Case Summary : Penny Ann Beernsten

First of all, Steven Avery is guilty for making Teresa Halbach a target. On October 10, 2005 Teresa Halbach had gone to Steven Avery's property. Steven Avery had called the Auto Trader magazine for a photo shoot. Steven had specifically asked for Teresa Halbach to come. Teresa had quit but the Auto Trader had begged her to go one more photo shoot. When Teresa knocked on his door Steven Avery had creeped her out by coming out the door with only a towel around his waist. On October 31 Teresa halbach was killed. Phone call records show Steven Avery calling Teresa's phone using *67 a numerous amount of times. This was so she wouldn't see who called

Richard Alexander was wrongly accused of three counts of rape in 1996. Alexander was told he would serve 70 years in prison for his crimes. However, was released after 5 years when DNA testing proved he did not commit the rapes in River Park, New York. From this evidence, one can conclude that in order to be convicted of a crime, there needs to be evidence such as this that cannot be faked. Alexander spent 5 years of his life

Picking Cotton, by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton (with Erin Torneo) was chosen as the Common Reading Experience book for the 2015-2016 Freshman class under UNCP's First Year Initiatives Program. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the experiences of Thompson-Cannino and Cotton. The presentation they gave on the UNCP campus was a mere cliff-notes version of the book, (although it was worth attending to meet them, listen to their stories, and to hear Mr. Cotton sing the song that he wrote). Jennifer Thompson was raped in her apartment in July of 1984. She was a student at Elon College.

Good people are not always rewarded, and people who commit felonies and do wrong are not always punished. Imagine a man who tries to be nice, honest, and friendly. One night police end up at your door and you are suddenly the suspect for your friends’ murder. This is sadly the case for James Driskell (Howe). In September of 1990 his friend, Perry Harder, was shot in the chest several times. A year later James was convicted to a lifetime in prison. The evidence the police had for the crime were 3 hairs on Harder’s chest that apparently belonged to Mr. Driskell. Later tests revealed that those 3 hairs did not

In November of 1983, 15 year old Lynda Mann was found raped and murdered on a deserted road, and although police were able to obtain a semen sample from her murderer the case remained unsolved. In 1986 the killer struck again murdering 15 year old Dawn Ashworth, once again leaving behind semen, but this time the police were able to use DNA profiling to match the semen to a suspect. Colin Pitchfork became the first person to be caught based on mass DNA screening, and the first to be convicted based on DNA profiling. The use of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) in the criminal justice system has greatly tipped the scales in favor of law enforcement, and changed the world that we live in. Court cases that in the past relied heavily on eye witness testimony and circumstantial evidence now have science to back them up. DNA analysis has revolutionized the criminal justice system, and even though there are some flaws, the use of DNA evidence should continue to be used by law enforcement.

CASE STUDY #2: Bennett Barbour Ronald Cotton’s case study is only one from hundreds of people who have been sent to jail for a crime they did not commit. Bennett Barbour, a 22-year-old man whose wife was pregnant with their first child was put in jail even when all the evidence was going against him except for the eyewitness. On February 7, 1978, a nineteen-year-old girl and Mary were sexually assaulted at gunpoint. After the incident, the victim called the police and gave a detailed description of the assailant. She told them that he weighed about 145 pounds and was about 5’6 tall.

The article that I found discusses how DNA evidence was used to convict a suspect after twenty years under investigation. The homicide case was recently closed on the rape and murder of Ophelia Preston, a 24 year-old female in Milwaukee County. Preston was deaf and mute and also suffered from a cocaine addiction, which led her to meeting Melvin Lee Jones.

As DNA fingerprinting progressed, Barbour sought the help of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science to use the DNA extracted from the crime scene and his own DNA. Once the institute typed both DNAs, they refused to give him or the court the information from their testings. “After denying repeated Freedom of Information Act requests from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the state finally agreed to release a partial list of the DNA exclusions to a volunteer attorney, Jonathan Sheldon. Barbour only learned that the evidence from his case still existed and that the state lab had obtained DNA results when Sheldon contacted him in early 2012.” Barbour went to the University of Virginia School of Law’s Innocence Project to seek representation from them. Through investigation, the state’s lab had gotten the evidence to exonerate him in early of June 2010, but he only got word of it in December of the following year. When the representatives of the Virginia state lab was approached about this, they claimed “...they had not been able to locate Barbour to inform him of his innocence. However, his correct address and phone number were publicly listed.”

A 28-year-old woman was attacked while walking home from work in Lowell, Massachusetts on the 16th of November 1983 (“Dennis Maher,” 2016). A man she did not know approached her and tried to engage the woman in conversation prior to forcing her into a yard nearby, where he proceeded to sexually assault her (“Dennis Maher,” 2016). The next evening, a 23-year old woman walking home from work was pushed to the ground by a man yielding a knife less than one hundred yards from the site of the first assault (“Dennis Maher,” 2016). After a fervent struggle, the second victim was able to escape her assailant and notified the police (“Dennis Maher,” 2016). The description given to the police stated that the assailant was a male wearing a red-hooded sweatshirt and a military-style khaki jacket (“Dennis Maher,” 2016).

In addition, the government, police, etc, may be corrupted and the criminal justice may just all turn out to be fraud and no way to gain freedom back. There has been DNA exoneration nationwide. According to the Innocence Project, there have been 317 post-conviction DNA exonerations in United States history. These stories are becoming more familiar as more innocent people gain their freedom through post conviction testing. They are not proof; however, that our system is righting itself. The first DNA exoneration took place in 1989. Exonerations have been won in 38 states; since 2000, there have been 250 exonerations.18 of the 317 people exonerated through DNA served time on death row. Another 16 were charged with capital crimes but not sentenced to death. The average length of time served by exonerees is 13.5 years. The total number of years served is approximately 4,249.The average age of exonerees at the time of their wrongful convictions was 27. Of the 317 exonerees, there were 199 African

He told the jury that Michael killed his wife because she would not have sex with him. Anderson convinced convincingly that Morton was violent and unreasonable. Michael and his trial lawyer suspected already from the beginning that the prosecutor was hiding evidence that would have help establish his innocence. However, they did not have access to the prosecutor’s file and therefore could not proof his innocence until the Innocence Project got access to the file and they also got the permission to do DNA testing on a bloody bandana found near the crime scene. It was Michael’s wife’s blood on the bandana but also the DNA of a known felon named Mark Norwood. His DNA has also been found in the case of another women who was murdered just after Michael’s

A violent rape in a tunnel to a virgin girl in baggy clothes, it is a nightmare, but sadly it did happen to Alice Sebold. She was violently raped and beaten. When she came back to her dorm in her college, it was obvious what had happened and she was suddenly seen as an outsider. People stared at her and she was no longer Alice, instead she was ‘the girl that had been raped.’ Her social life became dismal. She often needed to seek help from her family because of the emotional trauma that she had been put through. She ended up taking the man, Gregory Madison, into court and she won. But the emotional cost on Alice Sebold was heavy. A normal person in her situation would likely be at risk for having PTSD or a stress disorder, but interestingly Alice had very little symptoms of PTSD. She was very resilient and it was because of her willpower that she was able to convict her rapist.

Stephen Avery was convicted of a crime he did not commit. After serving 18 years, he was found innocent and released. The series “Making a Murderer” portrays Avery as a victim but as you will see in my findings, he is not. During his release he decided to sue the county $36 million for the false conviction. While Avery is fighting his case, Teresa Halbach comes up missing and is found brutally murdered. The police charge Avery and his cousin with the murder sentencing them to life in prison. This is the story and facts from the trial showing the problem with police corruption as well as the deviance and trickery of a criminal.

In 2003, the New York County District Attorney’s Office informed Alexenko of the testing of her rape kit in the John Doe Indictment Project. The project was a coordinated citywide initiative to prevent stranger rapists from

In 1987 in Texas, a prosecutor was faced with this dilemma. Michael Morton was convicted of murdering his wife based on circumstantial evidence. Morton’s defense attorney was never told about, or given access to, the police report in which Morton’s three year old son had told police that his daddy had not killed his mommy. After serving 25 years for murdering his wife, Morton was exonerated after attorneys were finally given access to the police report and DNA testing of a bloody bandana found at the scene of the murder matched a man who was serving a sentence for the murder of another woman.