Thursday, March 28, 2024

Russell Maze: Tennessee: Shaken baby syndrome: Major (Welcome) Development: His murder conviction based on a questionable diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, Russell Maze appeared in a Nashville court on Tuesday and Wednesday in hopes of having his conviction overturned - an effort spurred by the conclusion of the district attorney’s office that he is innocent, The Nashville Tennessean (Justice Reporter Evan Mealin's) reports…"Throughout Tuesday and until 11:30 Wednesday, Maze’s lawyers and assistant district attorneys questioned medical professionals from across the country who had reviewed evidence and Alex Maze’s medical records. They each testified that Alex’s diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome was highly unlikely if not flat out wrong. For Maze’s conviction to be thrown out, lawyers need to convince the judge in the case, Judge Steve Dozier: the same man who oversaw Maze’s criminal trial 20 years ago. Kaye Maze, Russell Maze's wife, who pleaded guilty to reckless aggravated assault in hopes of regaining custody of Alex and served a two-year sentence, said Wednesday that the hearing felt "surreal" because the process leading to it had been so long. If his conviction is overturned, "it would be the end of a nightmare," she said. "We'll be able to start grieving." The district attorney's office is also asking that Kaye Maze's conviction be overturned."


PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "What the doctors who testified said was that the evidence did not support Alex’s diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome but more likely indicated a stroke. Other details they testified to included that there was not the typical evidence of shaken baby syndrome on Alex’s body like his neck or ribs. Blood clots in the brain worsened days after Alex was admitted, which indicates they were caused by a buildup of blood from blockage, not trauma. Additionally, Alex’s complex history of life-threatening medical issues was largely ignored, evidence shows. Alex was born six weeks early to a mother with several health issues, which already placed him at higher risk of medical problems. Michael Laposata, chair of the department of pathology at University of Texas in Galveston and an expert in blood diseases, testified that many blood diseases can “masquerade” as child abuse. Laposata said he is “firmly convinced” that Alex’s death was not caused by abuse."


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STORY: "Court considers overturning 2004 conviction based on questionable shaken baby diagnosis," by Justice Reporter Evan Mealins, published by The Nashville Tennessean, on March 28,  2024.

GIST: "A man whose murder conviction was based on a questionable diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome appeared in Nashville court on Tuesday and Wednesday in hopes of having his conviction overturned, an effort spurred by the conclusion of the district attorney’s office that he is innocent.

Russell Maze, convicted of murder in 2004 for the death of his infant son four years before, and the Davidson County District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit have asked the court to throw out his conviction.

Throughout Tuesday and until 11:30 Wednesday, Maze’s lawyers and assistant district attorneys questioned medical professionals from across the country who had reviewed evidence and Alex Maze’s medical records. They each testified that Alex’s diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome was highly unlikely if not flat out wrong.

For Maze’s conviction to be thrown out, lawyers need to convince the judge in the case, Judge Steve Dozier: the same man who oversaw Maze’s criminal trial 20 years ago.

Kaye Maze, Russell Maze's wife, who pleaded guilty to reckless aggravated assault in hopes of regaining custody of Alex and served a two-year sentence, said Wednesday that the hearing felt "surreal" because the process leading to it had been so long.

If his conviction is overturned, "it would be the end of a nightmare," she said. "We'll be able to start grieving."

The district attorney's office is also asking that Kaye Maze's conviction be overturned.

The afternoon of May 3, 1999, Maze’s five-week-old son Alex stopped breathing while Russell was home alone with him. First responders were able to revive him, and he was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The first possible diagnoses were for sepsis, abdominal trauma or head trauma.

After reviewing CT scans, an ophthalmology report, a visual examination of Alex, and Maze and his wife’s accounts of what happened, Dr. Suzanne Starling of the child abuse referral and examination team concluded that Alex was a victim of abusive head trauma. A skeletal survey, an EEG and several blood tests that had been ordered had yet to be completed.

“The symptoms are classic shaken baby syndrome,” Starling told detectives at the hospital that day, according to a report from the conviction review unit. Former Detective Kristen Vanderkooi, who participated in the interrogation of Russell and Kaye Maze, said Wednesday that Starling did not express any doubt as to her diagnosis.

Police questioned Russell and Kaye Maze at the hospital at length. Russell Maze repeatedly denied hurting or shaking Alex. But Det. Ron Carter continued to press him, and eventually, Russell Maze said he “guessed” Alex may have been shaken as he picked him up to try to revive him — after he had already stopped breathing.

After Alex’s discharge later that month, the Mazes lost custody, and he was taken to a foster home.

Alex was taken to a hospital on Oct. 19, 2000, and he died six days later. Doctors attributed his ongoing health issues and death to shaken baby syndrome.

Russell Maze was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2004.

What the doctors who testified said was that the evidence did not support Alex’s diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome but more likely indicated a stroke. Other details they testified to included that there was not the typical evidence of shaken baby syndrome on Alex’s body like his neck or ribs. Blood clots in the brain worsened days after Alex was admitted, which indicates they were caused by a buildup of blood from blockage, not trauma.

Additionally, Alex’s complex history of life-threatening medical issues was largely ignored, evidence shows. Alex was born six weeks early to a mother with several health issues, which already placed him at higher risk of medical problems.

Michael Laposata, chair of the department of pathology at University of Texas in Galveston and an expert in blood diseases, testified that many blood diseases can “masquerade” as child abuse.

Laposata said he is “firmly convinced” that Alex’s death was not caused by abuse.

Russell Maze is represented by the Tennessee Innocence Project. Kaye Maze is represented by attorneys Daniel Horwitz and Melissa Dix. Sunny Eaton, director of the Conviction Review Unit, and Anna Hamilton represented the district attorney's office."

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/davidson/2024/03/26/nashville-shaken-baby-murder-conviction-russell-maze/73110247007/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;


SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


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FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;


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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:


David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.


https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801

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MORE VALUABLE WORDS: "As a former public defender, Texas' refusal to delay Ivan Cantu's execution to evaluate new evidence is deeply worrying for the state of our legal system. There should be no room for doubt in a death penalty case. The facts surrounding Cantu's execution should haunt all of us."

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett; X March 1, 2024.

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The Maya Kowalski case: Child Abuse Pediatricians (CAP's): Ethics intern Holly Kerr issues a blunt warning, in a commentary headed, "Guilty Until Proven Innocent: The Misdiagnosis of Child Abuse in Health Care': "The job of a CAP is necessary for recognizing abuse in children. However, their unchecked power has resulted in a vast amount of trauma and pain to families affected by misdiagnosis, violating the physician’s oath to nonmaleficence…"The biggest issue with the diagnosis of child abuse in health care is that CAPs have immense power that goes relatively unchecked. Their decisions are often taken as fact, even if they are unsupported by other specialists’ opinions, and there is little secondary testing done to check these claims. This is problematic because CAPs are not infallible and can be guided by an entirely subjective “gut feeling.” They are also not experts in many of the rare conditions that can present similarly to abuse. In Maya Kowalski’s case, further testing done by a specialist from Brown University proved that her condition was real, but this testing was not allowed by the court until after Maya’s mother had passed and the family had experienced undue suffering."


PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Health care providers are ethically required to provide care that abides by the principles of nonmaleficence and justice. In the case of child abuse investigations, they are currently failing this ethical requirement and must correct their practice as soon as possible. By implementing the changes outlined in this blog and continuing to improve the child abuse investigation system over time, we can drastically reduce cases like Maya Kowalski’s before more innocent lives are irreparably damaged."

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"COMMENTARY: "Guilty Until Proven Innocent: The Misdiagnosis of Child Abuse in Health Care," by Holy Kerr, published by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, on March 27, 2024. 'The mission of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics is to engage individuals and organizations in making choices that ​respect and care for others.' (Haley Kerr ’24 is a neuroscience major with a biology minor and a 2023-24 health care ethics intern with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Views are her own.) 

GIST: "The alarming possibility of unrecognized child abuse has led the United States to overcompensate and create a new alarming possibility: the misdiagnosis of child abuse. In 2009, in response to a growing recognition of hidden child abuse and neglect, the American Board of Pediatrics recognized Child Abuse Pediatrics as a distinct pediatric subspecialty. These pediatricians would practice a combination of medicine and forensics to diagnose a child’s condition and its cause through the analysis of medical imaging. According to the journal Pediatrics, as of June 2023, there were 425 certified Child Abuse Pediatricians (CAPs) in the United States. The job of a CAP is necessary for recognizing abuse in children. However, their unchecked power has resulted in a vast amount of trauma and pain to families affected by misdiagnosis, violating the physician’s oath to nonmaleficence.

The Case of Maya Kowalski

The danger of the misdiagnosis of child abuse became a hot topic of discussion at the end of 2023, when Netflix released a documentary about the unfinished case of Maya Kowalski. Maya Kowalski was 10 years old when she was admitted to the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital with excruciating abdominal pain in 2016. Her parents explained to the hospital that Maya suffered from a neurological disorder called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). They insisted that the only way to help Maya tolerate the pain was administering an infusion of Ketamine. Although Ketamine is FDA approved for use as an anesthetic, it is more commonly known as a drug of abuse that has hallucinogenic properties. Since Ketamine overuse can cause a number of health problems, a nurse became concerned by the request and brought in Dr. Sally Smith, a CAP, to investigate the case. Despite an original case being dismissed due to a lack of evidence, Smith filed another report, claiming that Maya’s mother had Munchausen syndrome by proxy. This mental illness is characterized by the caretaker of a child falsifying symptoms or purposefully creating symptoms to make it appear that their child is sick. In Maya’s case, because the health care providers could not find an explanation for her pain, they assumed that Maya’s mother was making it up. The state took custody of Maya, holding her in the hospital and removing her parents’ ability to contact her. When the pain of not being able to speak to her daughter became too much, Maya’s mother took her own life.

What was not detailed in this case, was that Maya’s regular Ketamine infusions were under the direction of an anesthesiologist who studied CRPS. These treatments resulted in “huge progress” according to Maya’s father. To the Kowalskis, these infusions were not nearly as scary as watching their daughter suffer from pain that no other doctor had a cure for. Maya’s mother had also been evaluated by a licensed psychologist who found no evidence of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Finally, in January 2017, Maya was taken to be evaluated by a professor who studied CRPS at Brown University. The professor agreed that she had CRPS and that the diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy was incorrect. Maya was returned to her father’s custody, but the trauma and devastation had already occurred and will be carried with them for the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately, Maya’s case is not uncommon. A yearlong investigation in 2018, performed by the Houston Chronicle and NBC News, found that “there were 3.5 million reports of suspected child abuse in America, and only 680,000 accounts were verified by authorities.” This huge disparity suggests that within child abuse cases, misdiagnosis may actually be quite common. 

Risk Factors Affecting the Misdiagnosis of Child Abuse

The biggest issue with the diagnosis of child abuse in health care is that CAPs have immense power that goes relatively unchecked. Their decisions are often taken as fact, even if they are unsupported by other specialists’ opinions, and there is little secondary testing done to check these claims. This is problematic because CAPs are not infallible and can be guided by an entirely subjective “gut feeling.” They are also not experts in many of the rare conditions that can present similarly to abuse. In Maya Kowalski’s case, further testing done by a specialist from Brown University proved that her condition was real, but this testing was not allowed by the court until after Maya’s mother had passed and the family had experienced undue suffering.

Another major issue is that child abuse diagnoses disproportionately affect socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Although there is no racial or ethnic difference in the frequency of children being confirmed as abuse victims, those who come from a minority background are more likely to be reported. Specifically, research has shown that, “a child’s injuries are as much as nine times more likely to be reported as resulting from abuse when the child is black rather than white.” This is a gross violation of justice, because minority families are disproportionately involved in the child welfare system and physicians are potentially missing actual cases of abuse because a child is white.

Preventing the Misdiagnosis of Child Abuse

In order to reduce the number of misdiagnoses of child abuse, the examination process for each diagnosis must be entirely restructured. Each diagnosis should be reviewed by a multidisciplinary team that includes, but is not limited to:

  1. Pediatric subspecialists specializing in medical conditions that present similarly to child abuse
  2. Clinical psychologists to examine the patient and family
  3. CAPs who have the sole job of examining the injuries/symptoms and family explanations, and can therefore devote more time to the investigation

These teams should consider questions of the following nature during their investigations:

  • Why do I suspect child abuse?
  • Is there objective evidence of child abuse?
  • Is a dissimilarity between the family’s appearance or values and mine affecting my thinking?

By having a diverse team examine each case, implicit biases are less likely to disproportionately influence the outcome. By implementing this system where each individual’s power is checked by the diversity of the group as a whole, misdiagnoses can be prevented from the outset of each investigation.

Additionally, these multidisciplinary teams need to have knowledge about prior cases they have worked on and be debriefed on any mistaken diagnoses. In doing so, if a case was misdiagnosed, the teams can learn from their mistakes and be reminded of the weight of the decisions they are making.

Finally, the main goal of these multidisciplinary teams should shift from diagnosing child abuse as soon as there is a sign, to ruling out other possibilities before making their final decision. Implementing these measures will not only prevent unjust trauma, but will also allow the multidisciplinary teams and other affected parties to improve the quality of their care in cases where child abuse is objectively apparent.

Moving Forward

As detailed by Maya Kowalski’s case, a misdiagnosis of child abuse has the potential to wreak havoc on individuals and their families. Innocent parents fighting against child abuse claims may be ostracized or wrongfully placed in prison, as well as lose massive amounts of money trying to fight in court. Not only can these all-too-real possibilities severely traumatize the child and their family, but they can also deter them from ever seeking out medical attention again.

Health care providers are ethically required to provide care that abides by the principles of nonmaleficence and justice. In the case of child abuse investigations, they are currently failing this ethical requirement and must correct their practice as soon as possible. By implementing the changes outlined in this blog and continuing to improve the child abuse investigation system over time, we can drastically reduce cases like Maya Kowalski’s before more innocent lives are irreparably damaged."

The entire commentary can be read at:

guilty-until-proven-innocent-the-misdiagnosis-of-child-abuse-in-healthcare

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;


SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


---------------------------------------------------------------


FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;


—————————————————————————————————

FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

---------------------------------------------------------

YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:


David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.


https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801

————————————————————————————————


MORE VALUABLE WORDS: "As a former public defender, Texas' refusal to delay Ivan Cantu's execution to evaluate new evidence is deeply worrying for the state of our legal system. There should be no room for doubt in a death penalty case. The facts surrounding Cantu's execution should haunt all of us."

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett; X March 1, 2024.

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Non-crime crimes. (U.S. Army): 'Stars and Stripes' (Reporter Rose Thayer) reveals a dangerous strain of 'non-crimes' involving U.S. army veterans who have had to fight to clear their names for military crimes they did not commit."… "Brown is one of thousands of service members who have been investigated by military law enforcement agencies, never charged or convicted of a crime, and yet, their criminal records show otherwise, according to attorneys who work with military clients. The root of the issue is a Defense Department policy ordering its law enforcement agencies to put a suspect’s name into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database once agents have “credible information” that a crime occurred. It’s known as titling and indexing. Credible information could be as simple as someone coming in and making a report. It typically precedes any evidence gathering or real investigative work, said Christopher Nuneviller, a former Army attorney who continues to work on military cases. Civilian law enforcement agencies do not enter people into the national database until there is an arrest warrant or indictment, he said. He published a paper to his law firm’s website last month on the military’s expansive use of criminal titling."


PUBLISHER'S NOTE: "The idea of innocent people being charged, tried and convicted for crimes that never happened in the first place has intrigued me for years. Flawed pathologist Charles Smith turned natural, non-criminal deaths of children from  falls and an array of illnesses into murders, with horrific consequences to the parents and caregivers involved, and their families.  Indeed, I was planning to call the not-yet-published book on Smith that I had planned to write at the time 'Manufacturing Murder.' The murder was in Smith's twisted mind. It never happened.  Over the years, the number of non-crimes that have crept into the U.S. criminal justice system  has multiplied to the extent that they became the subject of a book by Prof. Jessica Henry, aptly  called 'Smoke but no fire." Prof. Henry caught my attention with her assertion that, "The popular image of a wrongful conviction is that of an innocent person wrongly convicted of a crime committed by someone else. But what if I told you that over one-third of all people who have been exonerated were wrongly convicted of crimes that never happened in the first place." (Link below): I was fascinated to recently learn about a dangerous strain of non-crimes - this one (the subject of his post) involving U.S. army veterans who have had to fight to clear their names for military crimes they did not commit."

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f42eXvvxK9ghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f42eXvvxK9g

Harold Levy: Published: The Charles Smith Blog.

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Liz Ullman, a 71-year-old Colorado retiree, has become a collector of stories from soldiers who have received criminal records during Army service for crimes they did not commit. (Provided by Liz Ullman) Ullman operates a website, Defend Our Protectors, where she provides information on titling and advocates for a change to the DOD policy. “There are so many people who can’t help themselves because to have been investigated for a crime is damaging,” she said.

 “And these are people who have sworn on their lives to defend the United States. Then the government turns against them. So you add betrayal on top of humiliation, and you’ve destroyed someone’s entire moral being.” 

Army recruiting investigation Ullman began tracking the issue when a friend’s son got caught up in an Army recruiting investigation that pinned criminal records on hundreds of soldiers without their knowledge."

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STORY: "Proving your innocence’: Veterans fight to clear their names for military crimes they did not commit, by Rose Thayer, published  by Stars and Stripes, on March 4, 2024. "Rose L. Thayer is based in Austin, Texas, and she has been covering the western region of the continental U.S. for Stars and Stripes since 2018. Before that she was a reporter for Killeen Daily Herald and a freelance journalist for publications including The Alcalde, Texas Highways and the Austin American-Statesman. She is the spouse of an Army veteran and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism. Her awards include a 2021 Society of Professional Journalists Washington Dateline Award and an Honorable Mention from the Military Reporters and Editors Association for her coverage of crime at Fort Hood." 

GIST: "Retired Sgt. Major Eriq Brown first learned of his criminal record in 2021 during a screening for veteran disability benefits as part of his retirement from the Army. 

He met with a civilian psychologist in South Korea as part of a post-traumatic stress disorder screening.

 The psychologist asked him whether his pending criminal charge was causing him emotional distress. 

Brown, who spent 28 years doing human resources work in the Army, said he looked at the doctor perplexed.

 Two years prior, a fellow soldier in Korea accused him of assault. 

She told military police that Brown in a period of three months had hit her on the back of the neck, bumped her in an on-post store at Camp Humphreys and then grabbed her arm after an event. 

No charges came of the accusations, according to Brown’s service record and documentation that he would later present to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

 An officer in Brown’s chain of command with 8th Army conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence it happened — even discovering Brown wasn’t on post the day that he supposedly bumped the woman at a store, according to correction board documents.

 He was never arrested or detained or read his rights.

 There was no court-martial or nonjudicial punishment.

 Instead, Brown received a reprimand in his personnel file for unprofessional behavior.

 The letter scolded Brown for touching the woman’s neck and then reaching for her arm after she had told him that she did not want to be touched. 

Retired Sgt. Maj. Eriq Brown, 47, was investigated for assault while in the Army, but never arrested or charged with a crime. However, his criminal record shows he was arrested and is awaiting a final outcome for an assault charge and the Army has refused to remove the information.

 (Provided by Eriq Brown ) “You have exhibited poor judgment,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Donahoe wrote in the reprimand dated Aug. 21, 2019. 

Nowhere in the letter does he write Brown was arrested or committed a crime.

 Sitting in that doctor’s office, Brown realized none of this was behind him. The ordeal had left him with a criminal arrest listed on his background check with no resolution — as if he is still waiting to face judgment for a misdemeanor assault charge. 

“Think about the embarrassment of that,” said Brown, now 47. “I definitely wouldn’t let my children go in the military after this.”

 Brown is one of thousands of service members who have been investigated by military law enforcement agencies, never charged or convicted of a crime, and yet, their criminal records show otherwise, according to attorneys who work with military clients.

 The root of the issue is a Defense Department policy ordering its law enforcement agencies to put a suspect’s name into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database once agents have “credible information” that a crime occurred.

 It’s known as titling and indexing. Credible information could be as simple as someone coming in and making a report. 

It typically precedes any evidence gathering or real investigative work, said Christopher Nuneviller, a former Army attorney who continues to work on military cases. Civilian law enforcement agencies do not enter people into the national database until there is an arrest warrant or indictment, he said. 

He published a paper to his law firm’s website last month on the military’s expansive use of criminal titling. 

He recommended the military adopt civilian law enforcement standards. “The DOD transfer of the titling data to [the national database] before the investigation begins is a pervasive, arbitrary and capricious administrative function that serves no legitimate government purpose but to bureaucratically punish individuals,” Nuneviller wrote.

 The Defense Department has the power to clear these people’s records, but “they don’t do it and they won’t do it,” he wrote. “The Department of Defense should be held accountable for this improper and likely illegal expansive use of titling.” 

Sue Gough, spokeswoman for the Defense Department, said the titling policy into the military’s internal Defense Central Index of Investigations ensures a record is available for law enforcement, security purposes, background investigations and clearance adjudications.

 She echoed a sentiment included in the policy that the practice should only confirm a person’s role in an investigation and does not constitute a conviction or imply any guilt.

 A question about why it is necessary to report to the FBI’s database so early in an investigation went unanswered. 

Lifelong impacts For those who do seek expungement of their record, they are more than likely going to be denied, according to data from the military services. 

Less than 9% of service members and veterans who made requests to the Army and Air Force since 2021 — when a law passed to ease the process — were successful. 

The Navy did not provide complete data on expungement requests and the Marine Corps did not provide any data. In practice, the policy could mean honorably discharged veterans are failing criminal background checks because of false reports, Nuneviller said.

 The Defense Department put the policy in place in the early 1990s, despite concerns from the Army and the House Armed Services Committee, Nuneviller wrote. 

He estimated as many as 1 million service members and veterans could be caught in this system based on his estimates of the number of investigations each service has conducted annually since then. 

The Army Criminal Investigation Division said it conducts roughly 10,000 investigations each year, while the Air Force Office of Special Investigations said it does about 22,600 each year. 

Naval Criminal Investigative Service did not respond to the question. Doug O’Connell, an attorney and retired Army colonel, finds the entire titling process “baffling.” 

He wrote last year in a lawsuit on criminal titling that the services do this as an overcorrection to the 2007 mass shooting carried out by an Air Force veteran in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The veteran had a domestic violence conviction from his time in the service but was never entered into the FBI database. 

This allowed him to purchase a firearm. O’Connell said he gets calls at his law firm about titling expungement every day primarily from soldiers or Army veterans. “Army leaders are taking the position that they can create false government records with impunity. This is especially troubling when you consider that they’re branding soldiers and veterans as criminals while granting them an honorable discharge,” he said. 

“If the flawed logic and false records weren’t bad enough, it gets worse when you consider the impact on recruiting. What parent in their right mind would encourage their child to join the military knowing that their loved one may end up falsely branded as criminal for the rest of their life.”

 Failing background checks has caused veterans and troops to miss out on job opportunities, lose security clearances every time they move between units, get rejected from renting a home or securing a concealed carry handgun license, and leaves them unable to volunteer at their kids’ schools or contribute to their communities, said Liz Ullman, a 71-year-old Colorado retiree who has become an informal collector of soldiers’ stories on the subject. 

Liz Ullman, a 71-year-old Colorado retiree, has become a collector of stories from soldiers who have received criminal records during Army service for crimes they did not commit. (Provided by Liz Ullman) Ullman operates a website, Defend Our Protectors, where she provides information on titling and advocates for a change to the DOD policy. “There are so many people who can’t help themselves because to have been investigated for a crime is damaging,” she said.

 “And these are people who have sworn on their lives to defend the United States. Then the government turns against them. So you add betrayal on top of humiliation, and you’ve destroyed someone’s entire moral being.” 

Army recruiting investigation Ullman began tracking the issue when a friend’s son got caught up in an Army recruiting investigation that pinned criminal records on hundreds of soldiers without their knowledge.

 The National Guard Recruiting Assistance Program, known as G-RAP, brought thousands into the military during its seven-year run. It paid bonuses to soldiers who participated and brought recruits into the Army. However, some soldiers wrongly received bonus payments, which ended the program and triggered a fraud investigation.

 From 2012 to 2016, the Army CID put a team of Reserve agents on active duty to investigate fraudulent payments made to troops as part of the recruiting program. 

In the process, investigators titled and indexed 2,253 soldiers, according to a mandated report CID presented to Congress in April 2023. However, only 137 people were ever prosecuted in civilian courts, according to the Army. The internal audit of the investigation found 1,454 names were incorrectly logged with the FBI’s criminal database.

 Of all the names given to the FBI, only 7% were correct, the report said. “The purpose of titling is to ensure the accuracy and efficiency of the report and to ensure it is retrievable for future law enforcement or security purposes,” according to the Army’s CID. “Titling does not indicate any degree of guilt or innocence and [DOD policy] specifically precludes the use of titling as a basis for judicial or adverse administrative actions.” 

However, Ullman said some of those titled have faced adverse administrative actions. “In some cases … I think I was the only person in their life who believed that they were innocent,” she said. 

One soldier falsely caught in the recruiting investigation told Ullman that he was barred from reenlistment because of the false record. He also told her that his wife left him and took their children and he couldn’t get a civilian job. By the time he received a letter that the Army made a mistake and his record was clear, he was living in his car. “Now what?” 

Ullman recalled him asking her. Lee Hughes was falsely entered into the crime database as part of the recruiting investigation and didn’t even know he was under investigation until his promotion to captain in the Vermont National Guard was stripped from him in 2015.

 He only learned why he lost his promotion because someone in his unit pulled him aside to tell him. Retired Lt. Lee Hughes, seen on a 2010 deployment to Afghanistan with the Vermont National Guard, was given a false criminal arrest record by the Army that stopped his promotion to captain. 

The record was corrected but the Army has denied his request to return his promotion. (Provided by Lee Hughes) “It’s a complete circumvention of the American system of justice.

There’s no due process anywhere in this,” Hughes said. “People shouldn’t have the onus put on them to figure out if they were charged with something or were wronged somehow. And if you can figure it out, then they’ll allow you to take part in the expungement process. That’s not the way we do things here.” 

Hughes ultimately had his record cleared and works for the federal government in security, but he never got back the promotion. He retired with 20 years of service in 2019 as a lieutenant and his appeal to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records to regain his promotion failed — costing him thousands in retirement pay. 

“What they’re not being held accountable for is the damage done to people’s careers,” he said. Pentagon slow to respond The Army recruiting investigation also led Congress to mandate in 2021 that the military pave an easier path for those looking to remove false arrest records. 

Before the law changed, people had to prove the titling was a case of mistaken identity. Now, the law affords expungement for those never charged or convicted, but the onus is on the person to present new evidence to prove their innocence. “The process went from impossible to nearly impossible,” Ullman said. “It really is a matter of proving your innocence.”

 Congress required the Pentagon update its expungement policy by Oct. 1, 2021. It did so in August 2023. Defense officials declined to comment on the nearly two-year delay. Since Congress acted in 2021, the Army has seen 1,570 people request expungement with 189 succeeding, according to the service.

 Naval Criminal Investigative Service said it received 28 requests in 2021 from sailors and Marines. Of those, 11 were approved. It did not provide data for other years and officials said the Navy might receive expungement requests through avenues outside of law enforcement. 

The Marine Corps uses a decentralized system where service members can request expungements through the installation where the charge originated.

 Brown hired an attorney to write his expungement request, which was denied in July 2023. The records correction board cited the Defense Department’s old policy — a month before the Pentagon made the update. 

The Army declined to answer whether there is a path for Brown and others in his position to request a review under the new policy. 

The Air Force created a Criminal Justice Information Center in October to incorporate the new guidance and revisited all appeals filed after Oct. 1, 2021, to ensure airmen eligible under the new law receive due process. Of the 1,114 expungement requests received since then, the Air Force cleared 67 records, the service said. 

The Air Force also increased oversight of criminal titling and indexing and made titling and indexing specialists available for installations and at the OSI headquarters, said Linda Card, spokeswoman for the service’s Office of Special Investigations. 

“The Department of the Air Force is currently evaluating additional measures to improve indexing within the constructs of relevant law, DOD policy, and reporting requirements set by the U.S. Attorney General,” she said. 

Taking the Army to court Citing the new law, O’Connell attempted to clear the record of Denise Rosales, a noncommissioned officer in the Texas National Guard.

 Officials admitted in an email that she was never arrested but refused to remove information from the national database.

 Military police, not the Army CID, investigated Rosales during a 2020-2021 deployment to Kuwait for having alcohol at a birthday party for her husband. 

She was never arrested or charged. 

She only received an administrative reprimand. 

And yet, the Army CID entered Rosales into the national crime database as arrested.

 She spent the 12 years before her false arrest record working mainly as an analyst for civilian law enforcement. Because of the record, she said she lost a job with the Drug Enforcement Agency. It has also blocked her from returning to active duty with the Guard. 

After nearly two years of fighting, Rosales filed a federal lawsuit in April against the Army, the Army CID and the FBI, according to court documents. In a motion calling for the lawsuit’s dismissal, Army lawyers argued they followed procedure when they submitted Rosales’ information to the FBI national database, and they also agreed she was not arrested or prosecuted.

 The Army further argued the service is not the agency sharing the arrest history and violating her privacy, it is the FBI. 

‘I can’t reach my potential’ O’Connell said it’s not just the military that frustrates him with false criminal records. It’s also Congress. “They’re fully aware of the issue, and they claim to support military personnel but year after year fail to act,” he said.

 “DOD somehow thinks they have the inherent authority to create false criminal history records with the help of the FBI. Congress could easily pass a law that simply says the military cannot create a record that says someone was arrested without actually having been arrested.” 

Ullman said she has also gone to her elected representatives in Congress to raise awareness of the issue with no success. And she gets it. 

She knows it sounds ridiculous to tell people that the military is creating false criminal records for service members. 

She once mentioned it during jury duty selection and was immediately excused, she said. “I hope I live long enough to see some sort of resolution in the way the DOD and the military justice system work,” Ullman said. “There are so many untouchable problems in our society. The fact that I can do something about this is very fulfilling. I can’t do a whole lot about climate change or the upcoming presidential election, but I can stay on top of this, and I can keep putting information out into the universe that proves my point that military justice is a contradiction in terms.”

 Brown has exhausted all his options for expungement. He has spent the months since his denial from the Army corrections board coming to terms with a retirement life that he did not envision. He has a master’s degree in business administration and decades in human resources.

 But the only place he’s found work is in a hardware store starting at $13.45 an hour. 

As a father of four, he also planned to work with young men growing up in the same rough neighborhood that he did. His false criminal record blocks him from volunteering or creating a nonprofit. “I stress about this. I’ve had sleepless nights since I knew this was in my record,” Brown said. “I can’t reach my potential that I have the right to do.” 

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.stripes.com/veterans/2024-03-04/military-criminal-records-veterans-troops-expunge-13203822.html

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;


SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


---------------------------------------------------------------


FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;


—————————————————————————————————

FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

---------------------------------------------------------

YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:


David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.


https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801

————————————————————————————————


MORE VALUABLE WORDS: "As a former public defender, Texas' refusal to delay Ivan Cantu's execution to evaluate new evidence is deeply worrying for the state of our legal system. There should be no room for doubt in a death penalty case. The facts surrounding Cantu's execution should haunt all of us."

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett; X March 1, 2024.

——————————————————————

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: 

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: 

STORY: "Proving your innocence’: Veterans fight to clear their names for military crimes they did not commit, by Rose Thayer, published  by Stars and Stripes, on March 4, 2024. "Rose L. Thayer is based in Austin, Texas, and she has been covering the western region of the continental U.S. for Stars and Stripes since 2018. Before that she was a reporter for Killeen Daily Herald and a freelance journalist for publications including The Alcalde, Texas Highways and the Austin American-Statesman. She is the spouse of an Army veteran and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism. Her awards include a 2021 Society of Professional Journalists Washington Dateline Award and an Honorable Mention from the Military Reporters and Editors Association for her coverage of crime at Fort Hood." 

 

GIST: "Retired Sgt. Major Eriq Brown first learned of his criminal record in 2021 during a screening for veteran disability benefits as part of his retirement from the Army. 

He met with a civilian psychologist in South Korea as part of a post-traumatic stress disorder screening.

 The psychologist asked him whether his pending criminal charge was causing him emotional distress. 

Brown, who spent 28 years doing human resources work in the Army, said he looked at the doctor perplexed.

 Two years prior, a fellow soldier in Korea accused him of assault. 

She told military police that Brown in a period of three months had hit her on the back of the neck, bumped her in an on-post store at Camp Humphreys and then grabbed her arm after an event. 

No charges came of the accusations, according to Brown’s service record and documentation that he would later present to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

 An officer in Brown’s chain of command with 8th Army conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence it happened — even discovering Brown wasn’t on post the day that he supposedly bumped the woman at a store, according to correction board documents.

 He was never arrested or detained or read his rights.

 There was no court-martial or nonjudicial punishment.

 Instead, Brown received a reprimand in his personnel file for unprofessional behavior.

 The letter scolded Brown for touching the woman’s neck and then reaching for her arm after she had told him that she did not want to be touched. 

Retired Sgt. Maj. Eriq Brown, 47, was investigated for assault while in the Army, but never arrested or charged with a crime. However, his criminal record shows he was arrested and is awaiting a final outcome for an assault charge and the Army has refused to remove the information.

 (Provided by Eriq Brown ) “You have exhibited poor judgment,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Donahoe wrote in the reprimand dated Aug. 21, 2019. 

Nowhere in the letter does he write Brown was arrested or committed a crime.

 Sitting in that doctor’s office, Brown realized none of this was behind him. The ordeal had left him with a criminal arrest listed on his background check with no resolution — as if he is still waiting to face judgment for a misdemeanor assault charge. 

“Think about the embarrassment of that,” said Brown, now 47. “I definitely wouldn’t let my children go in the military after this.”

 Brown is one of thousands of service members who have been investigated by military law enforcement agencies, never charged or convicted of a crime, and yet, their criminal records show otherwise, according to attorneys who work with military clients.

 The root of the issue is a Defense Department policy ordering its law enforcement agencies to put a suspect’s name into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database once agents have “credible information” that a crime occurred.

 It’s known as titling and indexing. Credible information could be as simple as someone coming in and making a report. 

It typically precedes any evidence gathering or real investigative work, said Christopher Nuneviller, a former Army attorney who continues to work on military cases. Civilian law enforcement agencies do not enter people into the national database until there is an arrest warrant or indictment, he said. 

He published a paper to his law firm’s website last month on the military’s expansive use of criminal titling. 

He recommended the military adopt civilian law enforcement standards. “The DOD transfer of the titling data to [the national database] before the investigation begins is a pervasive, arbitrary and capricious administrative function that serves no legitimate government purpose but to bureaucratically punish individuals,” Nuneviller wrote.

 The Defense Department has the power to clear these people’s records, but “they don’t do it and they won’t do it,” he wrote. “The Department of Defense should be held accountable for this improper and likely illegal expansive use of titling.” 

Sue Gough, spokeswoman for the Defense Department, said the titling policy into the military’s internal Defense Central Index of Investigations ensures a record is available for law enforcement, security purposes, background investigations and clearance adjudications.

 She echoed a sentiment included in the policy that the practice should only confirm a person’s role in an investigation and does not constitute a conviction or imply any guilt.

 A question about why it is necessary to report to the FBI’s database so early in an investigation went unanswered. 

Lifelong impacts For those who do seek expungement of their record, they are more than likely going to be denied, according to data from the military services. 

Less than 9% of service members and veterans who made requests to the Army and Air Force since 2021 — when a law passed to ease the process — were successful. 

The Navy did not provide complete data on expungement requests and the Marine Corps did not provide any data. In practice, the policy could mean honorably discharged veterans are failing criminal background checks because of false reports, Nuneviller said.

 The Defense Department put the policy in place in the early 1990s, despite concerns from the Army and the House Armed Services Committee, Nuneviller wrote. 

He estimated as many as 1 million service members and veterans could be caught in this system based on his estimates of the number of investigations each service has conducted annually since then. 

The Army Criminal Investigation Division said it conducts roughly 10,000 investigations each year, while the Air Force Office of Special Investigations said it does about 22,600 each year. 

Naval Criminal Investigative Service did not respond to the question. Doug O’Connell, an attorney and retired Army colonel, finds the entire titling process “baffling.” 

He wrote last year in a lawsuit on criminal titling that the services do this as an overcorrection to the 2007 mass shooting carried out by an Air Force veteran in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The veteran had a domestic violence conviction from his time in the service but was never entered into the FBI database. 

This allowed him to purchase a firearm. O’Connell said he gets calls at his law firm about titling expungement every day primarily from soldiers or Army veterans. “Army leaders are taking the position that they can create false government records with impunity. This is especially troubling when you consider that they’re branding soldiers and veterans as criminals while granting them an honorable discharge,” he said. 

“If the flawed logic and false records weren’t bad enough, it gets worse when you consider the impact on recruiting. What parent in their right mind would encourage their child to join the military knowing that their loved one may end up falsely branded as criminal for the rest of their life.”

 Failing background checks has caused veterans and troops to miss out on job opportunities, lose security clearances every time they move between units, get rejected from renting a home or securing a concealed carry handgun license, and leaves them unable to volunteer at their kids’ schools or contribute to their communities, said Liz Ullman, a 71-year-old Colorado retiree who has become an informal collector of soldiers’ stories on the subject. 

Liz Ullman, a 71-year-old Colorado retiree, has become a collector of stories from soldiers who have received criminal records during Army service for crimes they did not commit. (Provided by Liz Ullman) Ullman operates a website, Defend Our Protectors, where she provides information on titling and advocates for a change to the DOD policy. “There are so many people who can’t help themselves because to have been investigated for a crime is damaging,” she said.

 “And these are people who have sworn on their lives to defend the United States. Then the government turns against them. So you add betrayal on top of humiliation, and you’ve destroyed someone’s entire moral being.” 

Army recruiting investigation Ullman began tracking the issue when a friend’s son got caught up in an Army recruiting investigation that pinned criminal records on hundreds of soldiers without their knowledge.

 The National Guard Recruiting Assistance Program, known as G-RAP, brought thousands into the military during its seven-year run. It paid bonuses to soldiers who participated and brought recruits into the Army. However, some soldiers wrongly received bonus payments, which ended the program and triggered a fraud investigation.

 From 2012 to 2016, the Army CID put a team of Reserve agents on active duty to investigate fraudulent payments made to troops as part of the recruiting program. 

In the process, investigators titled and indexed 2,253 soldiers, according to a mandated report CID presented to Congress in April 2023. However, only 137 people were ever prosecuted in civilian courts, according to the Army. The internal audit of the investigation found 1,454 names were incorrectly logged with the FBI’s criminal database.

 Of all the names given to the FBI, only 7% were correct, the report said. “The purpose of titling is to ensure the accuracy and efficiency of the report and to ensure it is retrievable for future law enforcement or security purposes,” according to the Army’s CID. “Titling does not indicate any degree of guilt or innocence and [DOD policy] specifically precludes the use of titling as a basis for judicial or adverse administrative actions.” 

However, Ullman said some of those titled have faced adverse administrative actions. “In some cases … I think I was the only person in their life who believed that they were innocent,” she said. 

One soldier falsely caught in the recruiting investigation told Ullman that he was barred from reenlistment because of the false record. He also told her that his wife left him and took their children and he couldn’t get a civilian job. By the time he received a letter that the Army made a mistake and his record was clear, he was living in his car. “Now what?” 

Ullman recalled him asking her. Lee Hughes was falsely entered into the crime database as part of the recruiting investigation and didn’t even know he was under investigation until his promotion to captain in the Vermont National Guard was stripped from him in 2015.

 He only learned why he lost his promotion because someone in his unit pulled him aside to tell him. Retired Lt. Lee Hughes, seen on a 2010 deployment to Afghanistan with the Vermont National Guard, was given a false criminal arrest record by the Army that stopped his promotion to captain. 

The record was corrected but the Army has denied his request to return his promotion. (Provided by Lee Hughes) “It’s a complete circumvention of the American system of justice.

There’s no due process anywhere in this,” Hughes said. “People shouldn’t have the onus put on them to figure out if they were charged with something or were wronged somehow. And if you can figure it out, then they’ll allow you to take part in the expungement process. That’s not the way we do things here.” 

Hughes ultimately had his record cleared and works for the federal government in security, but he never got back the promotion. He retired with 20 years of service in 2019 as a lieutenant and his appeal to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records to regain his promotion failed — costing him thousands in retirement pay. 

“What they’re not being held accountable for is the damage done to people’s careers,” he said. Pentagon slow to respond The Army recruiting investigation also led Congress to mandate in 2021 that the military pave an easier path for those looking to remove false arrest records. 

Before the law changed, people had to prove the titling was a case of mistaken identity. Now, the law affords expungement for those never charged or convicted, but the onus is on the person to present new evidence to prove their innocence. “The process went from impossible to nearly impossible,” Ullman said. “It really is a matter of proving your innocence.”

 Congress required the Pentagon update its expungement policy by Oct. 1, 2021. It did so in August 2023. Defense officials declined to comment on the nearly two-year delay. Since Congress acted in 2021, the Army has seen 1,570 people request expungement with 189 succeeding, according to the service.

 Naval Criminal Investigative Service said it received 28 requests in 2021 from sailors and Marines. Of those, 11 were approved. It did not provide data for other years and officials said the Navy might receive expungement requests through avenues outside of law enforcement. 

The Marine Corps uses a decentralized system where service members can request expungements through the installation where the charge originated.

 Brown hired an attorney to write his expungement request, which was denied in July 2023. The records correction board cited the Defense Department’s old policy — a month before the Pentagon made the update. 

The Army declined to answer whether there is a path for Brown and others in his position to request a review under the new policy. 

The Air Force created a Criminal Justice Information Center in October to incorporate the new guidance and revisited all appeals filed after Oct. 1, 2021, to ensure airmen eligible under the new law receive due process. Of the 1,114 expungement requests received since then, the Air Force cleared 67 records, the service said. 

The Air Force also increased oversight of criminal titling and indexing and made titling and indexing specialists available for installations and at the OSI headquarters, said Linda Card, spokeswoman for the service’s Office of Special Investigations. 

“The Department of the Air Force is currently evaluating additional measures to improve indexing within the constructs of relevant law, DOD policy, and reporting requirements set by the U.S. Attorney General,” she said. 

Taking the Army to court Citing the new law, O’Connell attempted to clear the record of Denise Rosales, a noncommissioned officer in the Texas National Guard.

 Officials admitted in an email that she was never arrested but refused to remove information from the national database.

 Military police, not the Army CID, investigated Rosales during a 2020-2021 deployment to Kuwait for having alcohol at a birthday party for her husband. 

She was never arrested or charged. 

She only received an administrative reprimand. 

And yet, the Army CID entered Rosales into the national crime database as arrested.

 She spent the 12 years before her false arrest record working mainly as an analyst for civilian law enforcement. Because of the record, she said she lost a job with the Drug Enforcement Agency. It has also blocked her from returning to active duty with the Guard. 

After nearly two years of fighting, Rosales filed a federal lawsuit in April against the Army, the Army CID and the FBI, according to court documents. In a motion calling for the lawsuit’s dismissal, Army lawyers argued they followed procedure when they submitted Rosales’ information to the FBI national database, and they also agreed she was not arrested or prosecuted.

 The Army further argued the service is not the agency sharing the arrest history and violating her privacy, it is the FBI. 

‘I can’t reach my potential’ O’Connell said it’s not just the military that frustrates him with false criminal records. It’s also Congress. “They’re fully aware of the issue, and they claim to support military personnel but year after year fail to act,” he said.

 “DOD somehow thinks they have the inherent authority to create false criminal history records with the help of the FBI. Congress could easily pass a law that simply says the military cannot create a record that says someone was arrested without actually having been arrested.” 

Ullman said she has also gone to her elected representatives in Congress to raise awareness of the issue with no success. And she gets it. 

She knows it sounds ridiculous to tell people that the military is creating false criminal records for service members. 

She once mentioned it during jury duty selection and was immediately excused, she said. “I hope I live long enough to see some sort of resolution in the way the DOD and the military justice system work,” Ullman said. “There are so many untouchable problems in our society. The fact that I can do something about this is very fulfilling. I can’t do a whole lot about climate change or the upcoming presidential election, but I can stay on top of this, and I can keep putting information out into the universe that proves my point that military justice is a contradiction in terms.”

 Brown has exhausted all his options for expungement. He has spent the months since his denial from the Army corrections board coming to terms with a retirement life that he did not envision. He has a master’s degree in business administration and decades in human resources.

 But the only place he’s found work is in a hardware store starting at $13.45 an hour. 

As a father of four, he also planned to work with young men growing up in the same rough neighborhood that he did. His false criminal record blocks him from volunteering or creating a nonprofit. “I stress about this. I’ve had sleepless nights since I knew this was in my record,” Brown said. “I can’t reach my potential that I have the right to do.” 

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.stripes.com/veterans/2024-03-04/military-criminal-records-veterans-troops-expunge-13203822.html

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;


SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


---------------------------------------------------------------


FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;


—————————————————————————————————

FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

---------------------------------------------------------

YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:


David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.


https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801

————————————————————————————————


MORE VALUABLE WORDS: "As a former public defender, Texas' refusal to delay Ivan Cantu's execution to evaluate new evidence is deeply worrying for the state of our legal system. There should be no room for doubt in a death penalty case. The facts surrounding Cantu's execution should haunt all of us."

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett; X March 1, 2024.

——————————————————————