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Wrongly Convicted Database Record
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Charge: |
First Degree Murder and Robbery |
Sentence: |
Death and later resentenced or commuted to Life |
Years Imprisoned: |
18 |
Year Crime: |
1978 |
Year Convicted: |
1983 |
Year Cleared: |
2000 |
U.S. State or Country of Crime: |
California |
County or Region of Crime: |
Los Angeles |
City of Crime: |
Long Beach |
Result: |
Judicially Exonerated Released |
Summary of Case: |
"Oscar Lee Morris was wrongly convicted of first-degree murder and robbery in 1983 and sentenced to death. In 1988 the California Supreme Court affirmed Morris' convictions, but reduced his sentence to life in prison. He was resentenced to life in prison in 1990. Oscar Morris was freed in 2000 after 16 years in prison – six of them on death row – when his chief accuser issued a recantation and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Pounders granted Morris a new trial. Prosecutors declined to try Morris anew, and he was set free. "Morris’s case was marked by the controversial use of testimony from a felon granted leniency for his testimony, and the prosecution’s failure to divulge this special relationship to the defense during the trial. The star witness later confessed that he had fabricated the entire case against Morris in return for favorable treatment in at least two criminal cases he was involved in. The chief prosecutor in the case, Arthur Jean, Jr., is today a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge. In a deposition about the case, Judge Jean said, “I wish I wasn’t on record having participated in giving him [Morris] something less than a perfect trial, but I am. It’s an embarrassing situation that I didn’t do well at the trial, and I didn’t handle things well. And misjudgments occurred, and I made them. And it’s tough to look people in the eye and ‘fess up with them sometimes.” .... As a prosecutor, Mr. Jean had told the jury in Morris’s case that “there is no evidence, not a shred, and you would know if it existed, if Mr. West [the witness] got any benefit from the handling of his criminal case.” Records show that Mr. West in fact received a reduced sentence on a felony auto theft charge in return for his testimony against Mr. Morris, as well as termination of his prison sentence for parole violation. Mr. Jean’s handling of the Morris case drew the wrath of the California Supreme Court when it considered Morris’s automatic capital appeal and vacated his death sentence in 1988. Mr. Morris spent another 11 years in jail, until Mr. West recanted his testimony and Mr. Morris was released. (LA Daily Journal, Oct. 29, 2002)" Exonerations in California, DeathPenalty.org. Morris' federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Long Beach was dismissed in 2002." |
Conviction Caused By: |
"Perjured testimony by prosecutin's star witness - a jailhouse informant, and Prosecutorial Misconduct due to failure to disclose an agrement to give the informant lenient treatment" |
Innocence Proved By: |
Conviction vacated and charges dropped in 2000 after the State's sole witness recanted that he had fabricated his testimony against Morris |
Defendant Aided By: |
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Compensation Awarded: |
Lost a federal civil rights lawsuit |
Was Perpetrator Identified? |
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Age When Imprisoned: |
33 |
Age When Released: |
51 |
Sex: |
Male |
Skin/Ethnicity: |
Black |
Information Source 1: |
"Death Penalty Focus - Exonerations in California, Oct 2002, deathpenalty.org" |
Information Location 1: |
http://www.deathpenalty.org/index.php?pid=Innocence |
Information Source 2: |
"Not Guilty After All, San Francisco Magazine, November 2004" |
Information Location 2: |
http://sanfran.com/archives/view_story/200/ |
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Comments About Case: |
Innocents Database Created and Maintained by Hans Sherrer innocents@forejustice.org