DNA clears Nevada woman imprisoned 35 years for murder

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

DNA clears Nevada woman imprisoned 35 years for murder
By MARTIN GRIFFITH and SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press | March 6, 2015 | Updated: March 7, 2015 12:12pm

RENO, Nev. (AP) — After the case was dropped against a Nevada woman who spent 35 years in prison for a 1976 murder she did not commit, both sides agreed on one point: justice was finally served thanks to new technology in DNA testing.

Cathy Woods became the latest innocent person in the country to be cleared by DNA evidence after prosecutors announced Friday there will be no retrial of her in the fatal stabbing of 19-year-old Michelle Mitchell on the edge of the University of Nevada, Reno, campus.

A judge tossed Woods' conviction in September after new DNA tests linked the Reno crime to an Oregon inmate who now faces charges near San Francisco in a string of killings about the same time.

Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks said he didn't fault earlier police, prosecutors and juries for sending Woods to prison because they didn't have "the incredible tool of DNA."


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/No-retrial-for-Nevada-woman-freed-after-30-years-6119180.php

[NaturalHigh]

1. The state of Nevada owes Miss Woods a large sum of money.

Even if this was a good faith error, the state took away 35 years.

[avebury]

2. I totally agree.

There is no way that she would be able to make up for all those lose years of earning potential in order to be able to take care of herself going forward.

[edgineered]

6. over 300,000 hours, as if that could make up for what she had to suffer. nt

[NaturalHigh]

9. No doubt that money can't make up for the wrongs...

done to Miss Woods, but maybe it can give her a good start on her new life. I'm afraid that's the best we can hope for in this situation.

[edgineered]

10. if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!

(Roy Batty says to Chew in Blade Runner)

it's a different context, but that's what came to mind when thinking of how unlikely she is to ever trust anyone, or to find herself.

(just having a sad for a minute)

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. They didn't have 'the incredible tool'...

but they still sent her to jail for murder. On evidence that apparently was either false or interpreted wrong, given that she was innocent. Somebody pushed for a guilty woman to go to jail, presented whatever evidence there was in a way that made it seem like an innocent person was the killer. And a dozen people believed that inaccurate interpretation of the evidence 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.

Obviously, if she was innocent, there really should have been a 'reasonable doubt' as to her guilt. Somebody was slipshod and really wanted to send someone to jail, no matter what. So much for 'rather 100 guilty go free than 1 innocent go to jail'.

[sendero]

21. It really seems like..

... most prosecutors are only interested in getting a conviction, and couldn't give two shits whether or not the convicted person is actually the guilty party.

Some of these guys think their job is putting lowlifes in jail but they never realize they are the lowlifes.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

22. I don't automatically think they all are

'lowlifes', but I think people all the way along the line get too focused on just their own little 'cog' in the wheel of the justice system. They do assume that everyone before them in the chain is honest, has done a careful job, and so on. So that if a defendant gets in front of them, they do assume they're guilty, because they trust too much in the police and evidence collection. So rather than seeking to ensure that they've actually got the guilty party, they simply are only interested in getting a conviction at that point.

And I think some of the things lawyers for any side are allowed to do without any real repercussions are seriously unjust. Smearing victims, so that instead of the defendant being on trial, the victim is, for instance. No human is an angel or saint, so of course you'll always be able to dig up things to plant that seed in the jury's mind that just maybe they 'deserved' whatever happened to them, or aren't 'worthy' of actually getting justice when they're victimized by someone else. Things lawyers say need to be clearly relevant to the incident at hand, and not merely to 'establish' that someone was a 'bad person'.

[sendero]

24. Sorry..

.. I didn't mean to say that all prosecutors are that way, but certainly some are.

And the whole system, where the defense attorney is supposed to be unconcerned with actual guilt probably breeds an atmosphere where the prosecutor doesn't feel the need of the luxury of worrying about actual guilt either.

At the end of the day if jurors were smarter we'd probably have fewer bad convictions.

[GGJohn]

4. Besides being immoral,

this is another reason why I oppose the death penalty.

[progree]

5. Ooops, forgot the Rec nm

[sulphurdunn]

7. The state's advocate

isn't called a prosecutor for nothing. These folks will try anyone if they believe they can win a conviction. They couldn't care less about guilt or innocence. Most cases where the accused cannot afford a top notch legal defense are just notches in a prosecutors gun handle.

[cab67]

20. You're not wrong in general...

…and if you want to lose sleep, read up on what was happening in Lake County, IL until a couple of years ago. I use it as examples of special pleading in the face of falsification in my nonmajors science course.

But in this particular case, the prosecutor does at least seem to have a sense of justice rather than conviction. He didn't talk his way out if it with "we just can't prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." He acknowledged her innocence.

[sulphurdunn]

25. I'll check it out. Thanks

[cab67]

27. some places to start:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/dna-evidence-lake-county.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-12-08/news/ct-met-michael-mermel-retires-20111208_1_dna-evidence-hobbs-case-jerry-hobbs

[sulphurdunn]

30. Thanks

[libdem4life]

8. One wonders whether to cheer or cry. God bless her. At least they didn't fry her.

[sadoldgirl]

11. I hope that some group will

keep track of all these cases, especially of those
which are ending up on death row.

Perhaps that might slow down the prosecutors a bit,
considering the amount of money the states have to pay
for these "misjudgments".

[DeSwiss]

14. !

Three hundred and twenty-five so far via The Innocence Project and 140 real perps found.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Thanks for posting this link. n/t

[Manifestor_of_Light]

12. They could have used DNA tests a lot sooner.

The first murder case tried in Harris County, Texas (Houston) that used DNA was in 1985.

[OnlinePoker]

15. Meanwhile in Texas

20,000 rape kits have yet to be tested. Another 9,000 in each of Ohio and Tennessee. Who knows how many in Nevada?

http://www.endthebacklog.org/backlog/where-backlog-exists

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

23. I think there was a recent post on a new methodology that reduced the time it took to process

rape kit data enormously. If it works out in large scale, they were saying it could reduce it down to about 2 hours, if I recall the posting correctly.

[Judi Lynn]

13. From last year: Woman found guilty of murdering teen nursing student in 1976 gets a new trial after

Woman found guilty of murdering teen nursing student in 1976 gets a new trial after DNA links convicted rapist to the killing... and deaths of FIVE other girls

Cathy Woods, 64, was convicted of killing University of Nevada student Michele Mitchell in 1976

However, new DNA evidence connects an Oregon inmate named Rodney L Halbower to the murder

Woods' attorney believes she confessed to the murder in order to get a better room at the mental hospital where she was being treated at the time

Now 64, Woods is set to be released from prison this week to await a retrial

By Ashley Collman for MailOnline and Associated Press
Published: 19:27 EST, 8 September 2014 | Updated: 06:15 EST, 10 September 2014

A woman who has been imprisoned for more than 30 years for the 1976 murder of a 19-year-old nursing student is set to be released this week, now that another man has been connected to the crime with DNA evidence.

Cathy Woods, 64, was being treated at the Louisiana State University Medical Center in 1976 when she confessed to killing Michele Mitchell.

Mitchell was found dead near the University of Nevada's Reno campus on February 24, 1976 - her throat slashed shortly after her car broke down.

The psychiatric patient's public defender says she only admitted to the killing so that staff would think she was dangerous, and let her have her own room at the mental hospital.

New suspect: Rodney L Halbower, an inmate in an Oregon penitentiary, recently submitted DNA evidence which now connects him to a cigarette butt found on Mitchell's dead body

'I'm told it was a product of wanting to get a private room,' her public defender Maizie Pusich said. 'She was being told she wasn't sufficiently dangerous to qualify, and within a short period she was claiming she had killed a woman in Reno.'

More:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2748457/Judge-orders-new-trial-1976-Reno-killing.html

[Stargazer09]

26. Damn

That's completely messed up.

[Doctor_J]

17. I wonder if someone could read this and still favor the death penalty

[Manifestor_of_Light]

18. If the justice system wasn't rife with errors and selective prosecution,

and it was guaranteed that no innocent person was convicted of the death penalty, I believe it would be possible to support it in limited circumstances. I say this as a person who has worked in the legal system my entire working life and has a law degree.

[ohnoyoudidnt]

31. They do and there are some right here.

How they rationalize it in their minds is the question.

[silvershadow]

19. Just one more reason I am against the death penalty. (not that she was on death row).nt

[Cal33]

28. Do you remember the case of the Governor of Illinois around the year 2000, when DNA testing was

still relatively new? Someone on death-row in another state was proven innocent. The
governor of Illinois (a Republican, by the way, a surprise to me) right away ordered DNA
testing for all of Illinois' 23 death-row inmates, and declared a moratorium of executions
until further study.

Well, it turned out that 12 of the 23 inmates were proven innocent. That's MORE THAN
HALF!!!

I wonder how many of the people executed in our country have actually been innocent?
Some of the smarter murderers know how to make it look like someone else had
committed the crime. And once a person has been executed, the case is over, and no
reparations of any kind to that dead man could ever be made.

This is only one reason why the death penalty should be stopped. We had it stopped for
about 14 years, like the other advanced nations of the world did, but Republicans insisted
on bringing this primitive and sadistic practice back into our society again.

I can't forget that GW Bush, Jr., as governor of Texas, had reviewed 135 cases of inmates
on death row, and had reduced the sentence of only one! He said he had faith in the
recommendations of the death-row reviewers. He even made fun of a woman, who was
begging him for her life, when he demonstrated to a news reporter what the condemned
woman was saying, and the way how she was saying it!

Talk about psychopathy and the lack of empathy, compassion and conscience!

[StevieM]

29. In the 2000 Presidential campaign I remember George Bush arguing that

Texas was doing better than the rest of the nation at getting death penalty convictions right. His evidence of this point was that Texas had fewer convictions overturned than other places.

Obviously, the state that does the least to ensure justice and resists a fair appeal process will also have the fewest overturned convictions. But the Democrats didn't trust the American people to understand that type of response, so they never made it. They also didn't think the American people would accept the Democrats derisively laughing off the suggestion that Texas is ahead of the nation when it comes to establishing an effective criminal justice system.