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He Was Convicted of Killing His Baby. The DA's Office Says He's Innocent, but That Might Not Be Enough
https://www.propublica.org/article/nashville-conviction-review-russell-maze-shaken-baby-syndromeHe Was Convicted of Killing His Baby. The DAs Office Says Hes Innocent, but That Might Not Be Enough.
by Pamela Colloff, photography by Stacy Kranitz
July 11, 5 a.m. EDT
This article is a partnership between ProPublica, where Pamela Colloff is a senior reporter, and The New York Times Magazine, where she is a staff writer.
Sunny Eaton never imagined herself working at the district attorneys office. A former public defender, she once represented Nashville, Tennessees least powerful people, and she liked being the only person in a room willing to stand by someone when no one else would. She spent a decade building her own private practice, but in 2020, she took an unusual job as the director of the conviction-review unit in the Nashville DAs office. Her assignment was to investigate past cases her office had prosecuted and identify convictions for which there was new evidence of innocence.
The enormousness of the task struck her on her first day on the job, when she stood in the units storage room and took in the view: Three-ring binders, each holding a case flagged for evaluation, stretched from floor to ceiling. The sheer number of cases reflected how much the world had changed over the previous 30 years. DNA analysis and scientific research had exposed the deficiencies of evidence that had, for decades, helped prosecutors win convictions. Many forensic disciplines from hair and fiber comparison to the analysis of blood spatter, bite marks, burn patterns, shoe and tire impressions and handwriting were revealed to lack a strong scientific foundation, with some amounting to quackery. Eyewitness identification turned out to be unreliable. Confessions could be elicited from innocent people.
Puzzling out which cases to pursue was not easy, but Eaton did her best work when she treaded into uncertain territory. Early in her career, as she learned her way around the courthouse, she felt, she says, like an outsider in every way a queer Puerto Rican woman with no name and no connections. That outsider sensibility never completely left her, and it served her well at the DAs office, where she was armed with a mandate that required her to be independent of any institutional loyalties. She saw her job as a chance to change the system from within. Beneath the water-stained ceiling of her new office, she hung a framed Toni Morrison quote on the wall: The function of freedom is to free someone else.
[...]
by Pamela Colloff, photography by Stacy Kranitz
July 11, 5 a.m. EDT
This article is a partnership between ProPublica, where Pamela Colloff is a senior reporter, and The New York Times Magazine, where she is a staff writer.
Sunny Eaton never imagined herself working at the district attorneys office. A former public defender, she once represented Nashville, Tennessees least powerful people, and she liked being the only person in a room willing to stand by someone when no one else would. She spent a decade building her own private practice, but in 2020, she took an unusual job as the director of the conviction-review unit in the Nashville DAs office. Her assignment was to investigate past cases her office had prosecuted and identify convictions for which there was new evidence of innocence.
The enormousness of the task struck her on her first day on the job, when she stood in the units storage room and took in the view: Three-ring binders, each holding a case flagged for evaluation, stretched from floor to ceiling. The sheer number of cases reflected how much the world had changed over the previous 30 years. DNA analysis and scientific research had exposed the deficiencies of evidence that had, for decades, helped prosecutors win convictions. Many forensic disciplines from hair and fiber comparison to the analysis of blood spatter, bite marks, burn patterns, shoe and tire impressions and handwriting were revealed to lack a strong scientific foundation, with some amounting to quackery. Eyewitness identification turned out to be unreliable. Confessions could be elicited from innocent people.
Puzzling out which cases to pursue was not easy, but Eaton did her best work when she treaded into uncertain territory. Early in her career, as she learned her way around the courthouse, she felt, she says, like an outsider in every way a queer Puerto Rican woman with no name and no connections. That outsider sensibility never completely left her, and it served her well at the DAs office, where she was armed with a mandate that required her to be independent of any institutional loyalties. She saw her job as a chance to change the system from within. Beneath the water-stained ceiling of her new office, she hung a framed Toni Morrison quote on the wall: The function of freedom is to free someone else.
[...]
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He Was Convicted of Killing His Baby. The DA's Office Says He's Innocent, but That Might Not Be Enough (Original Post)
sl8
Jul 2024
OP
stopdiggin
(12,852 posts)1. if I might suggest?
excerpting pieces of the article that go to the point or illuminate the purpose of the post?
(credit here for extensive excerpts - which is hugely appreciated ! - but it is all pre-log to the story .. )
I sometimes go to some length picking and choosing which 4 paragraphs of an to excerpt. With this article in particular I soon gave that up as a lost cause. I didn't see a good way to distill it down to just a few select paragraphs. I figured this was one where people would really need to read the whole article.
If you'd care to take stab at it, I'd consider substituting your paragraphs for mine in the OP. With credit to you, of course.