Save the Date: October 7, 2010
The Benefit for Innocence
Featuring Author and CNN Analyst
JEFFREY TOOBIN
Other Links: Press & News, Innocence Projects by Region, DNA, Criminal Justice
Federal Grant to Fund DNA Testing of Up To 13,000 Minnesota Convicts
Prosecutors, Defenders, Investigators and Innocence Project of Minnesota Join Together in a Unique Project to Identify Innocent Persons Convicted of Violent Crime
ST. PAUL, Minn. (Sep. 25, 2009) – The Minnesota Board of Public Defense, the Innocence Project of Minnesota, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced today that they have been selected by the United States Department of Justice to receive a grant of almost $860,000 to fund the state’s largest comprehensive review of criminal cases involving DNA evidence. The grant, provided by the United States Department of Justice Postconviction DNA Testing Assistance Program, will allow a joint task force of prosecutors, defense attorneys, investigators, and staff from the Innocence Project of Minnesota to conduct a review of more than 13,000 violent-crime convictions to determine whether DNA testing is warranted. This review is the largest undertaking of its kind ever performed in this state.
In cases where DNA testing may determine whether the convicted person is innocent of the crime and the evidence can be located, the evidence will be subjected to DNA testing after consents are obtained. If the testing program identifies that a convicted person is innocent, the Innocence Project of Minnesota will commence the legal work to secure his or her release. If DNA determines that another person committed the crime, that information will be turned over to the appropriate law enforcement authorities.
The partnership is innovative for its level of collaboration between a non-profit advocacy organization, law enforcement, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, with each organization contributing unique expertise to the effort. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension will contribute its expertise through DNA testing; the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office will provide outreach to Minnesota’s other counties and help coordinate outreach to crime victims; the Minnesota Board of Public Defense will provide an appellate lawyer to review cases; and the Innocence Project of Minnesota will manage the program’s operations and act as the first point of contact for the convicted.
“This partnership is the first statewide effort to perform systematic DNA testing,” Ed Magarian, co-chair of the Innocence Project of Minnesota, and partner at Dorsey & Whitney said. “It represents an unprecedented level of collaboration between a non-profit organization, law enforcement, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. We are all vitally interested in exonerating the innocent, but also in drawing attention to the fact that when someone is wrongfully convicted, the person guilty of the crime may remain on the street, free to reoffend. This grant and this collaboration further our goals of securing justice, which we, as Minnesotans, all share.”
To date, 242 people in the United States have been exonerated through DNA evidence—including one Minnesotan. The grant provides for review of any felony convictions obtained from 1981 to 1999.
“DNA evidence is a powerful tool in both securing convictions and in exonerating the innocent,” said Pat Diamond, Deputy Hennepin County Attorney. “By systematically reviewing convictions that were obtained before DNA testing was widespread, the Partnership will serve important interests in promoting public confidence in the criminal justice system and seeing that justice is done. Nobody is served by a wrongful conviction. Even if an innocent person has served his sentenced, the guilty remain on the street and free to reoffend.”
The project will focus on cases of forcible rape, murder, and non-negligent manslaughter that occurred before 1999 when DNA testing was not in widespread or consistent use. Once a case has been identified as potentially having DNA evidence available for testing, the grant will allow for DNA testing to be done at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension whenever possible. The grant will fund the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office to coordinate and do outreach.
To learn more, click here to listen to a report by Minnesota Public Radio.
Sherman Townsend Released from Prison
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (October 2, 2007) – Sherman Townsend was imprisoned for more than ten years for a crime he did not commit. Years ago he convinced lawyers, professors and law students working with the Innocence Project of Minnesota of his innocence, but they could not find a way to prove it. Earlier this year the true perpetrator contacted them admitting his guilt and giving a candid, detailed and chilling account of what transpired the night that changed Mr. Townsend’s life. On October 2, 2007 Sherman Townsend walked out a free man.
Background
On August 10, 1997, at 1:43 a.m., Minneapolis police responded to a home invasion at 1412 8th Street SE, Minneapolis in Hennepin County. The woman living in the house and her boyfriend were asleep in her bed when they awoke to find an intruder on top of them in the bed. After a brief struggle, the invader fled. Neither victim was significantly injured, nor was anything stolen. The victims called the police, but due to the circumstances were candid that they could not identify the perpetrator nor give much in the way of a description.
As police talked to the victims, another man, David Anthony Jones, who lived in an apartment building next door approached the police and told them that as he returned home that evening, a man came running from the direction of his neighbor’s house and knocked him down. He described the man as an African American with a large build. Mr. Townsend, an African American, was arrested nearby and brought to the scene where Jones identified him as the man who knocked him down. Neither victim could identify Townsend as the man who broke into the house. Mr. Townsend was arrested and charged.
As the trial approached, the only witness who could positively identify Townsend started to change his version of events. Jones told a an investigator working for Townsend’s then attorney that he could not in fact identify Townsend as the man who ran into him that evening. He also testified under oath at a pre-trial hearing that Townsend was not the man. However, at trial, he did testify that Townsend was the man who knocked him over. The victims were still not able to identify Townsend as the man who was in their bed, and there was no physical evidence tying him to the scene. However, Townsend was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison. At every step in the process he has protested his innocence to anyone willing to listen.
Sherman Townsend contacted the Innocence Project of Minnesota in when it first started accepting cases in 2002. His case was worked on by a number of law students taking the Innocence Clinic at Hamline University School of Law. They and their professor, Michael Davis, believed Townsend when he said he was innocent, and were looking at another potential perpetrator who had been doing similar crimes in the same neighborhood. To them, this case had all the hallmarks of a mistaken identification. They had no idea how much darker the truth really was.
In May of this year, David Anthony Jones – the neighbor, contacted the Innocence Project of Minnesota as well as several other organizations. He told anyone willing to listen that he was the true perpetrator of the crime for which Sherman Townsend was in prison. Jones is currently in prison himself for two different cases involving criminal sexual misconduct. While in prison, he was shocked to find that Sherman Townsend was still incarcerated for the crime that Jones himself committed. Now that he had faced life behind bars, he wanted to rectify the injustice he had done to Mr. Townsend ten years ago.
Mr. Jones provided Mr. Townsend's attorneys, Julie Jonas and Michael Davis, with a map and affidavits detailing what actually occurred that evening. Working on behalf of Mr. Townsend, the attorneys contacted the victims of the burglary and confirmed details provided in Mr. Jones’s affidavit, including details that were not available in the police reports or as part of the trial record. None of Mr. Jones’s admissions in his affidavit contradicted the victims’ recollections of the night. None of the facts developed through Mr. Jones’s affidavit or the victims’ confirmations implicate Mr. Townsend. Mr. Jones was the only witness to identify Mr. Townsend before, during, or after trial. Mr. Jones and Mr. Townsend both claim that Mr. Townsend is innocent.
On September 24 2007, Mr. Jones’s testified under oath for nearly three hours. He gave the following detailed and often times riveting account of what truly occurred that August night. Jones’s apartment window overlooked his neighbor, the victim’s home. He watched her from his window, knew what she wore, and was sexually excited by her. He heard her roommate leave the house in evening on August 9, 1997 and thought she was alone. He did not know her boyfriend was present. Mr. Jones had been drinking throughout the afternoon and evening using money he had stolen from work earlier in the day to buy liquor.
At some point in the night, while drunk, he went for walk to get more liquor. While on that walk he peeped into the window of an Asian woman that he did not know. She was partially nude and he wanted to rape her, but did not think he could get into her home. He then decided he wanted to rape his next door neighbor. He had gathered the supplies he would need – duct tape and a utility knife. He wore drawstring pants so that he would be able to get them off easily during the rape. After cutting through a downstairs window screen with a carpet knife, he climbed through the window.
When he went upstairs to the second floor to find his intended victim, Mr. Jones opened the first door he found and fell into a closet. He then found the bedroom and opened the door where he fell across a mattress on the floor. He put his hands out to break his fall and grabbed a man’s neck in the process. Mr. Jones only expected to find his female victim in the bedroom, so he fled hoping to avoid any confrontation with the male. He ran out the door and across an alley to his apartment, taking an indirect route to avoid detection. From his darkened apartment, he watched through the windows as the police arrived and began to look around the area.
Mr. Jones wanted to know how much the police knew about the burglar, and so he went out and pretended to be the concerned neighbor. As he talked to them, he decided throw them off his trail as a suspect by concocting the story about a man having run into him. When the police went to look for a suspect, they placed Jones in a squad car because he was still drunk and having a hard time standing. The police quickly arrested Townsend who was well known to them and brought him to the scene. Meanwhile, Jones was in the squad car and knowing his own guilt feared he was going to be arrested. When they asked Jones to make an identification of Mr. Townsend, Jones lied and told police that Townsend was the man who ran into him. In truth, he could not see the person in the spotlight well because he was too drunk to focus.
His subsequent statements made to police, prosecutors, and at trial resulted in numerous inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies resulted from Jones’ inability to remember what he initially told police and a desire to get everyone to leave him alone and quit bothering him. Mr. Jones also confirmed that he lied at trial when he told the judge that he had no prior criminal convictions. In fact, he did have felony convictions from Illinois at the time of Townsend’s trial. Because of all of the lies he told and the lack of other evidence Jones never thought Townsend would get convicted and never followed up to see if he had.
When Jones saw Townsend in prison for the crime that he in fact had committed, he was shocked. Jones approached Townsend and told him what he had done. Jones is extremely remorseful and wants desperately to correct this situation as soon as possible. Jones contacted Townsend’s attorneys among others in an attempt to set the record straight and free an innocent man.
Soon after hearing Jones’ wrenching testimony about the true details of the evening in question, the prosecutor contacted Townsend through his attorneys. Townsend was told that if he dropped his motion for a new trial, he could be released from prison immediately. Mr. Townsend, who had already placed his faith in the system once and lost, accepted his release quickly and graciously. He walked out of custody on October 2, 2007 after serving over 10 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He remains upbeat and positive. He told members of the media, “I don’t think they took my life away. I think I go from this day forward.”
