Archive for October 30, 2007
Alex Kelly is no David Pollitt
Oct 30th
One of the two crim justice stories of the day was the impending release of Alex Kelly, who is finally done serving his time for two 1986 rapes. He was in court today to find out whether he would be released despite the fact that he has not yet paid the $10,000 fine levied along with his prison sentence.
Mr. Kelly didn’t get that much needed promotion working in the commisary, so he didn’t have quite enough to pay the fine prior to release and being a 40-year old man, his parents weren’t going to pay it for him. Luckily, the Judge decided that he couldn’t be held past his maximum discharge date and that he would have to pay the fine as if it were restitution – on a weekly or monthly basis during his probationary period.
Alex Kelly is famous for several things, notable among them the 8 year period he spent on the lam in Europe, making wine while absconding from Connecticut. He is also famous for sitting somberly through his parole hearing a few years ago and upon hearing that parole was denied, losing it and yelling at the board members.
Meanwhile, the Governor’s phone has been silent. Maybe she passed the time watching that awful, awful movie about Kelly.
208 (FL) prompts calls for EyeID Reform
Oct 30th
As the dust on the 208th DNA exoneree had barely begun to settle, Broward County public defender Howard Finkelstein sent a letter to law enforcement officials suggesting a change in identification procedures.
Bostic’s [the exoneree] accuser recently told an investigator she never saw her rapist. She picked Bostic out of a photo lineup, she said, because she had seen him in the neighborhood in the days before the attack.
Simple extra precautions could keep this from happening again, Finkelstein said.
“These procedures will impact the human cost of misidentification,” he said. “This isn’t about pointing the finger at law enforcement. This is about making sure the methodology and the systems we employ are designed so innocent people don’t get ensnared in our system.”
Currently, Florida uses the non-blind, non-sequential method of identification. Finkelstein called for them to use the double-blind, sequential method. Law enforcement’s response was curious, if not typical:
“If we had concerns about the procedure, we would have changed the procedure,” said Elliot Cohen, spokesman for the Broward Sheriff’s Office. “But new ideas and new proposals are always worth looking at, and we’ll take it in that spirit.”
At least eyeid reform seems to be gaining some momentum. 16 states have considered some legislation in this regard during the past year. Connecticut, although one of those sixteen, couldn’t get past simply funding a pilot program. I’m not even sure that the pilot program has gone into effect.
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