There were statements of two witness, for which Craig Coley more than 39 years in a California prison for sass. A neighbor had testified that on the night of the 11. November 1978 loud, Bang, I heard noises from the apartment next door. You’ve seen Coleys all-terrain vehicle in front of the apartment complex, parked, in which his then-Ex-girlfriend Rhonda guy, 24, and her son, Donald, 4, lived.
A man with medium-length hair, the neighbor, testified to have driven away the car. Coley, today 71 and graying, had medium-long hair. The second witness lived a floor below Coleys Ex-girlfriend. He heard at around 5.30 am in the Morning loud noises in the apartment. At about 5.30 PM, so it limited the investigators, had raped the offender Rhonda guy and strangled, and her son have choked. Coley, a Vietnam Veteran, the night-shifts in a Fast Food Restaurant, pushed, had, for this time no Alibi.
Both of these statements plus the hypothesis that Coley did not take the separation from his girlfriend, submitted to the jury, to speak to him in 1980, in the second instance guilty. Life imprisonment without the possibility of the penalty to be suspended, the judgment.
Multiple mercy petitions
by the end of the eighties, a retired police officer expressed doubts about Coleys fault, but several pleas for mercy failed, and it took more than 25 years, until the local chief of police and the public Prosecutor for a new investigation ordered.
Coley was released in 2017, from prison: The former Governor of California pardoned him. Photo: Reuters
two years Ago, with modern methods, engineered DNA Test revealed that Coley could not be the perpetrator and the semen had to come to the scene of the crime by another man. The former Governor pardoned him, he was released from custody, California paid him a first compensation of two million US dollars. Well, last weekend, the case was closed legally. The city of Simi Valley, 40 kilometers Northwest of Los Angeles, agreed with Coley on a compensation payment in the amount of $ 21 million.
No case
cases such as that of Coley, there are in the US thousands. One of a number of research institutes operated Website, The National Registry of Exonerations, lists 2395 persons, who sat for many years wrongly in prison, and finally, on the basis of new evidence came free. Coley is, without a remand for expected, number ten on this list. The man who stands at number one, has spent more than 45 years in prison, although he was the perpetrator. All cases of this justice victims add up, so it says on the Website, on a 20’945 lost years.
Similarly precise Figures for Germany, there is not. “On retrial, no statistics are kept,” said the Hamburg lawyer Gerhard Strate, who has specialized in such cases. He took about the in the forensic psychiatry trained Gustl Mollath, and is currently working on the defense of a man who has been sitting for 13 years in prison, because he killed in Munich in 2006, his aunt, the millionairess Charlotte Boehringer,. In this case, there is Strate that considerable doubt that the court has considered the chain of circumstantial evidence leading to the conviction, right.
Richard Philipps was sitting for more than 45 years innocent in prison: During this time, he has painted over 400 watercolors. Photo: Keystone
Only slightly more than 0.01 percent of the year around 700’000 criminal cases, this number can often be found in the literature, are resumed. “The German justice defended their judgments with teeth and Claws,” says Strate. Unlike in the U.S., German lawyers could not force the access to evidence, such as a bed sheet with semen, as in the case of Coley,. Promising it was, so how in the Mollath case, the opinion of the expert challenge.
disputes
So it happened also in the case of Norbert kiss. He was convicted in 2004 by the regional court of Saarbrücken to three years in prison because he was accused of having his time of the crime, twelve-year-old foster daughter 100 Times abused. Kiss, 75, tells his story on the phone. As in the Saarland usual, he starts sentences with “Yo”, he says, sometimes, get, where, otherwise, would take said.
kiss remembers every Detail of his long struggle against the judiciary. In the Revision, the constitutional complaint and the three recovery applications failed. The invective in prison, where he was exposed as an alleged abuser. To the with a nail-studded block of wood, another prisoner threw it at him, and him only narrowly missed out. In 2013 kiss was rehabilitated. Acquittal of all charges. It had turned out that the foster daughter, who came from difficult circumstances, had invented it all.
The police and the author of the credibility of expert opinion, the court, saw it had the girl’s erroneous and suggestive questioning. For each of the 683 days in detention, he received 25 euros in compensation, more than 17’000 euros in total. A further five and a half years it took to kiss, a former military officer, all the damages could enforce claims against the consultant. Only last week the money has been transferred. What you feel to kiss? “I didn’t forget but I have forgiven the woman.”
In his case, there was no fact, in the case of Craig Coley is still uncertain as to who the villain, Rhonda, and their son killed. (Editorial Tamedia)
Created: 27.02.2019, 10:50 PM
