Amanda Truth Project

I had the privilege of meeting Dexter Hammett this week, the lead actor in the film entitled “A Murder in the Park” [1]. The documentary chronicles the true story of Alstory Simon, the man who spent 15 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit after being coerced into giving a false confession to a 1982 double murder.  The lead investigator, hired to investigate the death-row inmate’s claim of innocence, put a gun against Alsto...

(photo source: Corrections: Private Prisons are Back)

Tuesday night, I had the opportunity to meet a senior staff attorney with the ACLU who gave a talk on the many pitfalls and disastrous results since inception of privately operated prisons. Recently it’s beco...

(guest blogger: Jen Coburn of Michigan)

On October 3rd, 2012, a local man rushed his girlfriend’s 8-month-old daughter to the Helen Devos Children’s Hospital after she had suffered from a seizure. The attending physicians found that she had a skull fracture and that her brain was swelling. He spent the next two d...

(guest blogger: Thomas Deitman of Amador Paralegal Services)

Compassion, empathy, sympathy – in most human beings these are ingrained qualities. We have...

(guest blogger: Thomas Deitman of Amador Paralegal Services)

In recent news, Damon Thibodeaux was exonerated after spending 15 years in solitary confinement (23 hours alone in a cell, with 1 hour for rec.). Damon Thibodeaux was the 300th person to be exonerated due to DNA evidence proving he was not the murderer and rapist of his cousin, although he had confessed to police that he was in 1996 after a nine-hour interrogation. According to a police transcript, Thibodeaux said, “I didn’t know that I had done it, but I done it.” Before...

August 2012 continues the trend of a significantly higher rate of dismissed cases in the criminal docket system per day. Does this mean that prosecutors are bringing meritless cases or something else? Unfortunately I don't have information as to whom dismissed these cases. Two cases in this month's range were abated due to the defendant dying and one of the cases that went to trial actually garnered a not guilty verdict from the jury. If you've been following my blog you can see how your c...

In 2010, I wrote a blog to showcase a very real problem with the court system. The dockets keep flooding the courts in Cuyahoga County and there is simply no possible way for a judge to give a trial to every case that comes cross his/her docket each day. In Cuyahoga County, the judges hear civil and criminal dockets on any given day so that creates a greater chanc...

“The right of a family to remain intact is constitutionally protected.” [1]

A mother, S., gave birth to twins in October 2006, one male and one female. The male, Baby L., died suddenly two months later. Findings at autopsy revealed a skull fracture which was already in the process of healing (suggesting that is an older injury) and a brain injury. It was also discovered that the infant had liver disease and a...

An appeal made the headlines yesterday and given its deeply emotional roots in Cleveland as well as the twist (the man is requesting to withdraw his guilty plea), I felt it needed spotlighted. In 2002, a priest was shot. Father William Gulas was shot and after his murder, his office was set afire [1]. Dan Montgomery was taken in for questioning and after seven hours of interrogation ended up confessing to the police to the murder and subsequent arson. On October 3, 2003, Montgomery took a gu...

While some may find it difficult to believe that innocent people can be convicted when they’re “nobodies” like my husband and me, maybe it’ll be easier to fathom two judges taken into custody and indicted on corruption charges instead. The problems with the justice system are vast and wide-spread. Education is the first step to fixing it.

Judges Bridget McCafferty and Steven Terry plead not guilty to their charges, which – combined - in...

Late last week, yet another man was freed in Cuyahoga County based on exculpatory evidence being withheld from his defense lawyers at trial. Joe D’Ambrosio has spent over 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. There was evidence that the murder charges (carrying the death penalty) belonged to someone else. Apparently, the prosecutor handling his 1989 case knew this. D’Ambrosio took his case to the federal level to find respite and in 200...