HOUSTON
- June 8 - More than a dozen persons who were wrongly convicted based on
erroneous eyewitness identifications will travel to Houston Monday to
call on Gov. George W. Bush and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
to intervene to prevent the execution of a man wrongfully convicted of
capital murder.
The Center on Wrongful Convictions at
Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago will sponsor a
"Gathering of Those Who Stand as Living Testaments
to the Fallibility of Eyewitness Testimony"
at 11 AM on Monday, June 12, 2000 in Room 104 of the
Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University
3100 Cleburne Street, Houston, Texas
Featured speakers include:
o Lawrence C. Marshall, Legal Director, Center on Wrongful Convictions
at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.
o Kirk Bloodsworth, the first death row inmate to be released based on
DNA
evidence.
o Dennis Williams, released from Illinois’ death row with the help of
journalism students.
o Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, professor of psychology at the University of
Washington in Seattle and a leading authority on erroneous eyewitness
identifications in criminal cases.
Unless Bush and the board act, the state of Texas will execute Graham,
who
now goes by the name Shaka Sankofa, on June 22. Graham was convicted on
a dubious identification by a single eyewitness who testified to seeing
a stranger's face at night through a car windshield from a distance of
30-40 feet FOR TWO SECONDS. That testimony was the only evidence linking
then 17-year-old Graham to the killing of Bobby Lambert in a Houston
grocery store parking lot in 1981. Six other eyewitnesses have said they
saw another man shoot Mr. Lambert, but no court ever heard from these
witnesses due to incompetent lawyering.
"We now know beyond doubt that mistaken eyewitness testimony is the
major cause of wrongful convictions," Dr. Loftus said. "Let's recognize
that scientific truth before we execute an innocent person in ignorance
of it."
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