$1.4M grant to investigate claims of innocence

Arizona is getting a nearly $1.4 million federal grant to see if some people serving time in state prison have been wrongfully convicted.

The funds from the U.S. Department of Justice will be used to screen contentions by people serving time on charges of homicide or rape to see whether a new analysis of available DNA evidence might provide the grounds for a new trial, or possibly even exonerate them outright.

What makes this particular grant unique, though, is it is believed to be the first in the country where both prosecutors and defense attorneys have jointly sought the funds. And it is fueled by two high-profile cases where convictions were thrown out based on DNA.

One of those cases involved Ray Krone, who was serving time after being convicted of murdering a bartender. He was freed in 2002 after spending 10 years behind bars after it was shown that DNA evidence from the scene pointed to another person.

The other case was the 1985 conviction of Larry Youngblood on charges of abducting a 10-year-old boy from a Pima County carnival and repeatedly molesting him. Only after police retested degraded DNA using new technology was he released from prison in 2000.

“In both of those cases, DNA testing demonstrated not only the innocence of the person in prison but helped us identify the guilty person so that that person was being taken off the streets so that they do not prey on innocent victims,” said defense attorney Larry Hammond.

Hammond also is founder of the Justice Project, based at Arizona State University, which helps overturn wrongful convictions, and which is the co-recipient of the grant.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, whose agency is the other recipient, said he supports what the grant will fund despite the fact that the aim of the grant is to get people out of prison.

“We have no interest whatsoever, as a prosecutor I can say this affirmatively, in convicting somebody who is innocent and sending them to prison,” Goddard said. “So we all benefit if, in fact, we’re able to uncover the occasional mistakes that the system will make.”

No one at Thursday’s announcement of the grant had any idea of the number of people whose convictions might be overturned.

Greenlee County Attorney Derek Rapier, who chairs the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys Advisory Council, said he feels “confident” that the number of inmates wrongfully convicted is “pretty small.”

“But if that number is even one, then it’s something that needs to be addressed,” he said.

Goddard said procedures for screening which cases to review, which are still being worked out, should eliminate many claims by inmates that they are entitled to a new trial.

“Just because someone wants to bring their case back because they think they were wrongly convicted — I’m sure that there are not too many in Arizona State Prison who would not jump at that opportunity — doesn’t mean we’re going to take every one of them.”

Hammond said he expects the number that get through that screening process to be “very small.”

In many cases, Hammond said, there is no question but that the person serving the time did the crime.

“You can tell that from looking at the record in the case,” he said.

“In other cases, there may be some reason to doubt (guilt), but there is no biological evidence,” Hammond continued. He said the Justice Project will see what it can do for these people separate from this grant.

And sometimes, he said, there was evidence gathered at the scene but, for some reason, it just can’t be found.

Hammond said some of the grant funds will be used for a legal “postmortem” in cases where convictions obtained on some evidence other than DNA were overturned.

He said it is important to the criminal justice system to examine what happened when someone is wrongfully convicted to help prevent future mistakes.