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Massachusetts is one of two states without a post-conviction DNA access law. Gretchen Bennett (executive director), Dennis Maher, Anthony Powell, Kenneth Waters (exonerees) and Betty Anne Waters were featured in Sunday, November 21, 2011, Boston Globe Magazine story about legislation to change that.
The post-conviction DNA bill has passed unanimously in the state Senate and is currently awaiting a decision in the House.
(Originally ran 10/5/11) An Austin, Texas man walked free from prison today after serving 25 years for a crime that he didn’t commit. In 1986, Michael Morton was convicted for beating his wife to death after allegedly becoming enraged when she refused to have sex with him. Morton’s conviction rested on circumstantial evidence.
DNA tests conducted this summer on a bloody bandana found near the crime scene implicated another man who was involved in a similar murder in 1988 – after Morton was already behind bars. The Innocence Project discovered through the Texas Public Information Act that the county district attorney, John Bradley, suppressed evidence that could have been helpful to Morton’s team, including a police interview transcript in which Morton’s son said that his father was not the attacker. Nina Morrison, an attorney with the Innocence Project, said that they had identified six instances where prosecutors and investigators hid non-DNA evidence from Morton’s defense attorney that could have been exculpatory during the original trial. Morton had consistently maintained his innocence.
Read the Los Angeles Times story here.
UPDATE (11/11/11)– The case of Michael Morton took on a new twist on Wednesday when police arrested Mark Alan Norwood, 57, and charged him with the murder of Christine Morton in 1986. The Innocence Project fought for DNA testing on a bloody bandana found near the Morton’s home on the day of the murder. DNA results cleared Michael Morton and implicated another man. The DNA also linked this unknown male to the eerily similar murder of Debra Masters Baker that occurred two years after Morton’s murder. Norwood is now being considered a suspect in the 1988 murder of Debra Masters Baker as well.
A Texas Commission charged with investigating the Cameron Todd Willingham arson case released its final report last Friday, October 28. Willingham was convicted of killing his children by intentionally setting the fire that destroyed their home. Modern advances in arson science indicate that the evidence used to convict Willingham may have been faulty. Despite doubts about his guilt, Willingham was executed in 2004 for the crime.
The Texas Forensic Science Commission re-examined the evidence in the Willingham case and made recommendations for improving arson investigations in Texas. The Commission made 17 recommendations for incorporating new science and procedures into arson investigations to reduce the risk of wrongfully convicting people based on improper science.
The commission’s findings will also spur the re-review of over 700 old arson cases, with the State Fire Marshall’s Office as well as the Innocence Project of Texas working to examine the cases. They will be looking for bad forensic science and practices that may have lead to other questionable or wrongful convictions.
NEIP hosted a picnic for New England exonerees and their families Monday, October 10th on George’s Island in Boston. Four New England exonerees and their families joined current and former NEIP staff for a day of food, games and discussion. This is the first time that exonerees from New England have had the chance to come together in New England and share their experiences with each other and their families. Exonerees in attendance included Bernard Baran, Scott Hornoff, Dennis Maher and Anthony Powell, who spent a combined 56 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. The event was designed to give exonerees the chance to discuss their struggles and successes adjusting to life after being freed from prison.
While some exonerees have found jobs, started families and bought houses, many struggle with the lack of resources available to help them transition to life on the outside. People who are proved innocent are often not eligible for the same post-release services available to people who are released after they complete their prison terms.
NEIP provides pro bono legal assistance to inmates who have claims of actual innocence. The New England Innocence Project’s mission is to represent persons wrongly convicted in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or Vermont and to advocate for the reform of our criminal justice system. It is the New England Innocence Project’s vision that no one in New England will ever go to prison for a crime he or she did not commit.
Please consider making a donation so that we can continue to fulfill our mission of helping the wrongly convicted in New England.
Clockwise from top right: Scott Hornoff passes the frisbee to Dennis Maher’s daughter Aliza. Bernard Baran (center, blue shirt) speaks to a group of NEIP staff. Anthony Powell (white shirt) with NEIP Executive Director Gretchen Bennett (navy blue shirt). Scott Hornoff’s daughter Abbie performs in front of NEIP staff. Dennis Maher and his son Josh enjoy the ferry ride to George’s Island.
Douglas Starr, a local journalist, published an article in the November issue of Discover Magazine discussing the evolving field of fire science and the role it will play in wrongful conviction cases. Scientific study of fire scenes began in earnest during the 1970s, but it was not until the early 1990s that experts realized that many of the classic arson indicators that investigators relied upon where not, in fact, signs that a fire was set intentionally. Despite the increase in scientific analysis, expertly trained fire scientists were still largely only attracted to high-profile fires. Thus, most fires were handled by investigators who learned on the job. Few had taken college-level courses in fire science, chemistry or physics. Their on-the-job training consisted mostly of observing other investigators who in turn had learned from their supervisors. This ongoing cycle did not allow for introduction of the newer scientific information, and caused a perpetuation of investigators’ reliance on the indicators that science proved wrong.
John Lentini, a renowned fire expert, recognizes that his whole perspective on arson science changed early in his career. Lentini was called in to investigate a fire in Jacksonville, Florida that had killed six people. Before Lentini arrived, prosecutors already believed it was an arson case. The scene showed what were considered to be the classic signs of arson, including pour patterns. Pour patterns are burn areas surrounded by relatively unaffected material that for years were relied upon to demonstrate that accelerant was poured on the area and had burned. Interested in testing the conclusions that arson investigators had relied on for years, Lentini’s team received permission to re-create the fire in an abandoned house virtually identical to the one involved in the alleged crime. In a landmark experiment, known as the Lime Street Fire, Lentini’s team reproduced the fire with shocking results. Without using accelerant, the fire caused damage that included many classic signs of arson, including pour patterns. All charges against the defendant were dropped, and the study raised the likelihood that erroneous science was used to put others behind bars.
Despite a movement towards more scientific investigation, most states still lack any legal requirements for a person to become a fire investigator. In some states, a private investigator’s license is the only credential needed to investigate a fire and testify to its origins. While only a handful of Innocence Projects accept arson cases, The New England Innocence Project won a victory in an arson case just before Thanksgiving last year. James Hebshie, who was convicted of arson, was exonerated after John Lentini testified in support of his case.
Above: James Hebshie who was freed from prison after arson expert John Lentini testified in his defense.
photo credit: Matt Kalinowski
Read the full Discover article here.
Dewey Bozella always dreamed of boxing professionally. As a teenager, he had boxed as an amateur before his arrest at age 18 for the murder of 92-year-old woman in Poughkeepsie, New York. His conviction primarily rested on the testimony of two criminals who repeatedly changed their stories. However, a fingerprint found at the scene matched Donald Wise, who was later convicted of a similar murder in the same neighborhood. Bozella was retried for the crime in 1990 and prosecutors offered a deal where if he pled guilty, he could go free. Refusing to admit to a crime that he did not commit, he was re-convicted by a jury. In 2009, the Innocence Project referred the case to the law firm WilmerHale where lawyers working on the case located a file that the police lieutenant had saved. The file contained exculpatory evidence that was never turned over to defense attorneys. After 26 years in prison, Mr. Bozella walked free on October 28, 2009.
Now 52, Mr. Bozella’s dream of becoming a professional boxer has finally come true. During the 26 years he spent in prison, Mr. Bozella continued to box, working out in a space formerly used for executions performed in the prison. While at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York, he was the light-heavyweight champion. In September 2011, he passed the licensing test to become the oldest boxer ever licensed in the state of California. On Thursday afternoon, President Obama called Bozella to wish him luck in Saturday’s fight. In what he says will be his first and only professional fight, Bozella defeated his opponent in a unanimous decision on Saturday. After the fight he said, “Dreams do happen if you never give up hope and always believe in yourself.” He says that his next fight will be to help kids stay off the streets by opening his own boxing ring in upstate New York.
Read the New York Times article about Dewey Bozella’s boxing debut and the post-fight recap.
An Austin, Texas man walked free from prison today after serving 25 years for a crime that he didn’t commit. In 1986, Michael Morton was convicted for beating his wife to death after allegedly becoming enraged when she refused to have sex with him. Morton’s conviction rested on circumstantial evidence.
DNA tests conducted this summer on a bloody bandana found near the crime scene implicated another man who was involved in a similar murder in 1988 – after Morton was already behind bars. The Innocence Project discovered through the Texas Public Information Act that the county district attorney, John Bradley, suppressed evidence that could have been helpful to Morton’s team, including a police interview transcript in which Morton’s son said that his father was not the attacker. Nina Morrison, an attorney with the Innocence Project, said that they had identified six instances where prosecutors and investigators hid non-DNA evidence from Morton’s defense attorney that could have been exculpatory during the original trial. Morton had consistently maintained his innocence.
Read the Los Angleles Times article here.
In 1984 18-year-old Thomas Haynesworth went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for his mother. He never made it home. He was arrested by police on suspicion of committing five different rapes in the area after one of the victims identified him as the perpetrator. Haynesworth was convicted and sentenced to 84 years in prison. After DNA testing became available, tests conclusively demonstrated that Haynesworth could not have committed two of the rapes; rather, the test results pointed to a serial rapist who committed rapes in the area after Haynesworth’s conviction. The DNA results, along with strong circumstantial evidence, led a Virginia parole board to release Haynesworth from prison this past March on his 46th birthday, 27 years after he was first stopped by police.
Haynesworth is now seeking full exoneration for all five of the rapes. Since he has not been exonerated on all the prior convictions, he has to register as a sex offender and request permission to visit his nieces. In July, a three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for Virginia requested additional briefs, rather than granting Haynesworth’s request for a writ of actual innocence. One of Haynesworth’s supporters is Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli who believes that the judges are interpreting the law governing granting writs of actual innocence too strictly. He argues that they should not focus narrowly on identifying “conclusive” exonerating evidence, pointing out that the state destroyed the DNA evidence in the other cases, and saying, “It seems paradoxical to demand ‘conclusive’ evidence from Haynesworth when the commonwealth has deprived him of the opportunity to produce such evidence.” As Haynesworth fights to clear his name, the other pieces of his life seem to be falling into place. He was offered a job soon after his release working in Attorney General Cuccinelli’s Richmond office.
Read the NYT article here.
The debate over the death penalty in the United States was brought to the forefront last week with the execution of Troy Anthony Davis. A secondary issue to emerge from the debate is the need for eyewitness identification reform in police stations and courtrooms across the country. Media reports confirmed that seven of the nine eyewitnesses who testified in Davis’ case recanted their original testimonies, with several citing police pressure as a reason for their original identifications. Inherent in these admissions is the fact that these seven witnesses were either lying during the original trial, or are lying now. This overall truth indicates just how unreliable eyewitness identifications can be.
Another problem in the Davis case was the handling of the witnesses when they were initially questioned. Police brought all nine witnesses to the parking lot where the murder took place to walk the witnesses through the events of that night and have them recreate the crime. This type of policy has the effect of unifying witness stories and gives them the opportunity to coordinate their stories and memories. Best practices show that witness reliability is much higher when witnesses are questioned separately and not allowed to compare stories. With the debate over these issues brought into the spotlight, hopefully the Davis case will have the effect of spurring eyewitness identification reforms.
To read the TIME article, click here.
Last Thursday, two North Carolina men walked out of prison for the first time in a decade. Kenneth Kagonyera and Robert Wilcoxson pled guilty to the murder of Walter Bowman in 2000 despite maintaining their innocence. Attorneys for the two men argue that Kagonyera and Wilcoxson pled guilty to avoid life sentences; they were sentenced to 12-15 years in state prison. The case was investigated by the North Carolina Innocence Commission, a state agency including judges, attorneys, and a member of the public who review post-conviction claims of innocence. The North Carolina Innocence Commission, the only such body in the country, found enough evidence to cast doubt on the men’s convictions this past April, including DNA results that implicated others. This is the fourth case heard by the North Carolina Innocence Commission.
On Monday, September 19, the AJS Center for Forensic Science and Public Policy, in collaboration with the Innocence Project, the Police Foundation, and the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, released a study conducted over the past three years examining eyewitness identification procedures. The study analyzed over 850 lineups in four different police departments: Austin, TX; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC; Tucson, AZ; and San Diego, CA. Researchers found that when witnesses view photo lineups in a sequential manner, meaning they are shown one photo at a time, rather than in a simultaneous manner, meaning they are shown all of the suspects’ photos at once, the rate of identifying “filler” photos, photos known definitively not to be the suspect, fell by 6%. Erroneous eyewitness identifications are a factor in over 75% of wrongful convictions, making systemic improvements in the way lineups are conducted all the more important.
In an article published today by Slate, Universtiy of Virginia Law Professor and author Brandon Garrett details the eyewitness identification procedures used when investigating the Troy Anthony Davis case. Garrett explains how the lineups were not double-blind and were suggestive to the witnesses. Furthermore, Garrett states that the photo lineups were not conducted until at least five days after the crime had occurred, during which time they circulated Davis’ picture widely in the community and on the news, stating that they were looking at him as a suspect. All of these factors could have led to erroneous eyewitness identifications, the most common culprit in cases of wrongful convictions. Indeed 7 of 9 witnesses have since recanted their statements. Despite recent media coverage explaining the fallibility of memory and the need for reform in the way eyewitness identifications are obtained, the Georgia Board of Pardons this morning denied clemency to Davis, who is scheduled to die tomorrow night by lethal injection. There is no physical evidence linking Troy Anthony Davis to the crime and he has always maintained his innocence.
Read full Slate article here.
Read the letter submitted by the Innocence Network to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole.
Read the letter submitted by the Innocence Network to Chatam County District Attorney Larry Chisom.
David Ayers was released from prison Monday after spending over ten years behind bars for a murder he did not commit. Ayers has been in jail since 2000 for the robbery and murder of 76 year old Dorothy Brown. At the time of the murder, Ayers was a resident and security guard in Ms. Brown’s building.
Ayers’ conviction was based on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch, Donald Hutchinson. Before Ayer’s trial, Hutchinson told police that Ayers had confessed to the murder when the two men shared a cell. Police urged Hutchinson to get more information out of Ayers. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that this collaboration between the police and Mr. Hutchinson was unconstitutional because it violated Ayers’ Fifth Amendment right to counsel.
Despite testing before trial, which showed that hairs left on the victim did not belong to Ayers, he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. The Ohio Innocence Project, which was involved in Ayers’ case, fought vigorously for DNA testing of all the biological evidence in the case, including the hairs. The DNA tests revealed that Ayers was definitively excluded as the source of all the evidence.
Although the testimony of Mr. Hutchinson has been excluded and it has been proven that none of the physical evidence in the case matches Ayers, Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, Kevin Filiatraut, claims that Ayers is still a suspect in the murder and his office reserves the right to bring new charges against him. This will be a difficult task with virtually no remaining evidence against Ayers.
Ayers walked out of jail and into the arms of his family in an emotional reunion that can be seen here.
Dorothy Brown’s killer is still at large.
On Sept 12, 2011, a Utah judge issued an order of factual innocence for Harry Miller, the second person exonerated under Utah’s exoneration statute, passed in 2009. Miller was convicted in 2003 of a robbery that had been committed three years earlier. At the time of the robbery, the victim stated that her attacker was 18 to 21 years old and fit. Miller was 47 years old and had medical and employment records proving that he was in Louisiana recovering from a stroke both two weeks before and the week after the robbery. Miller served three and a half years in prison before he was released in 2007. Because Utah did not have an exoneration statute at that time, upon his release, Miller was given no assistance from the state. He was destitute and could not afford to return home to Louisiana.
Under Utah’s exoneration statute, a person determined to be factually innocent of the offense for which he or she was convicted is entitled to state compensation. Miller will receive $124,000.
Miller is currently living in Utah, doing landscaping work for Salt Lake County. Now that he has been exonerated, he hopes to return to Louisiana, where he plans to live “like an old man, enjoying [his] grandkids.” Congratulations to Mr. Miller and to the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center, which helped secure his exoneration.
Troy Davis, a Georgia man convicted of the 1989 murder of a police officer, is scheduled to be executed nine days from today. His conviction rests entirely on the testimony of nine witnesses, seven of whom have since recanted, claiming they were coerced by the police. Of the two holdout witnesses, one, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, was originally a suspect in the case. Troy Davis maintains that he is innocent and a victim of false identification.
Numerous high-profile organizations and celebrities believe that Davis should not be executed, including Amnesty International, Pope Benedict XVI, the ACLU, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles will hold a clemency hearing for Davis on September 19th. Amnesty International has organized a rally in Atlanta on September 16th and has declared the days between now and the hearing “Days of Solidarity with Troy.” The ACLU is urging people to contact the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles and tell them to stay the execution. Troy’s family has also drafted a petition to stay the execution which will be presented at the hearing. If enough people sign the petition, Davis’ death sentence will hopefully be commuted to life in prison without parole.
To sign the petition in support of staying Davis’ execution, please click here.
For more information regarding Davis’ case, please visit the following websites:
ACLU
Amnesty USA
On Sunday, September 4, 2011, the Boston Globe profiled NEIP exoneree Dennis Maher. Maher was convicted of two separate attacks on women in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1984 and another in Ayer, Massachusetts. He received a life sentence for the attacks and was convinced he would spend the rest of his life in prison. While he was in prison, he had to participate in a treatment program for sex offenders at the Massachusetts Treatment Center. Part of the treatment program was to create a “release plan,” a hypothetical plan that details how the inmate would re-integrate into society after release. Maher’s plan was to get released from prison on the basis of DNA evidence, take two months to readjust to society, meet a woman, get married, have children and buy a house.
Today, Maher is living his dream. He was exonerated 8 years ago through DNA evidence. He is happily married with two children. Despite the dearth of programs and services available to exonerees after their release from prison, Maher has thrived since his exoneration. He routinely speaks about the factors contributing to wrongful convictions and shares his own story. Perhaps most amazing is his ability to move on with his life and not become paralyzed with anger. As Maher puts it, “I got over losing the 19 years of my life. I don’t try and make up for it because I can’t. The best that I can do is just go forward. Don’t hold the anger. I can’t be an angry miserable person around [my kids].” Dennis has a six-year-old son, Joshua, and a five-year-old daughter, Aliza, who is named after the attorney who worked on his case and helped set him free.
Read the article here.
Read more about Dennis here.
NEIP Board Member Stanley Fisher, a professor at Boston University School of Law, was quoted in an August 28th New York Times article discussing the fallibility of eyewitness identification. Since the Supreme Court last examined the issue of eyewitness identification in 1977, more than 2,000 studies relating to the fragility of memory have been published. Brandon Garrett’s recent book entitled “Convicting the Innocent” also examined all 250 DNA exonerations (as of publication) and found that eyewitness misidentification was a factor in 75% of wrongful convictions.
A recent New Jersey Supreme Court ruling endorsed the decades of scientific research on the shortcomings of memory, and an anticipated ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in November could lead to federally mandated changes to how police departments nationwide conduct lineups. Currently there are no federal rules regrarding identification procedures, although the National Institute of Justice issued Guidelines in 1999 that were sent to all police departments in the United States. New Jersey and North Carolina are the only states that have implemented statewide policies aimed to reduce eyewitness error. These standards include administering blind identification procedures, where the officer conducting the line up or photo array is not connected to the case and does not know the identity of the suspect, in an effort to reduce inadvertent cues to the witness, and administering photos sequentially rather than presenting photos to a witness all at once.
While some police departments have been resistant to implement such changes, many departments that have changed their procedures have found that the new standards have been effective in their cases. As court rulings regarding eyewitness identification continue to be issued , they may provide the impetus for implementing these changes at the national level.
Relying on Scientific Research on Memory and Identification, Court Says
Standard Set by U.S. Supreme Court 30 Years Ago Must Be Revised
(Trenton, NJ – August 24, 2011) — Today the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a landmark decision requiring major changes in the way courts are required to evaluate identification evidence at trial and how they should instruct juries. The new changes, designed to reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions by taking into account more than 30 years of scientific research on eyewitness identification and memory, require courts to greatly expand the factors that courts and juries should consider in assessing the risk of misidentification.
To provide courts with these more enhanced jury instructions, the court gave the Criminal Practice Committee and the Committee on Model Criminal Jury Charges 90 days to submit proposed revisions to the current jury instructions on eyewitness identification, specifically directing them to consider the model jury instructions submitted by the Innocence Project.
The court’s decision stems from the 2004 conviction of Larry Henderson, a Camden man who received an 11-year prison sentence for reckless manslaughter and weapons possession related to a fatal shooting in January 2003. He appealed the photo lineup procedure because officers failed to follow the New Jersey Attorney General’s Guidelines, issued in 2001, for conducting identification procedures. The appeals court agreed and ordered a new hearing on the admissibility of the photographic identification of Henderson. Before that could occur, the state appealed, and the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that an extensive inquiry into witness identification procedures currently used by law enforcement was necessary.
The New Jersey Supreme Court appointed a Special Master to review the legal standard for the admissibility of eyewitness testimony known as the “Manson test,” established by the United States Supreme Court in 1977 and fully embraced by 48 out of 50 states, including New Jersey in 1988 in State v. Madison. In addition to the parties to the litigation, the court invited the Innocence Project and the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey to participate in an inquiry by the Special Master who considered over 200 scientific studies and heard from some of the nation’s most respected experts on eyewitness identification before issuing findings to the court in June 2010.
The court remanded the Henderson case back to the trial court for further review in accordance with the decision. The decision will apply to all future cases, but will not be applied retroactively with the exception of the companion case, State v. Chen, in which the court held that suggestive identification procedures that resulted from private actors would also be subject to court scrutiny to ensure the reliability of the identification.
Read the NYT article about the decision here.
Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of the 273 convictions overturned through DNA testing. Additional information about eyewitness misidentification is available here.
For the first time since 1977, the Supreme Court will re-visit the issue of eyewitness identification this November in the case of Perry v. New Hampshire. Barion Perry was convicted of theft and while two eyewitnesses placed him in the parking lot where the theft occurred, neither saw him actually commit the act. He admits to being at the scene and holding the stolen property, but claims he found it on the ground. Commentators suspect that the judges will issue a ruling “about which kinds of eyewitness identifications warrant a closer look from judges — just those made after the police used improperly suggestive procedures or all problematic ones?” This ruling will not address the broader conflict between the due process clause of the Constitution, which requires unreliable eyewitness identification evidence to be excluded, and the current instructions given to judges to use a two-step analysis, which allows them to look at other issues and almost always results in the eyewitness evidence being shown to the jury.
There has been extensive research since 1977 about eyewitness identification and the fallibility of human memory. Over 2,000 studies published in professional journals in that time show that memory does not function as a videotape and is fragile and subject to contamination. Furthermore, eyewitness testimony is very powerful in convincing a jury of a suspect’s guilt. Eyewitness identification has played a role in 75% of wrongful conviction cases according to Brandon Garrett who researched the first 250 DNA exonerations in his new book, “Convicting the Innocent.” These studies show that the time is ripe to re-assess the role of eyewitness identification in the courtroom.
Read a NYT article about the issue here.
The high profile case of the West Memphis Three took a surprising turn last week when Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., who were convicted of the murders of three boys in 1993, entered Alford guilty pleas which allowed them to maintain their innocence while conceding that the state had enough evidence to convict them. In a horrific crime, three 8-year-old boys from West Memphis, Arkansas were found dead with their hands bound behind their backs to their feet. The gruesome nature of the crime made police suspect that the murders were part of a satanic ritual. Suspicion soon turned to local teenager Damien Echols, who was a gifted yet troubled 18-year-old at the time.
Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were convicted in 1994 based on Misskelley’s coerced confession after a 12-hour police interview, during which he implicated Baldwin, Echols and himself. Misskelley, who has an IQ of 72 and is considered borderline retarded, later recanted his statement which contradicted facts police knew to be true, such as the time of the murder. Police determined that Echols was the ringleader, and he was sentenced to death. Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life in prison. After recent DNA testing failed to tie any of the three men to the crime scene, and with the possibility of a new trial on the horizon, defense attorneys and prosecutors worked out the Alford plea deal last week. All three proclaimed their innocence but pled guilty to first- and second-degree murder. The three men then walked free for the first time in 18 years and were greeted by their supporters, including such high profile names as singer Eddie Vedder and members of the Dixie Chicks. While they have no immediate plans, defense attorneys say that all three will continue to try to clear their names once and for all.