Man Wrongly Convicted Gets Paid

Herman Atkins spent 12 Riverside of his life behind bars for a crime
he didn't commit. He constantly said back then that he didn't do
yet he was convicted and sent away. Well he became the 69th
person to be exonerated because of DNA testing. Well it seems
that the detective that fabricated the evidence has moved on to
greener pastures in the form of onr of the nations top cops-the
FBI. And Riverside county as of yet has not addressed the issue.
Many people have been convicted on fabricated testimony and
evidence presented by those in law enforcement who have sworn
to uphold the law. How do you think this should be dealt with?


Finding that a sheriff's detective had falsified evidence, a federal jury in Los Angeles ordered Riverside County on Monday to pay $2 million to a man exonerated by DNA evidence after serving 12 years in prison for rape.The verdict came 19 years after Herman Atkins was sentenced to 45 years in prison for a 1986 rape and robbery in Lake Elsinore. Atkins steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2000, DNA tests conducted by Richmond, Calif., forensic scientist Edward Blake, and later confirmed by the FBI, eliminated Atkins as a source of semen found on the victim's sweater.

The actual rapist was never identified.Two years later, Atkins filed a civil damage suit alleging, among other things, that sheriff's Det. Danny Miller had fabricated evidence and withheld information that raised doubts about whether he committed the crime.Specifically, the attorneys said Miller submitted a statement attributed to a man named Eric Ingram. The statement said Ingram knew Atkins to be a gang member and that he had seen Atkins in the Lake Elsinore area in early April 1986. The rape occurred April 8, 1986.In papers seeking an arrest warrant, Miller said Atkins "has been identified and linked to the Perris/Elsinore area by an uninvolved and therefore unbiased witness.

"Sixteen years later, after Atkins had been released from prison, a private investigator tracked down Ingram, who signed a sworn statement saying he did not know Atkins and had not told Miller he had seen Atkins in the vicinity of the crime.Atkins was represented in his fight to overturn his conviction by lawyers from the Innocence Project at Cardozo School of Law in New York. His civil lawyers, Peter Neufeld, co-director of the project, and Deborah Cornwall, of Cochran Neufeld & Scheck law firm, contended that evidence of the fabrication could have persuaded the jury to acquit their client. The six-woman, two-man federal jury agreed, responding "yes" to a question on the official verdict form:

"Did Atkins prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Miller failed to disclose favorable information to the prosecutor; specifically that he fabricated the Ingram statement." Atkins, in an interview after the verdict, said he was pleased."When I was in prison, one thing that motivated me was something my grandmother often said to me. She said, 'A lie will die, but the truth lives on.' Today, Detective Miller's lies were not only exposed but put to rest, and the truth lives on as my grandmother said," he said.





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