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Wrongly
Convicted Database
Record
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Years
Imprisoned:
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Charge: |
Forgery |
Sentence: |
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Year Convicted: |
1914 |
Year
Cleared:
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Location
of Trial:
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Massachusetts |
Result:
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Judicially Exonerated Released |
Summary
of Case:
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"Wrongly convicted in 1914 of 17 separate counts of forgery and passing bad checks based on the eyewitness identification and testimony of 17 witnesses, which was buttressed by the expert testimony of a handwriting expert. After the bad checks written in the same handwriting continued to be passed after Herbert Andrews imprisonment, the actual culprit was identified and arrested. Andrews was released and the actual perpetrator was convicted and imprisoned. After the actual perpetrator was identified, Andrews prosecutor said that the two men "were as dissimilar in appearance as could be. There was several inches difference in height and there wasn’t a similarity about them. To this day I can’t understand the positiveness of those [identification] witnesses." ('Stanley Z. Fisher, Convictions of Innocent Persons in Massachusetts: An Overview,” 12 Boston Univ. Public Interest L.J. 1, 13-14 (2002))." |
Conviction
Caused By:
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Erroneous eyewitness testimony of 17 witnesses and the erroneous expert testimony of a handwriting expert. |
Innocence
Proved By:
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Actual perpetrator was identified after Herbert Andrews was imprisoned.
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Defendant
Aided By:
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Compensation Awarded: |
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Was Perpetrator Found? |
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Age
When Imprisoned:
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Age
When Released:
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Information Source 1: |
"Convicting the Innocent - Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice, by Edwin Borchard, Yale Univ Press, 1932, p. 1-6" |
Information
Location 1:
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Information
Source 2:
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"Stanley Z. Fisher, Convictions of Innocent Persons in Massachusetts: An Overview,” 12 Boston Univ. Public Interest L.J. 1, 13-14 (2002)." |
Information
Location 2:
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Information
Source 3:
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Information
Location 3:
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Information
Source 4:
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Information
Location 4:
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Information
Source 5:
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Information
Location 5:
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Ethnicity/Skin:
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White |
Book
About
Case:
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"Convicting the Innocent - Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice, by Edwin Borchard, Yale Univ Press, 1932, p. 1-6" |
Book
Information:
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Book About Case (2): |
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Book Information (2): |
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Movie About Case: |
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Comments About Case: |
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Innocents Database Created and Maintained by Hans Sherrer innocents@forejustice.org