Innocence

A nation weeps. At 9:30 a.m., a man in his 20s walks into an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., where his mother taught and proceeds to shoot and kill the equivalent of a filled classroom of people, most of them young children. It is the most senseless, most heinous, most hellish act imaginable. In our offices, our homes or wherever there is a TV set turned to a news outlet, we watch this crime scene and hear the speculation, the shock and horror and finally the gruesome details.

In two courts, half a country apart, judges last month grappled with the reliability of testimony and forensic hair evidence analysis that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents provided in criminal trials decades ago. John Norman Huffington, imprisoned nearly 32 years in Maryland, had his conviction overturned by a judge after DNA testing revealed that the hair that was presented as key evidence against Mr. Huffington did not belong to him. Willie Jerome...

What follows is a personal statement from David Simon, Creator and Executive Producer of "The Wire" (and currently in production on "Treme"). First of all, Felicia's entitled to the presumption of innocence. And I would note that a previous, but recent drug arrest that targeted her was later found to be unwarranted and the charges were dropped. Nonetheless, I'm certainly sad at the news today. This young lady has, from her earliest moments, had one of the hardest lives imaginable.

An uncle of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings said his nephews had brought shame to his family and ethnicity, while their father insisted they were innocent and had been framed. The uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said Friday from his front lawn in Montgomery Village that he had been following news reports and never could have imagined his brother's children were involved in the attack. He and another brother living in the middle-class Washington suburb said they have been estranged from the suspects' family.

U.S. Attorney Rosenstein's comments ("Feds don't confiscate property from the innocent" Feb. 27) highlight the problem with civil forfeiture: it turns the presumption of innocence upside down. If police seize your property under civil forfeiture, you must prove yourself innocent to get it returned, often waiting years before your day in court. Contrary to a criminal case, which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, to take your property under civil forfeiture prosecutors need only prove that it is more likely than not that your property is linked to a crime.

Death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis won a temporary reprieve from the Georgia parole board this month as a succession of witnesses who fingered him as a cop killer admitted that they had the wrong man. Their recantations weren't new; they'd been telling courts and others that they were mistaken in their identification of Mr. Davis for some time now and yet it didn't seem to make a difference until Mr. Davis was within 24 hours of execution. How is that possible in American jurisprudence?

Last year when CNN was talking about hiring Eliot Spitzer and Piers Morgan, I expressed my dismay at the way in which both could harm the credibility that the channel had steadfastly built through its journalism. Spitzer did prove to be an embarrassment when CNN tried to cover political sex scandals tbis year, and he is now gone for a variety of reasons, thank goodness. And now, just as I was becoming reconciled to accepting Morgan as the price I had to pay for all the sound journalism and analysis otherwise on CNN, comes Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal with its revelations of despicable phone hacking -- a scandal that threatens to shine a very bright light on Morgan's career as a UK tabloid editor.

Convicted murderer Roger K. Coleman went to his execution in 1992 protesting his innocence in a Virginia case that became a cause for death penalty opponents. But DNA technology unavailable at the time has proved otherwise: Mr. Coleman's guilt in the murder-rape of his sister-in-law was confirmed last week by a DNA test, the first ever held post-execution. Virginia Gov. Mark Warner was right to order the test: The technology offers a certainty as to guilt or innocence in crimes of murder and rape that other kinds of evidence can't match.

James Owens Jr. believed he would die in prison. Sentenced to life without parole for a rape-murder, he saw no other future - until last week, when a DNA test cast serious doubt on his conviction in the 1987 slaying of a young Southeast Baltimore woman. The testing, opposed by prosecutors and delayed by a judge, supports claims of innocence by Mr. Owens and his co-defendant, James Thompson Jr., who is serving a life sentence. It reaffirms the potential of this technology to identify innocence - and guilt - and underscores why requests for post-conviction DNA testing should be handled swiftly and judiciously.

I WAS on a bicycle errand the other day, pumping hard for the hardware store, when a guy on a bike faster than mine shot past me, then slowed and threw these questions back without turning his head: "Everything's different now, isn't that right, pal? Isn't everything going to be different?" "Yes," I said, without thinking. "It is." He then went to warp speed and virtually disappeared before my eyes, at which point I shouted, confusedly, into the wind, "No. It's not. I don't think things are going to be different."

U.S. Attorney Rosenstein's comments ("Feds don't confiscate property from the innocent" Feb. 27) highlight the problem with civil forfeiture: it turns the presumption of innocence upside down. If police seize your property under civil forfeiture, you must prove yourself innocent to get it returned, often waiting years before your day in court. Contrary to a criminal case, which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, to take your property under civil forfeiture prosecutors need only prove that it is more likely than not that your property is linked to a crime.

If the woman described in your asset forfeiture article did not know about the illegal drug business in her basement, prosecutors could not forfeit her house ("Seizing assets to take profits from crime," Feb. 17). The law is clear: "An innocent owner's interest in property shall not be forfeited under any civil forfeiture statute. " Federal courts supervise asset forfeiture cases. If someone makes an innocent owner claim, the court will evaluate the evidence to determine whether she knew about the criminal activity on her property and whether she tried to stop it. A property owner can tell her side of the story in a written affidavit or an oral deposition.

Gay Lynn Diffenderffer had no idea that her husband was growing marijuana at their Baltimore County home, her attorney says, until state police investigating his mysterious disappearance discovered about 100 plants in a locked basement. Two weeks later, investigators found Michael Diffenderffer, 52, dead in his car - an apparent suicide that meant he would never face the drug charges brought against him when the marijuana was found. But that didn't close the book on his 2011 case.

President Barack Obama, the Rev. M. Cristina Paglinauan and columnist Dan Rodricks all have expressed sorrow and outrage over the slaughter of innocent children in Newtown, Conn. ("Stand vigil for gun victims and new laws," Dec. 23). Yet their vocal concern is in stark contrast to their silence over all the children who have been murdered in Mr. Obama's drone attacks. What applies to children murdered by a mentally ill gunman should also apply to those murdered by drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The pundits are again grasping for reasons behind the recent mass shooting in Connecticut ("Battle lines form in gun debate," Dec. 19). On reflection, however, the answer is quite clear: Though as a society we cherish each member of our community, we are woefully detached from the massacres that exist in our midst every day. Where is this peril? Simply put, in a mother's womb. The place where a human life stands the least chance of survival is, in fact, the very place where it should be most protected.

A nation weeps. At 9:30 a.m., a man in his 20s walks into an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., where his mother taught and proceeds to shoot and kill the equivalent of a filled classroom of people, most of them young children. It is the most senseless, most heinous, most hellish act imaginable. In our offices, our homes or wherever there is a TV set turned to a news outlet, we watch this crime scene and hear the speculation, the shock and horror and finally the gruesome details.

WAR. The word sounds strange, almost foreign. Until now, I had discussed it only in the past tense, usually in a history class of some sort. Suddenly, it becomes a word very much of the present. For most college students, myself included, it is a word that is hitting home fairly hard.College, I have found, is a strange place, a strange existence. As students, we spend our time preparing to enter the "real world," that surreal place somewhere out there, shielded from us by a cloud of make-believe and fairy tales.

The Obama administration's omnibus answer to why the Middle East (and now much of the Muslim world) is in near open rebellion against the United States: The video did it. The follow-up question no one seems to be asking is: "What if the administration's explanation is true?" White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insists the attacks in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere were a "response not to United States policy, and not to, obviously, the administration, not to the American people," but were rather a spontaneous "response to a video, a film we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.

It may be a desire for immortality that pushes some athletes to seek to transcend the limitations of mere mortal bodies through the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Certainly Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner and Olympic champion, seemed well on his way to achieving that status in sports legend. But it all came crashing down on Friday, when he announced he would no longer contest charges by the United States Anti-Doping Agency that his victories were tainted by illegal doping.