Posted on 07/20/2006 10:33:03 AM PDT by newgeezer
Johnny Briscoe is a free man today, after serving 23 years for crimes the state now says he didn't commit.
Briscoe walked out of a state prison in Charleston, Mo., on Wednesday after serving part of a 45-year sentence for convictions involving a 1982 sexual attack on a woman ...
Thanks to DNA testing, authorities confirmed ... that Briscoe was innocent and that the real rapist was already in another Missouri prison.
...
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch called him ... and "apologized to him on behalf of the county, particularly for the past six years."
...
There was no DNA testing in 1983 when Briscoe was convicted. In 2000 and again in 2001, McCulloch ... asked the crime lab to look for evidence in the Briscoe case and other cases where DNA could now be applied to existing evidence.
McCulloch said his office was told the evidence had been destroyed.
... The laboratory reported that the freezer where the evidence might have been kept was searched and that the evidence - cigarette butts - had presumably been destroyed.
In 2004, the crime lab "was inventorying and cataloging everything in the lab" and found the cigarette butts in the freezer, McCulloch said, but his office didn't learn about their existence until July 6.
...
Testing of the three cigarette butts confirmed that the victim's DNA was found on all three but that the third contained DNA that matched a different man than Briscoe - one who is also in the Missouri prison system ...
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
My mis-read. I got it. Thanks.
Yes...read the paragraph again:"
Thanks
"I wonder why Briscoe didn't testify on his own behalf."
Because then his prior criminal record could have been used to impeach him.
"I assumed (or hoped) "jk" meant "just kidding." But, I guess I could be wrong."
I'm glad I read your post before I responded.
bttt
Johnny Briscoe was not proved innocent, only that he didnt leave the DNA that they found.
Aren't people considered innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, as opposed to proving someone's innocence?
Seems like this evidence may not rise to the reasonable doubt level.
Hey, you gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelette </sarc>
Two of the cigarette butts had only the victim's DNA. Those are irrelevant.The third had both the victim's and that of a third person. Given the victim's testimony that the perpetrator of the rape was the man who smoked that cigarette, that implies that if your DNA ain't on that cigarette you weren't there.
I hope you aren't ever on a jury if you would convict someone who you know wasn't in the room at the time.
I'm not sure what that optical illusion has to do with eyewitness identifications, but I've seen enough for such identifications to be very suspect unless the witness is identifying someone they previously knew.
"Did I miss something in the article?"
Yes, all the butts had the *victim's* DNA on them, and one also had the perpetrator's DNA, which turned out not to be
Briscoe. Assuming I read that correctly, it's not very well written, that sentence.
If you can't even trust your eyeballs to recognize identical colors being observed simultaneously as being identical, how can you trust them to recognize a face they may only have seen once?
Faces are a lot more complicated than colors.
DNA cannot prove innocence, only guilt.
I would suspect the face of a rapist would NOT be one a woman would forget....ever.
Inductive reasoning at its worst, whereas you don't know a)whether the rapist deposited smoked cigarettes in the room, or b)that the rapist was not IN THE ROOM, as you surmise simply because no cigarettes were found containing his DNA.
I hope you are not on a jury of a non-smoking defendant, where you would vote "not guilty" because of such a logic tree.
I really don't know, as I was not at the trial, and I'm not really confident in newspaper writers' interpretations of "evidence".
You were there?
If we had speedy executions, this sort of thing wouldn't be happening.
According to the logic of your tagline, even if they HAD shot him it would have been what God wanted. >shrugs<
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