The Life After Innocence Project

Hi! My name is Nicole Schnoor and I am one of the three new members of The Life After Innocence Project. I couldn’t be more excited and grateful to be a part of such a wonderful group. I am so happy Dr. Phil chose to do a three episode special on wrongful convictions.  He really helped bring awareness to such an important issue. I look forward to continue working with this group. After being a member for such a short time it isn’t hard to see the impact people like Ronald Kitchen, Dean Cage, and many others make on the people around them.

Hi all. I’m Erica and I will be live blogging through the Dr. Phil Follow Up show.

3:56 –  Loretta would like to start “Loretta’s Law” to obtain support for victims.  What a fantastic idea.

Thanks for tuning in today. Please check out our website at http://www.luc.edu/law/lifeafterinnocence/ for more information on our amazing clients.

3:51 — Rock on, Elearners.com! They gave Ronald a $7,000 scholarship package and a laptop!! And thanks Goodwill Industries for giving Ronald a job! We know you won’t be sorry. He is a great man.

3:49 — “It’s like being in a coma that whole time. You wake up and the world has changed.”   This statement by Dr. Phil makes me so sad. I am so sad for the years Ronald has missed.

And in the words of Dr. Phil, “Chicago, get Ronald Kitchen a job!”

3:40 — We meet Ronald’s two sons, Ronald Jr. and Randell. Ronald Sr. and Randell only recently met for the first time because Ronald was imprisoned before Randell was born.  Randell describes their relationship as more of an older/younger brother relationship and hopes to someday feel like he has another dad.  They take it dayby day and try to get to know each other.

3:34 — Ronald explains that he confessed because he was handcuffed and beaten for 17 hours. He believed they would beat him to death or beat him to the point where he wished he were dead. He needed it to stop, and believed that the jury would find him not guilty.  That was not the case and Ronald was sentenced to death.

3:33 — “If you are a fighter, you have to fight.” Ronald doesn’t feel pity for himself, but it is hard for him to be around other people.  He is used to waking up in the morning because guards banged on the bars to wake him.  He doesn’t ride the busses because it is hard for him to be with people.  He is short and blunt because he spent half his life in a place where he wasn’t allowed to speak freely. Ronald truly is a fighter and a survivor.

3:29 — Ronald Kitchen, another LAIP client, spend 21 years in prison for 5 murders that he did not commit. Eleven of those years were spent on death row where he was in solitary confinement 22 hours of the day. He was beat into confessing.  He cried himself to sleep and missed out on raising his sons.

3:24 — Dr. Phil introduces Laura Caldwell, our project’s fearless leader! She explains what we do at the Life After Innocence. Unfortunately exonerees fall through the cracks, and although Dean received a full pardon, he was not automatically granted an expungement to get the conviction off his record.  We are trying to help him with this so that finding employment will be less of a daunting task.

3:22 — Loretta thanks Dean for meeting her and says that meeting him changed her life.  She has been able to accept him as a victim too and says she is excited to see him again.  I am so touched by Loretta’s strength and love.  I am in awe of her. Like Dr Phil, I admire both Dean and Loretta and am grateful they have opened their hearts to each other.

3:22 — Dean still catches himself being afraid that he’ll have to go back to prison, it is still scary for him, but he prays every day for the strength to go on.

3:21 — Jewel, Dean’s amazing fiancee, explains that they are blessed and are doing better. Dean sleeps more peacefully, he is more open, a burden has been lifted off of him. The show helped him.

3:18 — Dean comes out and joins Loretta.  His smile brings tears to my eyes.

3:16 — Loretta realizes that both she and Dean are victims. Dr Phil asks everyone to imagine that they have been wrongly accused, locked away, criticized and ostracized.  Loretta feels bad for what Dean had to go through and hopes they can give each other strength to move forward.

3:14 — Loretta meets another exoneree and learned that they both had the same fears.  They are both victims, they are both alike.  She said that coming on the Dr. Phil show was a life changing experience for her.

3:09 — Jennifer helps Loretta see that she is a survivor, not a victim, and she can take back control of her life.  Dr. Phil reminds us that if they can overcome something as terrible as this, the rest of us can face our own challenges and overcome them too.  Their strength and courage is incredibly inspiring.

3:06 — Loretta met Jennifer Thompson, a woman who went through almost the same thing Loretta did. She and the man she accused, Ronald Cotton, are now friends.  They have also written a book together.

3:03 — We see a recap of what happened on the first show.  Both Dean and Loretta went through terrible things and were both victims of terrible events. It is heartbreaking to hear their stories again.

A friend of the Life After Innocent Project, Josh Kezer, an exoneree from Missouri, will be featured on 48 Hours Mystery March 13.  Check out Josh’s blog here to learn more about his story.

The City of Chicago has agreed to settle Life After Innocence client Jerry Miller’s federal civil rights wrongful conviction lawsuit.  Mr. Miller spent over 25 years in prison, wrongfully convicted of rape, aggravated kidnapping and robbery.  DNA testing obtained in 2007 by the Innocence Project eventually exonerated Mr. Miller, and he obtained a full pardon based on actual innocence in 2008.  In his civil rights lawsuit Mr. Miller alleged that Chicago Police Crime Lab analyst Raymond Lenz withheld test results from prosecutors that conclusively excluded him as a suspect.  While the analyst essentially reported that the tests produced an inconclusive finding, Mr. Miller’s expert, Dr. Edward Blake, determined that conclusion was impossible.  Read more here.

The role of the media in exposing wrongful convictions and getting innocent men and women out of prison cannot be overstated. However, with more and more newspapers making cuts and suffering in this economic downturn, reporters do not have the ability to pursue many stories. Fortunately, some newspapers and reporters aren’t letting financial troubles hinder their fight to expose the truth – and this article from Monday’s New York Times discusses that. The article covers several topics, but they begin by focusing on the lawsuit filed by Hearst last year against the governor’s office in Texas concerning access to Cameron Todd Willingham’s clemency petition.

Dean and Loretta’s story made the front page of AOL news today. Read the story here

Hi! I’m Emily and I’ll be liveblogging during today’s episode of Dr. Phil. Yesterday’s show introduced us to Dean and Loretta – two victims in this horrible wrongful conviction story. Dr. Phil spoke with both Dean and Loretta separately and allowed them to tell their stories. Today we’ll see if Loretta decided to take Dr. Phil up on his offer to meet Dean on the show.

3:55 – Watching Dean and Loretta shake hands and hug at the end of the show really opened the floodgates for me.  In all seriousness though, that’s a very special moment to watch – and hopefully their story will help others find some closure.

3:50 – Dr. Phil mentions that the real perpetrator is still unknown and that’s something that gets lost – there is someone who committed this awful crime and every effort should be made to find that man and bring justice on behalf of Dean and Loretta

3:42 – Dr. Wells discusses the problems surrounding identification issues.  This is a huge issue concerning wrongful conviction cases because only so many people can be cleared by dna evidence – most of the cases are false identification cases

3:40 – Jennifer is a great person for Loretta and Dean to have on their side.  Her perspective and her strength will hopefully be a great comfort to both of them.  The wrongful conviction community is small, but important – and having attended the Innocence Network conference last spring, I know how important it is for the exonerees to be able to talk to each other about their experiences – but it’s also important to have a support system in place for the victims, like Jennifer and Loretta

3:33 – Loretta’s honesty is very touching – she’s able to admit that she feels ashamed and guilty – and that’s an incredibly difficult thing to do, especially while sitting next to Dean

3:29 – Well, now I’m sitting on my couch trying to liveblog, but instead I’m crying! What a useless blogger I am!

3:26 – I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult this must be for both Loretta and Dean.  I feel sort of uncomfortable watching this – it feels a little voyeuristic – probably because I know Dean and I feel a little protective of him and I don’t like knowing how scared or how nervous he must be – and on national tv no less!

3:22 – I hope Loretta will agree to come out on the show and meet with Dean because I think it will bring so much closure to this terrible chapter for both of them.  The two of them are victims, and by addressing the truth of the situation, hopefully they will both be able to move forward a little bit

3:20 – It’s a little hard to hear Dean talk about his Jewel and his kids because I can’t even imagine how difficult it is for him to think about missing out on the last 14 years with them – but he never seems bitter, never angry

3:18 – Dean talks about how he gets up early in the mornings and has coffee by himself to think about what has happened.  Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in some of the sensational stories surrounding these cases, that you forget how special and how important those seemingly small and insignificant moments are

3:11 – Dr. Phil has Jennifer on the phone and when she describes how difficult it was to get Ronald’s face out of her mind it makes me so sad.  I’m so sad thinking about Loretta picturing Dean as the man who raped her.  The Dean that I’ve gotten to know is such a wonderful man and I can’t even imagine what it must be like for him to know that Loretta pictures him as someone who could have ever hurt her, or anyone else.

3:09 – Jennifer asked Ronald to meet him at a church to ask for his forgiveness – what an incredibly brave thing for both Ronald and Jennifer to do.

3:06 – Jennifer Thompson’s clip from a 60 minutes interview.  Jennifer, like Loretta, identified her attacker but it turned out to be the wrong man.  She and Ronald Cotton, the man who spent years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, have become close friends.  Last year in Houston at the Innocence Network conference we had a chance to hear Ronald and Jennifer speak together and we got a chance to speak with them over the course of the weekend.  Their story is incredible and inspirational.

3:01 – Dr. Phil recaps how Loretta, as a scared 15 year old, helped the police with their investigation.  Loretta did everything right, but this highlights the inherent problems with eyewitness misidentification and the problems with some police identification tactics. The police brought Loretta to Dean’s place of work instead of having him come down to the station or showing his picture to Loretta with those of other suspects.

Hi everyone! I’m Erica, a student member of the Life After Innocence Project, and I’m going to be blogging through the airing of the Dr. Phil show at 3pm today.  It is about eye witness misidentification and our client, Dean Cage, is a guest on the show.  Please tune in and feel free to keep up with my blog updates!

3:57 — Please tune in tomorrow and see if Loretta decides to meet Dean.  As Dr. Phil said, “there are nothing but victims here.” 

3:52 — Dr. Phil tells Dean that his peace about this, his great attitude, is impressive.  Dean is a victim too and Dr. Phil apologizes for what has happened to him. Dean says he is willing to talk to Loretta and smiles while he fights back tears.

3:47 — Dean only feels bad for Loretta that she is still in so much pain. He wants her to know he never hurt her and he never will. We will find out tomorrow if she decides to meet him.

3:43 — Dr. Phil tells Loretta that Dean isn’t mad, he doesn’t blame her or think she did anything wrong. He is just happy to be out. 

3:41 — How could the DNA be wrong? She doesn’t believe it.  She would feel excited if they found someone else… but it would be mean she did something wrong.  Dr. Phil tries to assure her that she did nothing wrong.  She did what she believed to be true at the time (and still believes to be true).

3:33 — The face of the person she remembers is not back from the crime scene but instead of the person she identified.  That face becomes the perpetrator in her mind.

3:31 — Both labs independently said that Dean could not have been there.  The exclusion of him was 100%.  In all of Dr. Phil’s time in the criminal arena, this was one of the most solid exclusions he has ever seen.

 3:25 — She feels she did something wrong, especially with Dean being released.  Dr. Phil says she is inspiring and she should be proud of everything she has overcome and accomplished.  We hear from her kids, how upset they are that Dean was released.  They are afraid he will come after them.

3:23 — We meet Loretta.  Too often the victim is lost in this process and we are reminded that she also suffered something horrible.  She explains she is still afraid that Dean will come back to hurt her, even though he was exonerated.  She has a lot of flashbacks — she sometimes thinks her husband is the rapist. 

3:16 — Dean cannot be mad at her because she went through something horrendous.  But he is sad for himself and the amount of time he has lost.

3:13 — Even after the DNA test came back and Dean was exonerated, Loretta still believed it was him.  Dean recounts how he missed his grandparents’ death, his kids’ childhoods, the invention of cell phones…everything had changed when he came out.  Everything was different.

3:12 — Are all eyewitness accounts reliable?

3:07pm — We’re introduced both to the victim of the rape and to the victim of faulty identification, our client Dean Cage.  We also see Jewel, Dean’s fiancee.

3:05pm — the actual perpetrator was NOT in the lineup.  Most times eyewitnesses are not warned that the actual perpetrator may not be in the lineup so there is more pressure to pick “the closest thing.”

3:02pm Eyewitness Identification Test — Who was the bomber on the roof? How did you do?

Michael Tillman was released from prison today after serving 23 years in prison for a wrongful conviction, due in part to torture at the hand of Jon Burge and his Area 2 associates. Read more here

On May 22, 2008, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Alan Beaman. He was exonerated on January 29, 2009. To view a video about Alan Beaman created by John Maki of the Northwestern University Law School, Center on Wrongful Convictions, click here.