Innocent man Jonathan Fleming freed after 25 years in jail

New York: A New York man convicted of murder despite being at Walt Disney World in Florida at the time of the crime has walked free after serving 25 years in jail.
Jonathan Fleming, 51, had lost several appeals against his conviction for the 1989 murder of Darryl "Black" Rush but was finally freed as part of a wider review of unsafe prosecutions. A hotel receipt proved he was 1700 km away in Florida five hours before the killing, and police there had sent a letter confirming that hotel staff remembered him paying.

Innocent man Jonathan Fleming freed after 25 years in jail

There is something RADICALLY wrong with the American justice system. In the last few months alone there have been numerous stories of people being exonerated for crimes they did not commit after having spent decades in jail, with this poor man being the latest. How many more innocent people are still languishing in American jails? An even scarier thought is how many innocent people have been executed that we may never know there innocence?

America needs to take a good, long hard look at itself and realise it is in dire need of a thorough overhaul. Between sending innocent people to spend decades in prison and the fact that American police seem to be shooting more and more people for the smallest of things, I personally wont be visiting America, the once great country, simply because I do not want to risk myself or my family being imprisoned or shot by over zealous prosecutors and police.

Fairest justice system in the world? Not by a long shot.
Land of the free? Tell that to those who spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit.

reply to post by Kryties


Acknowledging mistakes in convictions is a GOOD feature of a justice system!

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


In this case it only took them 25 years and multiple appeals to finally figure it out! Yippee!

In the case of Glenn Ford it took them 30 years!

Methinks those men, and many others who spent DECADES in prison, might disagree with your attitude. They should never have been imprisoned in the first place, nor should their multiple appeals have failed. It is abject failure of the US Justice system as a whole that saw the better part of these men's lives taken from them.

Kryties
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

In this case it only took them 25 years and multiple appeals to finally figure it out! Yippee!

In the case of Glenn Ford it took them 30 years!

Methinks those men, and many others who spent DECADES in prison, might disagree with your attitude.

edit on 9/4/2014 by Kryties because: (no reason given)

Especially, when the police and the District Attorneys office had sufficient evidence this man was where he said he was.

That's f' d up and so are all the other thousands of stories just like this one?

Simply inexcusable 😤😡

ETA
If this justice system were doing the right thing....some of these crooked ass cops and DA's would be going to prison for concealing evidence, which in the majority of these cases is why these poor souls spent more than half of their lives in freaking prison!!!!!!!!

RIDICULOUS HYPOCRISY 👎👎👎👎👎

reply to post by ThePublicEnemyNo1


Precisely!

What I find just as disgusting is that some states disallow or limit the amount of compensation these men can apply for. They have half their lives taken from them, due to lies and deceit, then they are virtually just tossed back into the street to fend for themselves.

It's an absolute bloody disgrace.

reply to post by Kryties


I'm reminded of one thing everytime another innocent man
gets sprung like this.

Evidence can lead us to believe a lie.

This kind of thing isn't going to end as long as there aren't any consequences. We need to start putting Prosecutors in jail for engaging in "prosecutorial misconduct". While we're at it, there are more than a few cops and politicians that should be incarcerated as well.

randyvs
reply to post by Kryties

 

I'm reminded of one thing everytime another innocent man
gets sprung like this.

Evidence can lead us to believe a lie.

Or lack thereof 😕

reply to post by imwilliam


The very fact that the police and prosecutors withheld evidence that this man was 1000 miles away at the time the crime was committed is testimony to the allure of money and power that those responsible for this mans imprisonment stood to gain.

As long as SOMEONE went to prison, no matter their guilt or innocence, the prosecutor could hang another award on his wall and add another conviction to his resume and the police could buy themselves some new military equipment.

I am not a religious person but occasionally the Bible does speak words of wisdom....

"The LOVE of money is the root of all evil".

Kryties
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

In this case it only took them 25 years and multiple appeals to finally figure it out! Yippee!

In the case of Glenn Ford it took them 30 years!

Methinks those men, and many others who spent DECADES in prison, might disagree with your attitude. They should never have been imprisoned in the first place, nor should their multiple appeals have failed. It is abject failure of the US Justice system as a whole that saw the better part of these men's lives taken from them.

edit on 9/4/2014 by Kryties because: (no reason given)

Yep - well you don't get a perfect justice system - there is no such thing, anywhere.

the best you can hope for is that mistakes do get recognized and corrected.

Aloysius the Gaul

Yep - well you don't get a perfect justice system - there is no such thing, anywhere.

the best you can hope for is that mistakes do get recognized and corrected.

Please explain how withholding key evidence and ignoring witness testimony is a "mistake"?

Aloysius the Gaul

Kryties
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

In this case it only took them 25 years and multiple appeals to finally figure it out! Yippee!

In the case of Glenn Ford it took them 30 years!

Methinks those men, and many others who spent DECADES in prison, might disagree with your attitude. They should never have been imprisoned in the first place, nor should their multiple appeals have failed. It is abject failure of the US Justice system as a whole that saw the better part of these men's lives taken from them.

edit on 9/4/2014 by Kryties because: (no reason given)

Yep - well you don't get a perfect justice system - there is no such thing, anywhere.

the best you can hope for is that mistakes do get recognized and corrected.

You're absolutely correct..."mistakes do get recognized and corrected", sometimes.

With all due respect though, withholding evidence, is clearly not a mistake. That's a crime that deserves punishment.

Especially, when innocent men and women sit in prison rotting because of it.

This type of legal madness needs to

Aloysius the Gaul
reply to post by Kryties

 

Acknowledging mistakes in convictions is a GOOD feature of a justice system!

Never time to do it right, but always time to do it over, is that the way it works? You can't give back 25 years of a person's life that has been stolen. Throw an ef'ing plate on the floor and watch it break. Then say sorry. Did it go back together? Our entire system is pooched, but gotta keep those private prisons running at all costs, eh?

We need to see some accountability in all frames of reference, justice and politics would be a good start. If these assclowns make a bad decision or a corrupt decision or are just plain old fashioned stupid, they should be accountable for their actions.

Cheers - Dave

This is actually a pretty large problem in our justice system and it's common. It doesn't always lead to an innocent man being thrown in jail but the prosecutor can essentially deny knowing about evidence that helps the defendants case and there's no system to prevent it. If the police find exculpatory evidence they can simply bury it in order to help their case. To the state prosecutor there is no such thing as guilty or innocent their only thought is to get a conviction on someone.

Once you start including private prison money and conviction rates as a job performance metric, any sense of decency and fairness gets thrown out.

They want you in prison, and they don't care if you committed the crime.

In my mind, these types of prosecutors are even lower than child rapists.

reply to post by ThePublicEnemyNo1

Or lack thereof

Agreed.

I wonder if there will ever be away to keep this from happening?
On a side note, I have written often how technology and corruption
has rendered our justice system obsolete. If I were on a jury I couldn't
find anyone guilty. The only way would be if I witnessed the crime
myself. Otherwise I would be suspicious the person was set up.

Good job the poor sod didnt live in Texas!

reply to post by Kryties


The failing is with the courts acceptance of DNA evidence. A field that is constantly evolving and that has finally gained widespread acceptance in the court system (it like the difference between a DataMaster and a Portable Breath Test /PBT - A DataMaster is a calibrated instrument where most PBT are not. hence why DataMaster results can be used and a PBT result cant).

The other issue revolves around how advanced DNA testing is now as opposed to 25 years ago.

Back in the day in order to use blood to establish certain crimes, the size needed was about the size of a quarter to half dollar. Now days, with the advance of technology, only a small amount is needed to obtain results. The advancement also no longer requires dry blood to be re-hydrated in order to test. Before, to pull dried blood it would need to be rehydrated with distilled water. The water used would also have to be submitted as a control to make sure there was nothing in the water that could affect the sample.

So those who were convicted decades ago were done so using the best methods at the time. With the advance in technology, and in cases where there is a claim of innocence coupled with biological samples that are preserved to the point they can still be tested, there is the possibility of reviewing that evidence with the new methods.

The problem comes down to cost sadly. When the PA obtains a conviction using everything available at the time, should they be required to pay for testing of evidence?

Currently from my experience I have not seen any new state laws / court rulings that require DNA testing to be done, although it is brought up in court by the defense more often now than 25 years ago.

In my region submitting a blood sample to the crime lab can take upwards of 9 months to a year to obtain results. Its not that the testing takes long, its just there are that many evidence process requests in the same category.

The other issue in that area is defense attorneys are issuing subpoenas to crime lab officials who processed the evidence. There are requirements / advanced training they are required to have in addition to certain ways evidence must be processed. That adds further to the back log.

Personally speaking I think if the state is going to lay charges, and DNA is an option, I think it should be required it be tested.

The flip side to this issue - The only way DNA can clear a person is if the person's DNA is on file already. If its not, they would need to submit a sample to compare with the DNA collected at the crime scene. Since they are being charged, they are not required to provide blood samples / DNA samples.

Its a convoluted mess to be sure..

crazyewok
Good job the poor sod didnt live in Texas!

Bingo! Throw capital punishment into the mix and it gets a little tougher to make amends for wrongful conviction.

Justice is sadly missing in our society.

There was a movie called 12 Angry Men. The whole of it is basically inside the jury room while the men decide the fate of a young man accused of murder.

They all almost instantly vote to have the man put to death expect for one person who isn't so sure of his guilt.

The fact is things like this are real. And I have no doubt that there are juries, and are prosecutors who will convict you without evidence, immediately.

I know this to be true because it happens all the time.

People are only human. If you are to convict someone of a heinous crime, and take away their freedom or life, you should have clear solid evidence. Not hearsay, or circumstantial evidence. But that will never happen.

This is another reason why man cannot rule himself. God himself declared:

(Jeremiah 10:23) . . .I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.


Soon now, very soon, the righteous king who rides for truth and justice will establish his government of peace and right over all the earth. Then real justice will be done unto every man:

(Isaiah 11:3-5) . . .And he will not judge by any mere appearance to his eyes, nor reprove simply according to the thing heard by his ears. 4 And with righteousness he must judge the lowly ones, and with uprightness he must give reproof in behalf of the meek ones of the earth. And he must strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; and with the spirit of his lips he will put the wicked one to death. 5 And righteousness must prove to be the belt of his hips, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

reply to post by iSomeone


There is a saying -

If you are guilty you request a jury trial.
If you are innocent you request a bench trial (judge acts as jury).

The reasoning is a jury trial is all it takes is 1 person for a not guilty / hung jury for a person to walk.
The reasoning for a bench trial is the judge is more familiar with the law, as well as tricks lawyers use to create reasonable doubt.

Both methods work and both methods don't.