Author Topic: Can the Court Deny a Clear Miscarriage of Justice?  (Read 796 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Can the Court Deny a Clear Miscarriage of Justice?
« on: February 24, 2019, 02:33:39 pm »
The Post & Email February 23, 2019

FALSELY-ACCUSED FORMER JAIL OFFICER CONTINUES TO SEEK EXONERATION

On Thursday, Memphis resident Earley Story went to the Shelby County courthouse at 201 Poplar Street, accompanied by an acquaintance, to file documents he said should prove him innocent of a 1999 conviction for selling marijuana to an undercover officer and confidential informant in January 1997.

As The Post & Email has reported since November, Story has appealed the conviction over the years but been met with stoic denial on the part of Judge Chris Craft, who was an assistant prosecutor at the time of Story’s arrest and conviction.

We were first alerted to what appears to be systemic corruption in Shelby County, which comprises Tennessee’s 30th Judicial District, more than two years ago after Tennessee state inmates Jerome L. Johnson and Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III provided accounts of an August 2016 post-conviction hearing for Johnson in front of Judge Lee Coffee, also a former Shelby County prosecutor.

Both inmates were then housed at the Northwest Correctional Complex (NWCX) but transported to the Shelby County jail for a temporary stay to attend the hearing.  Johnson called Fitzpatrick as an expert witness as to the form and function of Tennessee’s grand juries, which Fitzpatrick had been researching since fall 2009.

Fitzpatrick was released from state custody in October 2016 after suffering medical complications and two surgeries while in prison.

Following the two men’s stay at 201 Poplar, a significant number of Shelby County inmates contacted this publication with the complaint that the current District Attorney General, Amy Weirich, who is the district’s chief prosecutor, had committed frequent misconduct, including that for which she received a private reprimand in March 2017 in connection with the Noura Jackson case.  We continue to receive communications from inmates at the jail, where Story was working during the 1990s while employed by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO).

More: https://www.thepostemail.com/2019/02/23/can-the-court-deny-a-clear-miscarriage-of-justice/