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'I never stopped praying': Man freed after 17-years in jail for murder is freed

Hatuey

Hatuey

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A man who spent nearly 17 years in prison for murder walked free on Friday after authorities discovered evidence that law officers and prosecutors hid key details from defense lawyers during his trial.
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Superior Court Judge Joe Turner ordered that LaMonte Armstrong, 62, be released from prison where he was serving a life sentence.

Armstrong was convicted in 1995 for the 1988 killing of Ernestine Compton, one of his former professors at North Carolina A&T State University.​
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There have been 292 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States.
• The first DNA exoneration took place in 1989. Exonerations have been won in 36 states; since 2000, there have been 225 exonerations.
• 17 of the 292 people exonerated through DNA served time on death row. Another 15 were charged with capital crimes but not sentenced to death.
• The average length of time served by exonerees is 13 years. The total number of years served is approximately 3,839.

• The average age of exonerees at the time of their wrongful convictions was 27.
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Eyewitness Misidentification Testimony was a factor in 72 percent percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases in the U.S., making it the leading cause of these wrongful convictions. At least 40 percent of these eyewitness identifications involved a cross racial identification (race data is currently only available on the victim, not for non-victim eyewitnesses). Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own. These suggested reforms are embraced by leading criminal justice organizations and have been adopted in the states of New Jersey and North Carolina, large cities like Minneapolis and Seattle, and many smaller jurisdictions.Read more.
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Hatuey ive explained this a few times..Im going to be as brief as possible. Years ago and not alot of years ago the tools law enforcement has today were not available. Crime Prevention and Criminal Investigations have been turned upside down and arent even recognizable to how it was done 15-20 yrs ago. DNA and science strides have done wonders to assure more accuracy in law enforcement and it works to the benefit of BOTH SIDES the Police and the Accused. There are more people being exonerated for Past law enforcement errors...and that is a good thing. No one however talks about how many more are now convicted and how many less perpetrators get away with crimes because we DONT NEED TO RELY ON EYE WITNESS's like we had too...and eye witness's are unreliable.
When a crime was commited years ago with no dna and there were no witness'...Detectives took over and hit the street...hence the nickname gumshoes, they did alot of walking and wore softer shoes not just leather...they knocked on neighbors doors asked questions..asked if they heard or saw anything...we took notes, wrote what they said...after we accumulated all the infor we could get we sat down and poured over it...trying to make sense of it and get a direction...today thats mostly all unnecessary..they still do some of that but more often then not what they need for initial direction comes right from the crime scene.
All the exonerations that the media makes hay about today were from prior to DNA being available and alot of it had to do with bad eye witness accts....DNA has been a godsend for law enforcement...its made their job easier and ended alot of inadvertent bad situations that were happened.
 
lpast said:
Hatuey ive explained this a few times..Im going to be as brief as possible. Years ago and not alot of years ago the tools law enforcement has today were not available. Crime Prevention and Criminal Investigations have been turned upside down and arent even recognizable to how it was done 15-20 yrs ago
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The lack of technology argument still doesn't explain 72% of cases having eyewitness misidentification and police misconduct.
 
Hatuey said:
The lack of technology argument still doesn't explain 72% of cases having eyewitness misidentification and police misconduct.
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Thats your words police misconduct...there were many differences years ago...things were misplaced stuck in evidence boxs and forgotten and even INNOCENTLY lost...the media loves to make hay that every police mistake is intentional and designed to screw someone...thats just garbage.
Computers were not in use like today even 15 yrs ago...because depts didnt have the money and the cities wouldnt provide it to upgrade to the latests and greatest...they finally all have today.
Am I going to sit here and say the police didnt play some dirty games and do dirty deeds HELL NO...but I am going to sit here and say it was not the attitude of Police in general and it was a very few that had the mentality to do that...and it wasnt nearly as commonplace as the media makes it out to be...most of the mistakes were not intentional to set someone up as they imply
 
Has anybody seen any data on possible higher frequency of these false convictions among specific ethnic groups? Just curious. I think it could offer insight on general societal attitudes toward minorities outside of the discussion of crime and punishment.
 
Hatuey said:
The lack of technology argument still doesn't explain 72% of cases having eyewitness misidentification and police misconduct.
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I happen to have immediate family members who work in law enforcement who could absolutely verify the lack of consistent credibility in regards to eyewitness testimony and identification. The human mind and subconscious are far too prone to error and bias to justify the use of eyewitness testimony as the sole evidence in cases of that nature.
 
Smeagol said:
Has anybody seen any data on possible higher frequency of these false convictions among specific ethnic groups? Just curious. I think it could offer insight on general societal attitudes toward minorities outside of the discussion of crime and punishment.
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According to the innocence project a disproportionate majority of those freed have been African-American.
 
Hatuey said:
According to the innocence project a disproportionate majority of those freed have been African-American.
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What I suspected. IMHO this could be an indicator of possible discrimination in other areas. If there's a bent toward thinking of minorities as the bad guys in society by honest people with the best intentions, then not only would that play out in the jury room but in job interviews, etc. Of course IMHO political correctness isn't an exclusive domain of any one political persuasion and it's taboo to even mention that as in 2012 you're not supposed to notice racial bias because that would be "using the race card" regardless of the realness of the problem.
 
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