Posts Tagged ‘prison’

It took 35 long years for justice to prevail, but James Bain’s release from a Florida prison in December for a crime he didn’t commit will be celebrated this weekend at several events here in Philadelphia.

Mr.  Bain, who was freed on Dec. 17, will receive the 2010 Drum Major Award for Criminal Justice from the Philadelphia Martin Luther King Jr. Association for Non-Violence in ceremonies at 12:30 p.m. EDT on Monday, Jan. 18.  The award presentation will be held at the Sheraton Hotel, 17^th and Race streets, Philadelphia. Mr. Bain will also participate in a National Bell Ringing ceremony at The Liberty Bell at noon before the luncheon.

He will also be the featured guest on MyPhillyLawyer’s Court Radio show broadcast this Sunday morning, Jan. 17, at 7 a.m. EDT on WRNB-FM 107.9 with attorney Dean I. Weitzman.  Mr. Bain will talk about his case, experiences and legal battles since his arrest back in 1974.

James Bain talks to the media outside a Florida courthouse after being released from prison Dec. 17, 2009/ Image credit: The Innocence Project of Florida

Mr. Bain, whose visit is being sponsored by MyPhillyLawyer, was released from prison in Florida last month after DNA testing conducted on behalf of non-profit group, The Innocence Project of Florida, revealed what Bain insisted since his arrest back in 1974 – that the wrong man had been convicted and incarcerated in connection with the kidnapping and rape of a nine-year-old boy (See the MyPhillyLawyer.com blog entry on the case from Dec. 18, 2009).  Mr. Bain is the 248th person who has been exonerated of crimes due to DNA testing in our nation, according to The Innocence Project.

One of Mr. Bain’s attorneys with The Innocence Project of Florida, Melissa Montle, said that  it took so long for his eventual innocence to be determined because for years his appeals were denied on procedural grounds.  The first problem was that he only had two years after his guilty verdict to file an appeal based on DNA testing — but such testing didn’t even exist at that time, she said.  Later, another court rejected his request after it interpreted that two-year window as being after the development of such DNA testing,  Montle said, which was difficult to determine.

Mr. Bain’s case was also tainted, she said, by a poorly conducted police identification procedure set up for the young and traumatized victim at that time.  The police allegedly asked the boy to describe his attacker and when he did, the boy’s uncle, who was present for the procedure, said “that sounds like Jimmy Bain,” Montle said. “The procedure that the police used was very suggestive. The photo line-up wasn’t put together well.  The police  didn’t ask the victim to select the photo of the man who had raped him,” Montle said. “They told [the victim] to pick out the photo of Jimmy Bain.”

“Studies have shown that once a victim decides who their attacker is, that’s who it becomes for them,” Montle said.  “It was an honest mistake and no one is blaming this poor kid who went through this horrible experience.”

Also leading to the erroneous conviction, she said, was evidence presented by an FBI crime lab scientist who testified in court against Mr. Bain.  The FBI expert testified that a sample of semen from the attacker which was found on the boy’s underwear was from a man with Type B blood. Mr. Bain’s blood is Type AB, but the FBI expert explained that discrepancy away by saying it could “be a weak A and the B part just jumped out,” Montle said.  The FBI expert “fudged it a bit,” she said. But for the jury, it was enough. “You have to think that someone from the FBI testifying had great weight with the jury,” she said.

Mr. Bain is once again a free man after the justice system failed him 35 years ago.  Now he will work to put his life back together after more than three decades in prison for a crime that was committed by someone else.

We look forward to hearing his words, to hearing his story, straight from the man who lived through such a long and difficult nightmare.

Is he bitter? Is he happy to be free? Did he ever give up on his dream of being released from prison? Did he ever give up hope? And through it all, what kept him alive each day and able to cope with the inequities he endured?

Be sure to listen in this Sunday morning at 7 a.m. EDT at WRNB-FM 107.9 and call in with your questions and comments for Mr. Bain.

We are honored to sponsor his visit and we thank him for sharing his story with us.

After spending 35 years in prison for a crime he always insisted he hadn’t committed, James Bain walked out of the courthouse in Polk County, Fla., yesterday, a free man once again,  according to an Associated Press story in today’s New York Times.

It took many legal attempts to finally get the courts to analyze his DNA and compare it to DNA left at the scene of the kidnapping and rape of a nine-year-old boy back in 1974.  When the tests were finally done this year, the results clearly demonstrated that the wrong man had been charged, convicted and imprisoned.

No one can give James Bain those 35 years back, but his experience underscores again that our system of law is not without flaws and can allow innocent people to be imprisoned for decades.  The good news, however, is that there are national groups like The Innocence Project that continue to work on behalf of people who have been falsely accused of heinous crimes.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/hatman12

Bain is the 248th person who has been exonerated of crimes due to DNA testing in our nation, according to the group.

The details of his case are chilling.

“The victim described the perpetrator and the victim’s uncle said the description sounded like James Bain,” according to The Innocence Project’s press release yesterday.  “The victim then viewed a photo lineup and identified Bain as the perpetrator.  He would later say in a deposition that he had been asked to ‘pick out Jimmie Bain.’”

When he was arrested, Bain was 19 years old.  He maintained that he was at home with his younger sister at the time the crime has been committed.  His denials went unheeded and he was arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

In this case, it took repeated legal attempts by attorneys from the Innocence Project of Florida, a six-year-old non-profit group that uses DNA testing to help innocent prisoners in Florida obtain their freedom and rebuild their lives, to get a judge to order the tests.

This is a classic example of  how justice delayed is truly justice denied.  James Bain was allowed to rot in a Florida prison even though DNA evidence could have and should have exonerated him long ago.   Shame on the Florida judiciary,  shame on the county prosecutor and shame on all who contributed to this long,  sad,  unfair and miserable  miscarriage of justice.

What this case — and the hundreds just like it that have occurred in recent years across our nation — illustrates is that justice is never perfect, but that it can be corrected as long as their are people who make it their business to fight for those who are wrongly accused.

It also clearly shows that because justice can be imperfect, irreversible penalties such as death sentences should never be permitted.  If a prisoner is given a death sentence, and it is carried out, then finality is all that is left. And in Bain’s case, it would have been a tragic miscarriage of “justice” had the circumstances of his case never received further reviews.

Convicted killer Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas may not have been so fortunate.  He was charged and convicted in the murders of his three young children in 1991 in a house fire, which was ruled an arson.  He denied that he set the fire and refused to sign a plea agreement, choosing to let his story come out in court.  After a dramatic trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to death.  He was put to death in February, 2004, by lethal injection in a Texas prison.

Five years later, in a 17-page analysis story published this September in The New Yorker,  serious questions were raised about the techniques, conclusions and analysis done in the arson investigation in Willingham’s case. The tragedy is that though the questions raised could have impacted his case, Willingham had already been killed and he could not seek appeals based on the new information that could potentially have cleared him.

Some critics insist that justice is always fair, always right and that the accused are always guilty.

Remember that if you are James Bain or Cameron Todd Willingham and are accused of a crime that you insist you did not commit.

Death penalties are not the answer.

Justice, even justice delayed, is the only and ultimate answer.

James Bain’s tortuous case and his ultimately proper release from prison is proof of that.

Everybody deserves a second chance under our American legal system.  You do the crime, you do the time, and then you go back into society and try to make something of yourself.  That’s what former NFL quarterback Michael Vick is trying to do.  So why are so many people on his case?

Public reaction has been mixed after the Philadelphia Eagles announced yesterday that the team signed Vick to a one-year contract,  according to a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Why, critics are asking,  should the Eagles have signed the former Atlanta Falcons QB  — who was indefinitely suspended from the NFL and recently served 18-months in federal prison for running a dog fighting ring after his 2007 conviction?  How could the Eagles have hired an animal abuser?  Why would the Eagles have done such a stupid thing?

Well, I don’t like what Vick did either.  I am an animal lover who has three dogs and a cat.  I find his actions repulsive and inhumane, as did the courts and the judge who sentenced him to a 23-month prison term. But should that stupid action on Vick’s part mean that for the rest of his life he is only judged on this one heinous,  selfish, arrogant, mean and horrendous act?

The only reasonable answer is no.  For any of us who make a huge mistake or do something vile or stupid or hateful, somehow there has to be a way out through a second chance, through forgiveness, through lessons being learned in life.  And I believe that Vick or anyone else who commits a crime deserves such a chance.

As a free society, with laws and punishments and repercussions for our actions, there must also be a means for healing, for moving forward, for rehabilitation.  You’d want the same opportunity for yourself if you did something stupid and went to prison for it.  Starting now, Vick’s past is his past.  He served his time.

Now let’s see how he handles his second chance.  This chance  is there for him to fly as an Eagle and as a member of the Philadelphia community or for him to squander and perhaps forever be banished from professional sports as a failure and former felon.  It’s in Vick’s hands and heart now.

An online poll by the Inquirer on whether Vick should have been signed by the Eagles is so far split almost evenly, with 48.7% of the respondents supporting the move, while 51.3% opposed it as of 5 p.m. today.

There are already some Eagles season ticket holders who are posting their tickets for sale on Web sites in protest of his signing by the team,  according to a report in the Inquirer.  I think that’s ridiculous.  I think that attitude is part of what’s wrong in our country today, from people who believe they are holier than thou, until their own asses are on the line.  No one seems to give the other guy much slack.

Vick did a terrible, horrible, repulsive thing.  But he went to prison for it and paid for his past actions with 18-months of his life in a federal prison cell.  Now it’s time to give him another chance and see if he makes the best use of it.