|
Rafay/Burns
| Wilfred Hathway | Kyle
Unger | James Driskell
| Clifford St. Joseph |
John Stoll | Ludrate
Burton | Michael
Williams | Albert Johnson
| Shaka Sankofa:
Executed after conviction based on faulty eye-witness | U.S.
wrongful convictions: recently Exonerated Clifford
St. Joseph | John Stoll
| Ludrate Burton | Albert
Johnson | Stephen Cowans |
Laurence Adams | Peter
Reilly | Still working on it: | Dennis
Dechaine | Dennis Perry
| Dwayne McKinney | Marty
Tankleff
Peter Rose
Wrongly convicted of
rape, man files claim against city of Lodi
By Jake Armstrong, News-Sentinel
Staff Writer
A former Lodi man whose conviction
was tossed out of court after he served 10 years in prison for
a crime DNA later showed he did not commit, has filed a claim
against the city of Lodi.
Peter Rose was convicted of
raping a 13-year-old girl in 1994 after the alleged victim named
him as the man who grabbed her from behind and dragged her into
an alley behind the 400 block of Eden Street. In 2004, the girl
later admitted she had no idea who raped her, and DNA evidence
later cleared Rose of the crime.
He was released from Mule Creek
State Prison in Ione after a San Joaquin County judge tossed
his conviction in October 2004.
Rose's three children have
also filed claims against the city.
In his claim, usually a precursor
to a lawsuit, Rose alleges that members of the police department
used interview techniques that "were so coercive and abusive"
to the alleged victim that the interviewers should have known
"the techniques would and did yield false information,"
including the identification of Rose as the perpetrator.
Rose, now 37, also alleges
members of the police department "deliberately concealed
evidence" they should have known would clear Rose's name
and "pressured and coerced" others involved in the
investigation to "alter and suppress exonerative evidence,"
according to the claim.
Transcripts from a portion
of a police interview with the alleged victim, now 24, indicate
the girl adamantly denied knowing who had attacked her. The News-Sentinel
is not naming her since she was sexually assaulted.
"I'm telling you I don't
know who it was," the girl told police detectives Matt Foster
and Ernie Nies, according to the transcript.
Both Foster and Nies are named
in Rose's claim.
It also states Rose was unable
to have normal interactions with his children, family and friends
and missed out on family events and business opportunities as
result of the wrongful conviction and subsequent jail time.
Rose seeks from the city damages
in excess of $25,000. The date of loss is listed as Feb. 18,
the date the order of exoneration was entered.
The city, however, did not
receive the claim until April 28.
Claims filed by Rose's children
each seek damages in excess of $25,000 because the children were
denied the right to associate with their father as result of
the wrongful conviction.
All four claims are scheduled
to go before the Lodi City Council at its meeting Wednesday.
City staff has recommended the council deny the claims, which
is a routine action.
Neither City Attorney Steve
Schwabauer nor Rose's attorney, Mark E. Merin, could be reached
for comment late Friday.
Contact reporter Jake Armstrong
at jakea@lodinews.com.
- Activists help clear
innocent
Law students seek freedom for the wrongly convicted
- By Claire Cooper , The
Sacramento Bee
Saturday, March 19, 2005 - - Peter Rose bolted through an emergency
exit to shake the reporters and camera crews, fed up with their
demands to tell his story, over and over.
How did it feel, they asked,
to be wrongly convicted of the lowest of crimes? Would he carry
a grudge for the 10 years he'd been branded a child rapist? What
would he do with the rest of his life?
He "just knew it was all
going to work out,' Rose said into the microphones. He had no
time for grudges. He would go fishing.
Then he jumped a rope barrier
and was out the door to join his family, muttering about the
silence that had met his claims of innocence for almost a decade
from the press, the police, even his court-appointed lawyer.
"I believe lunch was more
important to him than my trial,' Rose said.
Once the Northern California
Innocence Project took up his case, though, Rose was being believed
by the most persistent of advocates a succession of law students
working under a pair of seasoned defense lawyers.
After two years of work, they
were able to upset his conviction and get him freed from prison.
Then they cleared his name.
Innocence projects began opening
prison doors for those wrongly convicted about the same time
that Rose began serving his 27-year sentence.
The first was founded in New
York in 1992 to tap the potential of DNA for proving people innocent.
Today, 30 or so projects are operating out of law schools and
journalism schools around the country. Most aren't confined to
DNA work but consider any conviction that can be upended by new
evidence.
It can be cut and dried, as
in one Los Angeles robbery case. A surveillance tape showed the
6-foot-6 robber walking past a ruler that had been painted on
the frame of the Office Depot entry door. The man convicted of
the crime, Jason Kindle, was a head shorter.
Or the evidence can involve
a web of false confessions, coerced accusations, eyewitness mistakes
and laboratory blunders that can take years to unravel.
Two California projects have
won the release of Kindle and six other men since 2000. Dozens
of cases are under investigation at the California Innocence
Project at California Western School of Law in San Diego and
the Northern California Innocence Project, based at Santa Clara
University with a new satellite office at Golden Gate University
in San Francisco.
The Rose victory was the first
for Golden Gate.
Relatively crude tests performed
on rape evidence in 1995 did not exclude Rose as the possible
rapist. Attempts to DNA-type the semen sample had failed then.
But after many advances in technology, a successful test became
possible.
Former Golden Gate student
Marilyn Underwood "pushed and pushed and pushed,' she said,
until the state DNA lab confirmed it still had the evidence and,
yes, there was enough to do a DNA test.
Two other students with two
supervising lawyers wrote the petition that persuaded the judge
to order testing. The results showed the evidence hadn't come
from Rose and led to his release on Oct. 29.
After the victim's recantation,
followed by more DNA results in January, another student team
helped prepare a motion to have Rose declared "factually
innocent.' Granted a month ago, it led to the clearing of his
criminal record.
The judge, a former county
prosecutor, called the experience "an education for me.'
One student, George Derieg,
who worked on the final phase of the case, called it "exhilarating.'
Rose called the Innocence Project "the best thing that's
ever happened to the justice system.'
But Janice Brickley, the lawyer
who supervised the project's work, asked in the court hearing
for "a day of reflection' on convicting an innocent man,
a father whose youngest child hadn't been born when he went to
prison, a son who couldn't support his mother when she went through
cancer treatments, a grandson whose grandfather spent his life
savings on a defense and died before seeing the exoneration.
Brickley told the judge that
she had received an e-mail from a correctional officer, saying
he felt "just terrible' that he didn't believe Rose when
he said he was innocent.
Innocence projects have been
contributing to public acceptance of the idea that the wrong
people really do get convicted, said Kathleen Ridolfi, the Northern
California Innocence Project's executive director. There may
be a growing consensus, too, that prosecutors as well as defense
lawyers have a duty to find and free them.
"We have great respect
for (the innocence projects),' said Karyn Sinunu, assistant district
attorney in Santa Clara County. "Our philosophy is, we all
have the same interest. If an innocent person is incarcerated
or convicted, it means the real culprit is free. We don't want
that.'
"Doing justice doesn't
mean just winning cases,' said San Diego District Attorney Bonnie
Dumanis. "Our mission in our office includes vigorously
prosecuting those that commit crimes but not at the expense of
those who are innocent.'
In San Diego, Ken Marsh was
freed last summer after 21 years in prison for the death of his
girlfriend's toddler. When the Cal Western Innocence Project
produced medical evidence pointing to an accidental death, Dumanis
stipulated to Marsh's release and asked the court to dismiss
the charges.
In the nation, thousands of
criminals have been caught with the help of DNA technology, and
more than 150 innocent people have been released from prison.
Few so far have been freed
in California.
Under state law, DNA testing
can be ordered after a conviction when it could change the case
outcome.
According to Rockne Harmon,
an Alameda County DNA expert who chairs the Forensic Evidence
Committee of the California District Attorneys Association, judges
have granted testing in about one case a year an indication,
he said, that while many California inmates say they're innocent,
few really are. He said prosecutors have other priorities than
to look for "needles in haystacks.'
Try telling that to John Stoll.
In 1985, Stoll, a carpenter
and gas plant supervisor who had never been in trouble before,
was sentenced to 40 years. He was among those caught up in a
frenzy over alleged sex rings targeting youngsters in Kern County.
No physical evidence showed
the children had been abused. The prosecutions ended when the
children's stories escalated wildly. Most of the 40 or so convicted
defendants were freed.
Yet Stoll remained in prison.
Abandoned by family and community, he thought he'd been forgotten
until an exonerated defendant persuaded his lawyer to do something
for Stoll.
The lawyer contacted the Innocence
Project. Cal Western and Santa Clara students and lawyers worked
on the case.
Soon, Stoll said, "people
started to visit. I started thinking of them as friends.'
Two law students of the dozen
who worked for Stoll, along with seven lawyers and an investigator
- stayed with the case through their summer vacations and a year
past their project courses.
The defense team tracked down
Stoll's now-grown accusers. Ridolfi personally paid to fly in
witnesses for hearings.
Four of the six men recanted.
They said they never had believed their accusations but had been
coerced by law enforcement and social workers. The fifth said
he had no memory of the time. Only Stoll's sixth accuser his
son stuck to his original story, though he could offer no details.
Stoll was released last spring,
nearly penniless. Ridolfi and her partner, Innocence Project
legal director Linda Starr, invited him to stay in their guest
cottage for a year to get his bearings.
He lives there today, surrounded
by photos of friends but none of his son, his wife or his former
Bakersfield home.
On a balmy winter day, an investigator
drops off a used motorcycle for him. His new neighbors wave.
He smiles back, showing a set of teeth donated by a team of local
dentists who saw him on television.
The interviewer had asked Stoll
what he wanted most. His first choice was his son, the 5-year-
old who ran to him in his dreams when he was in prison. His second
choice was being able to smile.
"I didn't know there was
that much kindness in the world,' Stoll said of his fortune.
He does landscaping in the
San Jose neighborhood, but his search for steady work hasn't
panned out. Determined not to overstay his welcome in the guest
house, Stoll, 61, worries about the future.
"When they turn you loose,
there's nothing there for you,' he said, not even a letter to
potential employers explaining the 20-year gap in his job history.
Stoll has applied for state
compensation that's available to innocent people who have lost
money through wrongful imprisonment. It can amount of $100 for
each day of loss, but it's rarely granted and never yet to someone
exonerated through the Innocence Project.
Peter Rose, who now lives on
the north coast, also will apply. With his judge's finding that
he's "factually innocent,' his case may be stronger than
Stoll's.
He's stronger in other ways.
At 37, he walked out of prison
and into the arms of an extended family that never doubted him.
He went to work as a tender on sea urchin boats operated by cousins
in Point Arena and Bodega Bay.
He hopes to own his own boat
some day.
DNA test frees man convicted
in '94 Lodi rape
By Cheryl Miller -- Bee
Correspondent, October 30, 2004
STOCKTON - A Lodi man sentenced
to 27 years in prison walked out a free man Friday after DNA
evidence failed to link him to the 1994 rape of a 13-year-old
girl.
A San Joaquin County judge
overturned Peter J. Rose's 8-year-old conviction based on the
new DNA evidence.
Over the objections of prosecutors,
San Joaquin Superior Court Judge Stephen Demetras ordered Rose,
36, immediately released from Mule Creek State Prison in Ione.
A sweats-clad Rose was taken
to the prison's administrative center around 3 p.m., where he
was immediately swarmed by his four children. Tears flowed as
he hugged each of the 16 friends, relatives and advocates who
traveled to Ione to greet him.
"Thank you! Thank you!"
Rose said to the two attorneys and four law students who worked
for his freedom.
A prison van then carried Rose
to the facility's front gates, where he became a free man for
the first time since his arrest 10 years ago.
The New York City-based Innocence
Project said 152 people nationwide have been exonerated like
Rose since 1989 - six from California - by testing DNA evidence
that may not have been considered during the original trial.
The California attorney general's
office does not track convicted felons exonerated by DNA, said
Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for the office.
The New York Innocence Project's
Web site said the most recent Californian to be exonerated before
Rose is a 44-year-old Los Angeles man serving a life sentence
for killing three people. David Allen Jones was released in March
after nine years in prison.
In the last decade, as the
biological profile in DNA found in blood, semen or saliva helped
convict the guilty, those convicted sought to resort to the same
evidence to prove their innocence. But inmates often faced lengthy
legal battles and resistance from prosecutors.
After the work of groups like
the Innocence Project, a nonprofit law clinic that focused exclusively
on post-conviction DNA cases, more states passed laws to guarantee
an inmate's right to scientific technology that might not have
been available during trial.
California passed its law in
2000 that ensured inmates the opportunity to have DNA evidence
tested if a positive result would affect the original verdict.
Earlier this year, Congress
proposed a law that would grant federal convicts post-conviction
testing, which is awaiting President Bush's signature.
For Rose, advanced tests -
unavailable to investigators at his 1996 trial - conducted this
summer revealed that DNA found on the victim's clothing did not
match the Lodi man's.
"We're just pretty much
stunned," said Tanya Austin, the mother of Rose's teenage
daughter, Ashley Rose. "He thought this was going to happen
before and got his hopes up."
San Joaquin County District
Attorney John Phillips has until January to decide whether to
refile charges against Rose. Deputy District Attorney Brian Short
said that "there were problems with the case" and that
his office has lost contact with the victim.
In 1994, a middle school student
told police that Rose, then an unemployed beekeeper, grabbed
her off a Lodi street and raped her in an alley. Rose's attorneys
said he was an acquaintance of the girl's family.
Evidence on the girl's clothing
proved too scant for investigators to glean a DNA profile with
the techniques available at the time, court documents said. Other
tests showed blood on the clothing matched the victim but not
Rose - information the jury never heard.
The prosecution instead pointed
to a PGM marker, a sort of genetic fingerprint, found in blood.
The marker matched the teen
and Rose, along with 30 percent of the population.
The victim named Rose as her
attacker three weeks after the rape. She had not identified him
in a lineup and initially said that her assailant was a stranger,
court documents said.
A jury found Rose guilty of
four counts related to the rape.
As Rose sobbed and proclaimed
his innocence, a judge sentenced him to the maximum sentence
of 27 years behind bars.
He filed appeal after appeal
with state and federal courts.
Most were rejected. Then, his
attorney called the Northern California Innocence Project, a
nonprofit program by Golden Gate University in San Francisco.
"The more I heard about
the case, the more I was convinced he was innocent," said
Janice Brickley, an attorney with project.
Golden Gate law students, who
earn academic credit for work on the program, tracked down evidence
that authorities originally said was destroyed years ago.
Project attorneys petitioned
the court for modern DNA testing on the victim's clothing, which
cleared Rose as a source.
The lawyers asked the state
attorney general's office and the San Joaquin County District
Attorney's Office to assist them in overturning the conviction.
The district attorney's office balked, arguing that stains may
have been the result of consensual sex with someone else, a scenario
the judge apparently rejected.
Rose probably will spend some
time with his mother and brother, who live in the coastal community
of Point Arena, Brickley said, and he probably will file a claim
with the state to seek some sort of compensation.
Friday, the jubilant family
gathered at an Ione restaurant, where Rose sat at a table and
looked in wonder at the empty place mat.
Today's lunch, he said, would
not come on a prison tray.
About the writer:
· Bee staff
writer M.S. Enkoji contributed to this report.
This article is protected by
copyright and should not be printed or distributed for anything
except personal use.
The Sacramento Bee, 2100 Q St., P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA
95852
Phone: (916) 321-1000
Copyright © The Sacramento
Bee
Inmate free after DNA test
Jury had convicted
man in '95 rape of Lodi girl
By Jeffrey M. Barker, Record
Staff Writer, October 30, 2004
STOCKTON -- Consistently, for
nearly 10 years, Peter Joseph Rose has maintained his innocence.
He has said he did not kidnap and rape the 13-year-old Lodi girl
who identified him in court as her attacker.
On Friday, he was vindicated
and freed. His six convictions relating to the crime were reversed.
His 27-year sentence was halted. New DNA evidence had ruled him
out as a match for the semen found on the victim's underwear
immediately after the 1995 attack.
Rose, 36, walked out of Mule
Creek State Prison into the arms of family members. His is the
first San Joaquin County case to be overturned on DNA evidence,
according to prosecutors in the district attorney's office.
San Joaquin County Superior
Court Judge Stephen Demetras signed an order early Friday for
Rose's release, granting a petition submitted by the Northern
California Innocence Project at San Francisco's Golden Gate University.
In doing so, Demetras did not
declare Rose's innocence but said that had attorneys had the
DNA findings in 1996, the jury would have been presented a very
different case. Demetras ruled that the outcome very likely would
have been different.
The Innocence Project, however,
was more dramatic, saying the DNA testing had proved Rose right
and calling the convictions the result of "suggestive and
coercive" police interviews of a young girl.
The victim, who is about 23
now, was not notified Friday of Rose's release. Deputy District
Attorney Brian Short said he has tried several times to reach
her, even asking the Lodi Police Department for help. He expressed
concern that she might read of the overturned convictions in
the newspaper. If she does, he said, he would like her to contact
him.
That's because Short, who did
not originally try the case, is now charged with reinvestigating
the crime.
"I think we have a strong
obligation to do that," Short said. "We're in the situation
now of trying to do the right thing ... 10 years later."
Rose was an acquaintance of
the victim's aunt in April 1995, when the girl was grabbed and
dragged into an alley while walking to Woodbridge Middle School.
She didn't get a good look at her assailant, a man with a mustache
who raped her and forced her to perform oral sex.
She initially said she did
not know who had attacked her. She failed to pick Rose out of
a lineup, even though he closely matched police sketches of the
attacker, Short said.
Three weeks later, after what
Short called "pressure" from law enforcement, the girl
named Rose as her rapist.
Blood-type tests used at the
time to match Rose to semen were inconclusive but did not rule
him out.
A jury convicted Rose of kidnapping
a child, kidnapping with the intent to rape, kidnapping for a
lewd and lascivious act, rape and forcible copulation.
Rose sobbed at his sentencing
and called the crime "sick; that's not me," according
to newspaper accounts.
Rose had tried unsuccessfully
over the past eight years to appeal his conviction.
In January 2002, the Innocence
Project took on his case.
Marilyn Underwood, a Golden
Gate University law student, was the first on the case. Silky
Sahnan, another student there, argued a motion to allow DNA testing
of the evidence.
That more-advanced testing
showed definitively that the semen found was not Rose's.
Short said that knowledge would
have entered into the case. He said jurors probably then would
have been told that the victim was sexually active -- that she
had had intercourse two days before the attack with her boyfriend,
who allegedly wore a condom.
The exoneration is the first
for Golden Gate's clinical program, said Susan Rutberg, its director.
A sister program at the University of Santa Clara has helped
free three people from prison, Rutberg said,
"I'm so excited right
now," Rose said briefly Friday evening while having dinner
at a Mexican restaurant with his family, which includes four
school-age children, and with attorneys who worked on his case.
He said he probably would move
to Point Arena, where his mother lives, and work with his cousin,
who is a fisherman.
Beyond that, Rose hadn't done
much thinking -- not about the renewed investigation into the
crime or about the nearly 10 years he lost behind bars.
"I haven't even really
thought about that," he said. "I'm just happy to be
with my family right now."
* To reach reporter Jeffrey
M. Barker, phone (209) 546-8279 or e-mail jbarker@recordnet.com
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell