Myrna Martinez
May 5, 2015
Final
Bruce Godschalk was a 25 year old man from Pennsylvania. In the year of 1987 he was convicted of two counts of forcible rape along with two counts of burglary in the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. His convictions led him to receiving a sentence of ten to twenty years in prison. He was convicted based on the eyewitness identification that the victims provided and Godschalk detailed confession that was taken after he was interrogated by the police. In the year of 1986 two women that lived in the same apartment complex were confronted by the same perpetrator. Both women were awoken by the man the allegedly entered their home raped them. Out of both the victims’ only one of them was able to identify Godschalk as the perpetrator, while the second victim of the crime was able to help the police in creating a compost sketch of the offender. The sketch was used to be broadcasted on television and placed on the local newspapers. On December 30 of 1986 the police department received a call informing them that Godschalk looked like the man that appeared on the sketch that was being broadcasted.
A month later on January 13, 1987, the police acquired a detailed confession from Godschalk that held information that was not yet released to the public. Later on that year in May both of the rapes were tried together in court. In court the prosecution relied on various items, such as the second victim’s identification of the perpetrator, the confession
As questioning continued, she was asked about specific crimes that she had been accused of committing. After the testimony had been taken from
The Leslie Faber rape took place in the Scherzer’s basementon the afternoon of March 1, 1989. During the trial the defence attorneys did everything they could to try
In this article, “Who Killed the Jeff Davis 8”, Ethan Brown, the author, attempted to solve the murder case and prove the police authorities to being wrong and being responsible for the murders of the town. The main problem of this article is determining who is responsible for the murders of those eight women everyone’s contradicting stories. In an attempt to figure out what really happened Brown includes factual evidence from interviews and shocking statistics to inform the reader of what’s going on in the article. By providing such information, Brown indulges the audience into the full experience of solving the murder case.
On June first, a single black man named Joe James jumped off a freight train entering springfield, and began a streak of partying. He had been arrested soon after, and was sentenced for 50 days in the jail, but was allowed to run errands while on parole. WHile on parole on June 3rd, he left and didn’t come back. While drunk, he had entered Clergy Ballard’s house the night before, and had slashed the neck of Clergy after attempting to sexually assault his daughter. The next day, after waking up on a park bench, multiple of Clergy’s relatives and neighbors ganged up on James and beat him senseless until police arrived to arrest James. They hauled him off to the town jail until shipped off to a court case.
After Jennifer Thompson-Cannino was raped in 1984, she identified a man in a police lineup and in court as her attacker. The detective conducting the lineup told Jennifer that she had done great, confirming that she had chosen the suspect. Eleven years later, DNA evidence proved that the suspect, Ronald Cotton, had been wrongfully convicted of the rape. A man named Bobby Poole, who Thompson testified she had never seen before, was the man who actually raped her. Ronald and Jennifer's book, picking cotton, portrays common factors that contribute to erroneous convictions. Although it addresses a variety of important issues, the most crucial is how subtle factors like eyewitness misidentification, confirmation bias and nature of a defendant can
``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the
Christopher was identified in a crime line-up and two of the women-mother and sister of the rape victim was in court and identified Coleman as the offender. They didn’t find any physical evidence to show that Coleman committed this crime. The victim's mother told the prosecutor that she had know Coleman years earlier and she had not seen him recently, but recognized his voice and distinctive walk. Another sister told the court that she knew Christopher by the nickname “Fat” and that he had removed his mask during the crime when it was occurring. Nevertheless, these women had identified Coleman to responding during the grand jury hearing, and the other sister had incorrectly identified at least two other alleged
To explain the crime, the criminal involved in the crime tricked the woman into getting in her car by impersonating a parking attendant. He stole the woman’s purse and car keys and drove off with the woman’s vehicle. During the carjacking, the man tried to attack the woman with a screwdriver which resulted in the criminal being stabbed. (“Antonio Beaver”). The victim gave a very vague description of the criminal, mentioning that he was african american, was wearing a baseball cap, was 5’10, had crooked teeth, and had facial hair.
The two rape cases that were put against Dwayne Allen Dail and Christopher Abernathy were very similar in more ways than just one. These two people were both charged with crimes of rape against two younger girls. Later both Abernathy and Dail were both freed from federal prison after serving for many years do to evidence found from DNA samples. The first examples of the similarity between the two cases are the convictions of both Abernathy and Dail.
Just recently, a middle-ages man has been captured by the local police. Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Thomas Gilliland reported to the Houston Chronicle, ‘…that the relationship between Conley and the victims — who ranged in age from 6 to 50 — remains unclear.’ After the discovery, deputies applied capital murder to the bodies of six-children—ages 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 13. A David R. Conley was allegedly involved in an upset with the deputies that ended after the accused killer was persuaded to give in to the demands of the Harris County authorities. On a tip, deputies entered the residence to confront the abusive killing. However, according to sources—at a news conference Sunday afternoon—Chief Deputy Rim Cannon announce that the degree of
Throughout the trials, the townspeople’s opinions began to get in the way of making accused people’s statements valid. Some accused confessed to save themselves (Hansen, 1969). Others gave their lives to save the innocent people accused of such a treacherous crime. Giles Corey, one of the people whose wife was accused, was pressed to death using stones because he would not tell the court anything to send his wife to death.
A young girl, a six-year-old beauty pageant queen, was found brutally slaughtered in her home the morning after Christmas in 1996. Who killed the defenseless little girl? The JonBenét Ramsey murder was one of the most chilling cases of its time. The investigation caught the public eye around the world and was a center for tabloids, newspapers, and TV news alike. Now, twenty years later, the world is still captivated by this bizarre crime. What really happened on that fateful winter night? Was it the mother who snapped in a fit of rage over a bed-wetting accident? Or did the neighborhood Santa Clause become a little too enthralled with the tiny beauty queen? Whatever the case, this tragedy has been under investigation for twenty years, and
was committed and by who as soon as it happens. The story is about how
Early the next morning of December 8th, the lifeless body of Debbie Carter was found strangled in her small apartment. The murder of Debbie Carter flipped this small, rural, bible-belt, town on its head. People were outraged, overwhelmed, and stunned that such a thing could happen in this town to a young, beautiful girl whom everyone had known. This gruesome act put enormous pressure on local law enforcement to find the atrocious criminal. Finger prints, hair, and blood spatter was carefully collected from the scene.
They think they have a detailed account of where it happened and what their surrounding were or when it happened. From Bass and Davis, Jennierose had been raped but she remembered what she saw when her father raped her. There she was getting rapped and she also her rose-colored curtain which were blowing in the window. She even took into account when it happened. Jennirose was raped when her mother had gone to the hospital to give birth to another baby.