Alton Logan served 26 years in Illinois prison for murder before he was released on Friday based on new evidence of his innocence. While DNA evidence is not involved, Logan joins a vast group of people released from prison years after an apparent wrongful conviction. His family members collected $1,000 for bond in the courthouse lobby on Friday and he is now awaiting a decision from the Illinois Attorney General on whether to retry him.

Logan was convicted of a 1982 murder in a McDonald's restaurant and sentenced to life in prison, narrowly avoiding the death penalty. His release was sparked by an affidavit provided by two Illinois attorneys, revealing that their client in another murder case, Andrew Wilson, had confessed to them that he committed the McDonald's murder alone. The confession came before Logan was sentenced in the case. The attorneys had Wilson sign an affidavit admitting his guilt, but kept it locked away because they weren't allowed to break attorney-client privilege. Wilson told them they could release the affidavit if he died, and he passed away last year in prison.

Cynthia Sommer, accused of fatally poisoning her Miramar Marine husband with arsenic, spent two years and four months behind bars. Yesterday, the 34-year-old mother of four walked out of the Las Colinas jail a free woman, after prosecutors dropped the murder case against her.

...

"As soon as we had the information that pointed to reasonable doubt, we brought this case this afternoon to get the matter dismissed," she said, adding that prosecutors acted quickly "so that Sommer didn't spend any additional time in custody."

Defense lawyer Allen Bloom was unconvinced.

"No one should say that this system worked," he said. "This dismissal wasn't because of the prosecution's efforts; it was done because the defense demanded it."

Todd Sommer, 23, died Feb. 18, 2002, after collapsing at the couple's home at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. Doctors first determined he died of natural causes, but tests later revealed high levels of arsenic in his liver and kidneys.

Just goes to show that not just inaccurate testimony from eye witnesses, but also forensic evidence will lead to wrongful convictions.

James Ochoa served 10 months in a California prison for a carjacking he didn't commit. He pled guilty to avoid a possible life sentence. In 2006, DNA evidence proved his innocence and exonerated him. He has applied for compensation under state law, but documents obtained by the Innocence Project show that state officials are seeking to deny Ochoa his compensation because he pled guilty.

A final decision is expected at the April 17 meeting of the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board, but a proposed decision says that "Ochoa has not met the statutory requirements to receive compensation under Penal Code section 4900 because he contributed to his conviction by pleading guilty."

Ochoa has argued that he pled guilty to avoid a possible life sentence. Scott Baugh, a former California lawmaker who authored an amendment to the compensation law, told the Los Angeles Times last June that Ochoa should definitely be compensated under the law.

A Buffalo, New York, cold case squad detective was suspended without pay this week for speaking publicly about two cold cases in which evidence showed that a man and woman were in prison for crimes they didn't commit. Dennis Delano, a 28-year veteran of the Buffalo Police Department, has been suspended for allegedly compromising the nature of investigations with his public statements.

Delano's work has been key to the release of two wrongfully convicted individuals in Buffalo in recent months -- Anthony Capozzi and Lynn DeJac. Capozzi was exonerated by DNA evidence last year after serving two decades in prison for two rapes he didn't commit. DeJac was officially cleared yesterday when prosecutors dropped all pending charges against her. She served 13 years for allegedly killing her 13-year-old daughter in 1933. Three medical examiners have now said the girl died of a cocaine overdose, not strangulation.

Two men who were wrongfully convicted of separate child murders in Noxubee County, Mississippi, were cleared in the crimes at a hearing this morning based on evidence proving their innocence. Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, who are represented by the Innocence Project, have maintained their innocence for 15 years and were joined by more than 100 of their relatives at this morning’s hearing.

...

"It has taken 15 long years, but Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks are finally free. The evidence clearly shows that they are innocent -- what's troubling is that their innocence has been clear for years, but they remained incarcerated while the true perpetrator was at large," Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld said. "The system wasn't just broken in these cases -- different elements within the system actually conspired to convict two innocent men of heinous crimes, while the actual perpetrator remained at large. These cases should haunt Mississippi and the nation, and they should lead to a top-to-bottom review of how the state is investigating and prosecuting cases."

The same sheriff's officer investigated both crimes, the same District Attorney prosecuted both crimes, and the same discredited forensic dentist and same controversial pathologist conducted the post mortems and misled juries in both cases with false testimony implicating Brooks and Brewer. Because of concerns about whether Brewer and Brooks' cases would be handled appropriately once new evidence emerged, the Innocence Project persuaded the Mississippi Attorney General to intervene in the reinvestigation of the cases. This is the first time in the nation that a case has ended in exoneration after a state Attorney General has intervened and removed it from a local prosecutor, according to the Innocence Project.

All the more reason there should be no capital punishment because innocent people are being put on death row.

Most have forgotten Abdallah Higazy, but he's proceeded with his lawsuit against the FBI. In an interesting twist, the details of the threats made against his family by FBI Agent Michael Templeton have been classified. Sadly for the Second Circuit, they released the unredacted version briefly before withdrawing and replacing it with the classified decision. Good on How Appealing for keeping the opinion online.

Here's what they cut:

Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.”

Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

Higazy explained why he feared for his family:

The Egyptian government has very little tolerance for anybody who is —they’re suspicious of being a terrorist. To give you an idea, Saddam’s security force—as they later on were called his henchmen—a lot of them learned their methods and techniques in Egypt; torture, rape, some stuff would be even too sick to . . . . My father is 67. My mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When the word ‘torture’ comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just press on one of these knuckles. I couldn’t imagine them doing anything to my sister.

And Higazy added:

[L]et’s just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same token, some people who actually could be —might try to get to them and somebody might actually make a connection. I wasn’t going to risk that. I wasn’t going to risk that, so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that’s convincing? And I said okay.

Local mirror of unredacted decision regarding the threats made by Agent Temleton regarding the torture of Higazy's family