antonio Beaver Exonerated: More Coverage

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

A smiling Antonio Beaver walked out of a St. Louis jail yesterday after serving a decade in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

"I'm happy to be in the company of good people. I'm thankful for a good meal," Beaver told reporters. "But most importantly, I'm glad I'm not back in that madhouse anymore."

Read press accounts of Beaver's release:

Man Cleared on DNA evidence is freed. (St. Louis Post Dispatch)

Video: St. Louis man innocent after a decade in prison.

Learn more about Beaver's case.

Eyewitness misidentification has been a factor in 75 percent of DNA exonerations to date. Learn more about reforms that can prevent these injustices in the future.

Federal appeals court finds that prosecutors are accountable for snitches

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

In an important 3-0 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled on Wednesday that prosecutors can be sued for failing to maintain and uphold policies regarding jailhouse informants.

The ruling came in a civil damages case filed by Thomas L. Goldstein, who spent 24 years in prison for a wrongful murder conviction based largely on the testimony of jailhouse informant Edward F. Fink.

The decision marked the first time that the 9th Circuit has considered this issue, and the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on the precise question. Because of the potential ramifications for prosecutors, Loyola Law School professor Laurie L. Levenson said she thought the case might go to the Supreme Court.

"I'm really happy with the decision," Goldstein said by telephone. "Jailhouse informants have been used by prosecutors to put a lot of innocent people in prison.... The ruling by this court is the first step toward making district attorneys accountable for their actions."

Read the full story. (LA Times, 03/29/07)

Jailhouse informants are one of the most common causes of wrongful convictions, read more about this issue here.

Listen online tonight to exoneree Ken Wyniemko

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Tune in to Detroit's WPON AM 1460 tonight to hear exoenree Ken Wyniemko discuss his case. Listeners from around the country can hear the show here at 7 PM ET.

Read more about Wyniemko's case.

Antonio Beaver Exonerated

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

This morning, Innocence Project client Antonio Beaver walked out of a St. Louis jail a free man after DNA testing proved he could not have committed the carjacking for which he served more than a decade in prison. Beaver is the seventh Missouri resident to be cleared by DNA testing.

Read the press release here.

Watch a video news report, with comments from Antonio Beaver. (KSDK, 03/29/07)

DNA clears New York man of rape

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

DNA evidence stored in a hospital drawer for more than 20 years has proven the innocence of Anthony Capozzi, 50, a Buffalo, New York, man who has served 20 years for a series of rapes he didn't commit. DNA tests have proven that another man committed the crimes, officials say. That man was arrested in January in connection with other crimes.

The main evidence against Capozzi at trial were the identifications of the three victims, none of whom mentioned a prominent scar on Capozzi's face. All three victims said their attacker was about 150 pounds; Capozzi was over 200 pounds. Capozzi's lawyers and the Erie County District Attorney have said Capozzi may be released from prison within a week.

"Eyewitness testimony is devastating, but you've got to be very skeptical," (Capozzi's attorney Thomas) D'Agostino said. "In Anthony's case, the problem was that you had three victims who came in and each one said it was him. You get to a point where jurors say, 'Maybe the first one was wrong, but all three of them can't be wrong - they're all saying it was the same guy.' "

Read the full story. (New York Times, 03/29/07. Free registration required)

Eyewitness misidentification played a role in the wrongful convictions of more than 75 percent of those exonerated by DNA evidence to date. A man exonerated this morning in St. Louis, Antonio Beaver, was convicted almost solely on the testimony of a single victim, who chose him from a severely flawed lineup. Read more on Beaver's case.

Read more about eyewitness misidentification.

Hear exoneree James Waller discuss his case online

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Yesterday, Texas exoneree James Waller discussed his case and life after exoneration with North Carolina Public Radio.

Click here to listen, or visit American Public Media's "The Story" site for more.

Court orders new trial for New York man

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

In a decision that may have broad repercussions in eyewitness identification cases, New York's top court ordered a new trial yesterday for a man serving a 25-year sentence for a murder he says he didn't commit.

The Innocence Project filed an amicus brief in the case, which argued that the New York City man, Nico LeGrand, didn't get a fair trial because the judge barred an expert who would have testified about the unreliability of eyewitness identification. LeGrand was convicted in 2001 of the 1991 murder of a cab driver, and four witnesses to the crime helped police make a composite sketch of the perpetrator. The Court of Appeals' decision on Tuesday recognized the importance of admitting expert testimony in cases that turn on identification issues.

Misidentifications such as those in the LeGrand case are not unusual. Decades of solid scientific research have shown that eyewitness identifications are often inaccurate, and misidentifications have led to more than 150 of the 197 DNA exonerations to date.

Read the full story here. (New York Daily News, 3/28/07)

Read more about eyewitness misidentification as the leading cause of wrongful conviction.

Rogue DNA databases operate outside of the law

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Forensic labs in at least five states maintain their own databases that aren't controlled by any laws and don't meet the standards of the FBI's DNA database. California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri and New York store DNA profiles that are ineligible for CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) - the database managed by the FBI and authorized under federal law.

"They're rogue databases that operate without the public's knowledge and without the security and privacy considerations of the government databases," says Stephen Saloom, the Innocence Project's policy director. "This is an issue the public ought to decide."

Read the full story. (USA Today, 3/26/07)

Read more about DNA privacy issues.

Many states - and the federal government - are working to expand their DNA databases despite staggering backlogs in labs. Read more.

Does Texas need eyewitness ID reform?

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

More than 75 percent of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence involved eyewitness misidentification. An article in the Forth Worth Star-Telegram examines the need for proven reforms, like sequential lineups.

"A sequential lineup forces the witness to compare each face with their memory," said Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University who introduced the concept. "In the simultaneous version, they tend to compare one person to another and pick whoever looks most like the guy. Then that person tends to become their memory."

Read the full story. (Star-Telegram, 3/25/07)

How easy is it to make a misidentification? Test yourself with this interactive online lineup. (Star-Telegram)

Innocence Network conference draws hundreds

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

More than 300 people from dozens of organizations and perspectives in the innocence movement around the world met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, over the last three days to discuss the past year's work as well as challenges and goals ahead. The group included more than 50 people exonerated after being wrongly convicted of crimes they didn't commit - the largest group of exonerees ever to attend such a conference.

Click here for more on the Innocence Network.
Email us for further contact information on presenters and conference materials.
Watch the Innocence Blog for photos and more from the conference in the days to come.

States are slow to fix crime lab problems

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Oversight of forensic crime labs has developed slowly around the United States, despite a 2004 federal law that requires states to conduct inquiries into allegations of fraud, mistakes or misconduct.

Tackling critical problems in the nation's justice system, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia have each founded powerful oversight boards in the last two years that can investigate misconduct in crime labs.
But not one of the new boards has yet reopened a case - either because they have refused to do so or because they haven't been funded.
"The country has to have trust that we're convicting the guilty and not the innocent," said Texas state Sen. Juan Hinojosa, a Democrat whose bill to create the Texas Forensic Science Commission became law in 2005.
The flaws in his state and elsewhere are "the tip of the iceberg," Hinojosa said. "Prosecutors are supposed to do justice. Instead, they just want notches on their belt. It permeates the whole criminal justice system."
Read the full story. (San Francisco Chronicle, 3/24/07)

Read more on crime lab oversight in our Fix The System section.

New Virgina project starts working to free wrongly convicted

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Joining more than 35 projects working nationwide on behalf of the wrongly convicted, the new Institute for Actual Innocence at the Richmond College of Law is a legal clinic where law students assist convicted individuals with appeals asserting innocence.

Professor Mary Kelly Tate said she was inspired to create the institute after hearing a speech by Peter Neufeld. He is a defense lawyer who helped found the Innocence Project, a program that focuses on using DNA testing to exonerate wrongfully convicted people.

Tate teaches a prerequisite course on the causes of wrongful conviction. Race, social and economic factors all contribute, as well as poor interrogation techniques by police, false confessions and mistaken eyewitness identifications.

Most of the time, she said, the criminal justice system works as it should and guilty people go to prison. But it's important to help students recognize the possibility for error in the system before they begin practicing law, she said.

"We make mistakes," she said. "There's something sort of primitive in society's unwillingness to face that."

Read the full story. (Daily Press, 3/26/07)

Visit the Richmond Institute for Actual Innocence website.

March 26-30 is Innocence Week in Washington, D.C.

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and Washington College of Law are sponsoring Innocence Week, which starts today.

The weeklong symposium examining wrongful convictions in America will feature four free luncheon lectures and a production of the award-winning play "The Exonerated" on Thursday and Friday nights. Click here for more information.

False testimony from "expert" could lead to hundreds of new trials

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Public defenders filed papers on Tuesday in Baltimore seeking a new trial for a police sergeant convicted of killing his mistress because his conviction was based partially on the testimony of Joseph Kopera, the former Maryland ballistics examiner who lied on the stand repeatedly about his credentials.

Experts say that Kopera, who resigned three weeks ago under controversy as the head of the Maryland State Police firearms division and committed suicide the next day, may have falsified results of forensic tests. As a result, hundreds of convictions based on his testimony could be overturned.

Read the full story. (Baltimore Sun, 3/22/07)

Read our previous blog post on this story. (3/9/07)

Florida exoneree files civil rights suit

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Luis Diaz, who served 26 years in Florida prisons for a series of rapes he didn't commit, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Miami-Dade County and police officials falsified documents and committed other illegal acts to wrongly convict him. Diaz was exonerated in 2005 after DNA tests proved his innocence.

"They took away from him any chance of having a family, any chance for a career, and any chance he had at happiness," said his attorney Marvin Kurzban. "We are here to right that wrong."
Read the full story. (International Herald Tribune, 03/21/07)

U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in Fry case

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

In a case that could clarfiy a standard for appeals in cases where defendants were prevented from offering key evidence, the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today in the case of Fry v. Pliler. John Fry was convicted of first-degree murder in California and sentenced to life in prison. At his trial, the judge prevented testimony of a witness who would have stated that she heard another man admitting guilt in a crime matching the one for which Fry was convicted. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that although the witness's testimony "would have substantially bolstered" Fry's defense, it still constituted "harmless error."

The Supreme Court today reviews the Ninth Circuit's denial of Fry's petition.

The Innocence Network filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that the error in this case "can not be said to be harmless." Read the amicus brief here. (PDF)

Click here for an analysis of the case on the SCOTUS Blog.

Click here for briefs filed by the parties in this case.

Critics question bloodhound evidence

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Police across the country frequently rely on scent-sniffing dogs and a device called a scent transfer unit to track alleged perpetrators. In a recent DNA exoneration in California, a bloodhound led police to the home of James Ochoa, relying on a scent from a baseball cap in a car. Ochoa eventually pled guilty to a carjacking he did not commit. He served 10 months in prison before DNA test results on the hat matched another man, who confessed to committing the carjacking.

Now, another California man is awaiting his second trial on arson charges. In his first trial, which resulted in a hung jury, prosecutors relied on evidence of a bloodhound that placed him at the scene of 21 fires. The dog handler said her dog could identify scents after eight years and even find a scent on a bottle that had been thrown into a fire and turned into molten glass. Critics were less convinced:

"If you got nothing else but a dog, you've got a bad case," said (Gary) Gibson, ... an attorney with the San Diego County public defender's office. "I'm terrified for the American justice system when three people voted guilty when the only evidence came from a dog."

Read the full story here. (LA Times, 3/9/2007, free registration required)

Georgia House approves compensation for Clark

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Robert Clark served 24 years in Georgia prisons for a rape he didn't commit. Today, the Georgia House of Representatives approved a bill that would pay him $1.2 million in compensation for his wrongful incarceration. The funds proposed for Clark would still be subject to federal income taxes. The bill now goes before the State senate.

Read the full story. (Daily Report, 3/19/07)

Read the press release from the Georgia Innocence Project.

Georgia does not have a general state law for compensating the wrongly convicted and this bill only applies to Clark. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue said on Monday that the state should create standards for compensation of all wrongly convicted people.

Read the full story. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 03/19/07)

USA Today Column: Other counties should follow Dallas

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Joyce King wrote in Friday's USA Today that new Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins is setting a powerful example for jurisdictions around the country.

Victims deserve to have the actual perpetrators brought to justice. Preserving evidence and opening up cases based on questionable convictions would go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.

Watkins is just one district attorney in one county trying to do the right thing. It's time for other cities to join Dallas in ensuring justice for the victims of crime and for those wrongly convicted.

Read the full column. (USA Today, 3/16/07)

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

The winner of the 2003 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, "The Exonerated" brings the stories
of six wrongly convicted people to the stage. In the play, actors tell the stories of Sunny Jacobs, Gary Gauger, Kerry Max Cook, Robert Earl Hayes, David Keaton and Delbert Tibbs, all of whom were exonerated from death row. (DNA evidence was not central to any of the six exonerations, so they are not included in the 197 DNA exonerations tracked by the Innocence Project.)

The play opened at The Strand Theater in Galveston, TX last weekend and will run through April 1. Performances are Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $15-$22.

Click here for a review in the Galveston County Daily News and more information.

Man pleads guilty to murder for which Deskovic was wrongly convicted

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Steven Cunningham, 46, pleaded guilty on Wednesday afternoon to the 1989 murder of a 15-year-old girl in Westchester County, New York. Jeff Deskovic, then 17, was convicted of the crime in 1991 after he falsely confessed to police. He served 16 years in prison before DNA samples from the crime scene were checked against a state database at the Innocence Project's request. The DNA, which showed the jury at trial that the evidence didn't come from Deskovic, matched Cunningham and Deskovic was released in 2006. Cunningham is already serving time in New York prison for another murder, committed four years after Correa's murder. He will be sentenced in the Correa case on May 2.

Read the full story on Cunningham's plea. (The Journal News, NY, 03/14/07)

Read more background on Deskovic's case.

Federal court issues major DNA opinion

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

The Second Circuit Court yesterday released an important opinion for defendants seeking post-conviction DNA testing. The federal appeals court ruled that a lower court must consider whether Frank McKithen, a New York inmate convicted of attempted murder, has a constitutional right to have evidence in his case DNA tested. The lower court, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, had previously dismissed McKithen's case on procedural grounds. The case will now go before the same court again.

The circuit court's decision begins:

Eighty-four years ago, Judge Learned Hand observed that "[o]ur procedure has been always haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted," but posited, optimistically, that "[i]t is an unreal dream." (United States v. Garsson, 291 F. 646, 649 (S.D.N.Y. 1923).)

Today, with the advance of forensic DNA technology, our desire to join Learned Hand's optimism has given way to the reality of wrongful convictions - a reality which challenges us to reaffirm our commitment to the principle that the innocent should be freed.

Read more on the opinion on Appellate Law & Practice, an appellate law blog.

Read the full opinion.

Connecticut legislators consider forensic nurse program

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

A bill before the Connecticut General Assembly would require the state's 31 acute-care hospitals to make forensic nurses available to patients. These specially trained nurses handle cases of sexual assault, child abuse, domestic violence and other emergency trauma patients. These nurses are also specially trained in collecting evidence, such as fingernails, hairs and body swabs, which is crucial in the age of DNA testing.

Read the full story here. (Stamford Advocate, 03/12/07)

Editorial: criminal defense and crime labs need funding in Louisiana

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Louisiana is the only state in the nation that relies on traffic tickets to pay for public defense and forensic testing. An editorial over the weekend in Shreveport demanded reform.

Louisiana has long had a history of putting its money into building more prison cells to keep pace with mandatory sentences and other societal factors that make us the nation's per capita incarceration leader.

Meanwhile, we sometimes skimp by on the cost of making sure justice is done.

Money spent on defense of the poor is but a fraction of the dollars at the disposal of parish prosecutors. Overwhelmed public defenders have been duly noted in reports and lawsuits. Yet indigent defense continues to bubble along beneath most law-abiding citizens' radar. The momentum for reform that was building prior to hurricanes Katrina and Rita was another worthy cause slowed by the focus on storm recovery.

Read the full editorial here. (Shreveport Times, 03/10/07)

Read more about bad lawyering as a leading cause of wrongful conviction.

Exoneree Ray Krone to speak in Sauk Rapids, MN

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Ray Krone was sentenced to death in Arizona in 1992 for a murder he didn't commit. In 2002, DNA testing proved that another man had committed the crime. Krone will be speaking at a Sacred Heart Church in Sauk Rapids, MN, Wednesday, March 14, at 7 p.m.

For information on the speech, call (320) 251-2872, Ext. 6.

Read more about Ray Krone's case.

Murder victim's mother calls for more crime lab funding in Florida

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

The mother of a six-year-old girl found murdered and sexually assaulted last September is taking her call for more crime lab funding to Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida. Evidence in the case has not been fully tested, as Florida's five state crime labs face serious backlogs.

Read this story and watch video here. (NBC 2, Fort Myers, Fla., 03/11/07)

Crime lab backlogs prevent police and the courts from working efficiently and create the possibility of error. For our recommendations on crime lab reform, see our Fix the System section.

More on crime lab backlogs in Florida and elsewhere:

Florida DNA labs are so backed up that officials may limit the number of items police can send from each case.

Montana labs continue to suffer from serious backlogs.

Several states, and the federal government, are considering DNA database expansions despite backlogged labs.

James Waller pardoned in Texas

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

A Dallas man who first asked for DNA testing 18 years ago has finally been cleared by the state of Texas. On Friday, Governor Rick Perry pardoned James Waller, who spent 10 years in Texas prisons and 13 years on parole for a rape he didn't commit.

Waller appeared in court in January with his attorneys from the Innocence Project as the District Attorney filed a motion agreeing with the finding of innocence.

Read more about the case.

View the pardon papers.

Thirteen Dallas men have been proven innocent by DNA testing; read about their cases here.

New Dallas DA Craig Watkins agreed to allow the Innocence Project of Texas to review 354 Dallas cases for possible DNA cases. Read more.

Massachusetts crime lab director resigns under pressure

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Carl Selavka, who ran the Massachusetts State Police crime lab for nearly seven years, has resigned as his lab is scrutinized for possible misconduct. Officials said that the resignation was "an admission that he didn't meet his job responsibility."

The lab is currently undergoing an audit due to problems with the way DNA database samples have been handled in the past. The lab's database administrator was suspended without pay in January after it was revealed that he had failed to report DNA database matches to prosecutors.

Read today's Boston Globe article on Selavka's resignation.

Read previous blog entries on the Massachusetts State Police crime lab.

Read about crime lab oversight in our Fix the System section.

Maryland expert fabricated credentials, testimony is questioned

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

The former head of the Maryland State Police firearms division suddenly retired days ago and then committed suicide, and police revealed yesterday that an investigation showed that he lied repeatedly on the witness stand about his credentials. Joseph Kopera, 61, had worked as a forensic expert for 37 years on state and federal cases in every Maryland jurisdiction as well as in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys told the Baltimore Sun last night that this revelation could lead to new trials for dozens of inmates that Kopera helped to convict.

"It raises huge red flags, and it's particularly disturbing because he had been doing this for so long that God knows how many cases he's been involved in," (Public Defender) Michelle Nethercott said yesterday evening in a telephone interview from Annapolis, where she was testifying in favor of a bill that would require oversight of police crime labs in Maryland.

As a firearms examiner - first with the Baltimore Police Department and then the state police - Kopera collected and then analyzed bullets, shell casings, weapons and other forensic evidence. Given the length and breadth of Kopera's work, prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys alike said yesterday that the implications of the investigation could be tremendous, with the analysis of every bullet and every weapon that has passed through Kopera's crime laboratory called into question. ...

"The potential problem cannot be overstated," said Thomas J. Fleckenstein, a former Anne Arundel County assistant state's attorney. "Every case he has ever been involved in is open to question. There will be a lot of prosecutors having a lot of heartburn."

Read the full story here. (Baltimore Sun, 03/09/07)

The Innocence Project has worked on many cases in which the discovery of crime lab misconduct has led to the exoneration of innocent people. Forensic fraud is troubling because in many cases handled by these notorious experts, evidence that could have proven innocence has been lost or destroyed after conviction. Cases is which DNA evidence can lead to exoneration are rare, and they point to larger problems in the criminal justice system.

Former West Virginia lab chief Fred Zain testified in 12 states over the course of his career, and his faulty work led to the wrongful conviction of Gilbert Alejandro, James Richardson, William O'Dell Harris and others.
The Innocence Project represents Thomas Siller, who was convicted partly based on false testimony by a notorious forensic analyst, Joseph Serowik, whose forensic fraud also led to the wrongful conviction of Anthony Michael Green.
The Innocence Project is also involved in the case of Curtis McCarty, who has been convicted twice and sentenced to death in Oklahoma and is currently awaiting his third trial. His first two trials were tainted by the faulty forensic testimony of Joyce Gilchrist, who was also involved in the wrongful convictions of Jeffrey Todd Pierce and Robert Miller.
Read more about forensic science misconduct.

Dateline NBC to feature Clarence Elkins case on Sunday

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

In 2005, Melinda Elkins got the break in her husband's case she had been looking for. Her husband, Clarence Elkins, had been convicted in 1999 of killing Melinda's mother and attacking her niece. Melinda, working with a private investigator, learned that a possible alternate suspect had been in the area at the time of the crime. And this man was now in the same cell block as Clarence.

Clarence picked up a cigarette butt that the man had smoked and mailed it to Melinda. She sent the cigarette to lawyers at the Ohio Innocence Project and they tested it for DNA. The results matched the DNA from the crime scene. Elkins was released later that year after serving more than seven years for a crime he didn't commit. Prosecutors have said they are planning to charge the alternate suspect with this crime.

This Sunday at 7 p.m. ET, Dateline NBC reports on how Melinda Elkins helped crack Clarence's case.

UPDATE: Watch the full show online.

Check your local listings to find out when to watch Dateline this weekend.

Read more about the Clarence Elkins case.

Marty Tankleff Case Featured on NPR

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST

Today on WNYC public radio, Innocence Project Staff Attorney Olga Akselrod discussed the case of Long Island man Marty Tankleff, who was convicted in 1990 of killing his parents and has always claimed his innocence. Other guests on the show included a private investigator working on the case and Tankleff's aunt, the sister of his murdered mother. The Innocence Project has helped Tankleff's attorneys to present new evidence that can prove his innocence of the crime.

Listen to the show online or download an mp3.

Background on the Tankleff case, including legal briefs and television specials.