A federal judge ruled Tuesday that six Columbia police officers who worked on the case against Ryan Ferguson are not entitled to immunity from the remaining counts of Ferguson’s civil rights lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey issued the order about three months after the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had sent the case back, instructing her to clarify whether the officers should be entitled to qualified immunity. The order clears up the issue and allows the case to go to trial on several claims of constitutional violations, pending any further appeals at the Eighth Circuit level.
Qualified immunity protects government officials from legal liability unless their conduct clearly violates a person’s rights and an official acting reasonably would have known the conduct was unlawful. The doctrine is meant to shield officials from frivolous lawsuits.
Kathleen Zellner, Ferguson’s lawyer, did not respond to a message seeking comment. Brad Letterman, attorney for the officers, declined to comment. Read more >>
The 911 operator heard a woman refusing to get into a vehicle and begging for help. Gunshots—loud and staccato—cut through the confusion of noises. A smoke alarm shrilled.
When police arrived, a 33-year-old man lay dead inside an O’Fallon, Missouri, house. The caller said the man had climbed into her SUV, held a knife against her throat, and demanded that she take him to a bank to get “Russ’s money.” Terrified for her life, she said, she’d knocked the knife away, run inside through the garage door, dashed into the master bedroom, and grabbed a .38 Ruger revolver from her nightstand. He came after her like “a madman.”
The 911 caller—a 58-year-old woman named Pamela Hupp—was questioned and released.
Seven days later, she was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
Before being booked, she asked to use the restroom and stabbed herself in the neck and wrists with a ballpoint pen.
St. Louisans squinted at their TV screens, trying to fathom this blond woman, her square jaw set hard, her face impassive. This was the same woman who’d testified three years earlier in a murder trial after her friend was stabbed 55 times. The friend’s husband was convicted and later acquitted. In the meantime, Hupp’s mother had died in a suspicious fall from a third-floor balcony.
The only possible motive connecting all three cases was money. Hupp, who’d held several jobs in the insurance industry, was the beneficiary of both her friend’s and mother’s policies. But would somebody really stab a sick friend and shove her own mother off a balcony to get cash she’d receive in a few years anyway, then shoot a perfect stranger just to twist the plot?
“Even Hollywood,” one St. Louisan tweeted, “doesn’t write scripts this convoluted.”
Pamela Neumann Hupp grew up in an orderly Catholic household in Dellwood, the third of four kids, their mother a schoolteacher, their father a union man who worked for decades at Union Electric. Pam rode bikes with her friends, went Christmas caroling, occasionally skipped Sunday school. At Riverview Gardens High School, she was a blond pompommer with a laugh that burst forth like a geyser, no stopping it.
Pam was always ready for fun, friends recall—no moodiness or drama, no talking behind people’s backs. Her grades could’ve been higher, one friend guesses, “but she was boy-crazy.” By senior year, she’d made a real catch: a boy who was soft-spoken and well-liked, a member of the soccer team, golf team, and National Honor Society. They went to their senior prom together. Three months later they “had to get married.”
Pam’s devout mother couldn’t have been pleased about the pregnancy. Pam did the responsible thing, but her friends sensed a wistful resentment: Everybody else was caught up in the whirl of college, while here she was, sitting in a cheap apartment spooning strained beets.
The marriage lasted six years. Soon after her divorce, Pam married Mark Hupp, a quiet, easygoing guy who played minor-league baseball for the Texas Rangers and, when he didn’t get drafted, fell back on carpentry. They gave Pam’s daughter a little brother, and in 1989 moved to Naples, Florida. When they returned in 2001, they settled in O’Fallon, Missouri, and started flipping houses on the side.
Pam also took a clerical job in a State Farm office, and Betsy Faria was the first person she met there. Eleven years younger than Pam, Betsy was warm-hearted and bubbly and scatterbrained, always short of cash but shored up emotionally by dozens of friends who adored her. Even at 32, she looked like a greeting card illustration—round face, curly hair, pink cheeks, bright-blue eyes—and in her part-time gig as a DJ, she could coax anybody onto the dance floor. Read more >>
The legal record shows that Jerry Hartfield’s first murder conviction was thrown out on appeal, and for the next 32 years, he was not officially guilty of anything, not sentenced to anything. Yet he spent that time in Texas prisons, in what an appellate court now calls “a criminal justice nightmare.”
He was finally tried and convicted again in 2015, but on Thursday, Mr. Hartfield moved closer to freedom than he has been in decades. A state Court of Appeals ruled that he was not only denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial, but to a degree the court had neither seen nor imagined before; it noted that the important precedents dealt with delays of three years, six years, eight years — not 32.
The three-judge panel dismissed the indictment against Mr. Hartfield, who is developmentally disabled, in effect erasing the recent conviction. But it is still not clear whether, or when, he will get out of prison. Read more >>
Rodney Lincoln is currently serving two life sentences for the murder of JoAnn Tate and the assault of Tate’s two young daughters in April of 1982 in St. Louis, Missouri. Evidence shows that Rodney was wrongfully convicted based on a hair found at the crime scene that was wrongly attributed to him and a questionable line-up conducted by police. The victim who was shown the faulty line-up has now recanted her ID that ultimately put Rodney in prison. There isn’t one shred of evidence linking Rodney to the crime. He is clearly an innocent man.
There is currently a clemency request pending in Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s office for Rodney Lincoln. The request was filed by Melissa Neal DeBoer. DeBoer, now forty-two, was the seven-year-old victim who testified against Rodney at trial. DeBoer has now fully recanted her testimony which worked to convict Rodney, and she is now lobbying for his release. You can read her very moving letter in support of Rodney here.
Governor Nixon is expected to make a decision regarding the clemency request by January 8, 2017. Rodney’s supporters are asking for a strong showing of support in the final week leading up to Nixon’s decision. Rodney needs as many people as possible to call, fax, email, tweet, and write to Governor Nixon’s office to express their support for the clemency request. Support for Rodney Lincoln can be seen worldwide. He has this widespread support because he is an innocent man. If all of Rodney’s supporters speak out this week, we can all make an impact.
Freeing the wrongfully convicted is no easy task. The Midwest Innocence Project has been fighting to free Rodney Lincoln for over eleven years. In a recent press release, Rodney’s attorney said, “Mr. Lincoln’s case highlights the mountains we have to move to correct an injustice. As members of a society that allow this to happen, it’s our obligation to do everything we can to correct it.”
Ryan Ferguson, who spent nearly a decade in prison in Missouri as an innocent man, said after his release in 2013 that, “It takes an army” to free the wrongfully convicted. Ryan was right. It does take an army. And Rodney has just that. An army of supporters have been calling for Rodney’s release for a long time, and his supporters will remain vigilant for as long as it takes. If you support Rodney Lincoln, who is undeniably an innocent man, please spend the next seven days bombarding Governor Nixon’s office through social media, telephone, fax, and postal mail. When reaching out to Governor Nixon, please remember to be respectful. Strong factual statements will have a far greater influence than inappropriate language.
According to Rodney’s daughter, Kay Lincoln, all forms of contact are welcome and helpful, but hard copy letters are the best and most persuasive. If you prefer email, feel free to email your letter to freerodneylincoln@gmail.com. Kay will format, print, and mail the letters for you. If you are writing a hard copy letter, you need to act fast. Please get your letters in the mail in the next day or two if possible.
Let’s do this! Get those letters in the mail! Make Rodney Lincoln a trending topic on Twitter! Keep Governor Nixon’s fax machine running nonstop! Call Governor Nixon’s office! All calls are documented and are included in the clemency request file . Rodney has been in prison for far too long. It’s time for him to come home!
Governor Nixon’s contact information:
Mail: MO Governor Jay Nixon
PO Box 720
Jefferson City, MO 65102
Rodney Lincoln is incredibly grateful for the support he receives. Thank you to all who are actively advocating for this release. Please share the information in this article with your friends and family. Sharing on Facebook only takes a minute. Just visit Rodney Lincoln’s group page and share the group’s posts with your Facebook friends.
What we think in this situation,” said the first detective, “the other babies are screaming, crying, whatever. You’re taking care of them by yourself. You have Ben in your hands, he starts acting up and, you get mad at him and you throw him on the floor.”
“You threw him on the floor?” asked the second detective.
On January 14, 2009, 16-month-old Benjamin Kingan was discovered unresponsive in his bouncy chair at the Illinois daycare where 22-year-old Calusinski worked. Initial examination showed he had suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Two days later, detectives George Filenko and Sean Curran walked out of a nine-hour interrogation at the Lake Zurich police department with a detailed videotaped confession. Calusinski first denied knowledge of how Kingan could have sustained his injuries, but eventually admitted, under sustained questioning, that Kingan had a habit of flinging himself backwards and hitting his head on the floor. Eventually, Calusinski confessed to throwing Kingan violently to the ground. Read More>>
I didn’t get my old life back. No one does. Condemnation doesn’t stop once you’re found innocent.
Every day for the past nine years I’ve been called a slut and murderer by total strangers. In prison, it was hate mail. Outside of prison, it’s social media and hate mail. “Teach me how to get away with murder.” “I hope you will be alone forever.” “Murderess.” “Psychopath.” “Whore.” One person promised, in a comment on my personal website, to kidnap me in broad daylight, rip out my teeth and fingernails, electrocute me, and carve Meredith Kercher’s name into my body.
Meredith was a kind and outgoing British student who was murdered by Rudy Guede. She was my roommate, and I was accused of her murder by a prosecutor whose insane theories and disregard for evidence landed me in prison for four years. Italy’s highest court ultimately exonerated me, finding “stunning flaws” in the investigation and “an absolute lack of biological traces” connecting me to the crime.
While the TV version of my life would end there, I have learned that condemnation doesn’t stop once you’re found innocent. From the moment I walked out of prison, my family and I have focused on healing and rebuilding our lives. But the beast of media sensationalism wasn’t satisfied. Tabloids snapped pictures of my every move, speculated on everything I did, and spun everything I said out of context. I was accused of buying my supporters, the media, and my freedom. I was shamed for having friends, opinions, fun — a life. Certain people made it their hobby to torment me and anyone close to me, so that we might never feel safe. And despite all the objective evidence confirming my innocence, the predominant narrative and subsequent discussion about my case still revolved around the question, “Did she do it?” Read more >>
It’s a horror no one should ever feel: Sitting in prison for the rest of your life for a crime you know you didn’t commit. Convicted killer Jamie Snow says he’s living that nightmare right now. Andrea Isom is in Illinois with his story.
“One thing that’s been hard for me to figure out is how can I be sitting in this prison when I know that when someone walked into that gas station and murdered Billy Little I was sitting in my living room clear across town,” said Jamie Snow.
Is Jamie Snow just another guy sitting in prison who claims he didn’t do it, or was he railroaded?
You can view part 2 and 3 of this investigative report on Crime Watch Daily’s website here >>
Advocates for convicted murderer sue city for records
BLOOMINGTON — Two supporters of Jamie Snow’s efforts to exonerate himself on murder charges have filed a lawsuit against the city for withholding records they claim are needed to prove his innocence.
Snow was convicted in 2001 of the Easter 1991 killing of 18-year-old Billy Little during an apparent armed robbery of a now-closed Bloomington service station where Little worked.
Tammy Alexander and Raymond Wilson have filed more than 30 Freedom of Information Act requests since 2011 for evidence in Snow’s case. Alexander, of Tennessee, became interested in the case in 2009 after reading media coverage and an interview with Snow. Wilson, of New Jersey, is married to Snow’s longtime friend, Pam Wilson. The two started working together on Snow’s case about five years ago. Read more >>
Wrongful Conviction Day is an international day to raise awareness of the causes and remedies of wrongful conviction and to recognize the tremendous personal, social, and emotional costs of wrongful conviction for innocent people and their families.
Wrongful Conviction Day began as an effort of the Innocence Network, an affiliation of organizations dedicated to providing pro bono legal and investigative services to individuals seeking to prove innocence of crimes for which they have been convicted, working to redress the causes of wrongful convictions, and supporting the exonerated after they are freed. This is the Third Annual day. Learn more >>
