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Call Attorney Charles Johnson 1-800-535-5727 (ucan) REAL ESTATE PUBLIC NOTICE: By Annie McCallum Bitter MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama National Guard Master Sgt. Catina Hyatt has been deployed in Afghanistan for months, but she got back this week just in time. Hyatt arrived stateside Sunday and spent the night at a friend's house so she could show up to surprise her daughter, Erykah Hyatt, at school Monday, Erykah's ninth birthday. "I wanted to see her so bad," Hyatt said. With the help of Hyatt's husband, Eric Hyatt, Dannelly Elementary School officials worked to coordinate an event that surprised Erykah and her mom. The school delayed its Constitution Day Parade until Monday so Hyatt could take part. The school's third grade, including Erykah, watched as Jeff Davis High School's Marine Corps ROTC color guard led a long line of firstgraders, who carried red, white and blue flags, stream- Solutions AL ERO BLAB I LSA ROLE° R I LE NEUT ABYSM UMPS DOMO OPENBOOKEXAM AERATE EPICS ANDTHATSTHAT L OWS I RONHAND UN I SHUTEYE V I E M O NA L IS A DANE CASETHEJO I NT ABORT EVER LY LAWYERSDREAM ABEL I KEA NESTS RA NI FE LL IR IS H MRSC TEED ESSAY 3 6 9 7 8 4 2 5 1 4 7 1 5 3 2 8 6 9 2 8 5 9 1 6 3 7 4 7 1 6 2 5 9 4 3 8 9 3 2 4 7 8 5 1 6 8 5 4 1 6 3 9 2 7 6 2 7 8 9 5 1 4 3 5 9 3 6 4 1 7 8 2 1 4 8 3 2 7 6 9 5 ers, wind socks and pin wheels, along the side of the school and up its front walkway. At the end of the line of students marched Hyatt. Standing by her teacher, Erykah caught sight of her mother and pointed in what looked like disbelief before she raised her hand to her mouth and started crying. She started walking fast toward her mother before breaking into a run and falling into a hug that lasted minutes. "I didn't know they would do this today," said a still bemused Erykah after the parade. She knew her mother would be home soon, but wasn't sure when. She said she even thought maybe her mother was at school earlier that day, but it turned out simply to be her father with a birthday surprise. "I was thinking that my mom, I thought she was in the office this morning," Erykah said, explaining she was called to the office Monday morning, but it was because her father had dropped off cookies and balloons for her as a special birthday treat. Erykah said she was definitely surprised to see her mother walking at the end of the parade carrying a "Happy Birthday Erykah" banner. Her mother confessed the parade caught her off guard, too. Catina Hyatt said she thought her arrival would be a small affair, just inside her daughter's classroom. She had no idea it would be a fully coordinated spectacle with American flags, streamers and the national anthem. "I was nervous," she said, later adding, "I didn't know it was this big of an event." Dannelly Principal Emily Little said they had the idea to plan the surprise after pulling off a similar event Davis execution raises doubts of eyewitnesses FORCLOSURE 52 ac$14,900. Lender is selling at drastic reductions from original price, for quick exit, and providing superior By Russ Bynum financing as low as 2.75% writer I Associated Press fixed. Beautiful property, year round roads. UTR LLC SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - 1-877-358-5263. (ucan) When Georgia executed Troy Davis last week, it SIGNPOST POLICY brushed aside internationTHE SIGNPOST DOES al protests that too many NOT ENDORSE, PROMOTE witnesses had recanted OR ENCOURAGE THE trial testimony that he was PURCHASE OR SALE the gunman who killed a OF ANY PRODUCT OR police officer in 1989. SERVICE ADVERTISED The issue raised in DaIN THIS NEWSPAPER. vis' case, however, is getADVERTISEMENTS ARE ting harder to ignore. With THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY scientific studies showing OF THE ADVERTISER. the human memory can THE SIGNPOST HEREBY be surprisingly faulty, the DISCLAIMS ALL LIABILITY once-damning weight of FOR ANY DAMAGE eyewitness testimony has SUFFERED AS THE RESULT come under question in OF ANY ADVERTISEMENT IN THIS NEWSPAPER. courts and state legislaTHE SIGNPOST IS tures. Last month, New JerNOT RESPONSIBLE sey's top court made it easFOR ANY CLAIMS OR REPRESENTATIONS MADE ier for criminal defendants IN ADVERTISEMENTS IN to challenge the credibilTHIS NEWSPAPER. THE ity of eyewitnesses, while SIGNPOST HAS THE SOLE the U.S. Supreme Court is AUTHORITY TO EDIT AND set in November to hear LOCATE ANY CLASSIFIED its first case dealing with ADVERTISEMENT AS eyewitness evidence in DEEMED APPROPRIATE. 34 years. Such issues also THE SIGNPOST RESERVES played a role in the aboliTHE RIGHT TO REFUSE tion of Illinois' death penANY ADVERTISING. alty earlier this year and a 2009 law narrowing when capital punishment can be sought in Maryland. Davis' execution outraged hundreds of thousands of people who said they feared an innocent man was being put to death, based on his defense attorneys' assertion two years ago when another student's father came home that witnesses who had identified Davis in court from a deployment. Little said it's certainly as a killer two decades ago important to honor those had tried years later to take who serve, but events like it all back. Dorothy Ferrell Monday also remind stu- was one of those witnesses. "Well, I'm real sure, dents about the importance of what military men and positive sure, that that is him, and you know, it's not women do. "This just shows them ex- a mistaken identity" Feractly what the military do for rell told a Savannah jury in 1991. "I did see him and us," she said. Erykah's third-grade you know, on the fact of teacher, Wendy Williams, what happened and how it stood beside Erykah during happened, you know, I'm pretty sure it's him." the parade. Nine years later, Ferrell "We're glad to see Erykah and her mom reunited," she signed an affidavit saysaid, adding it really remind- ing she didn't actually see ed her of how she felt when the 1989 shooting of offher sister was deployed. "I duty police officer Mark had goose bumps for the MacPhail, but pointed at past two weeks. I would just Davis to tell police what they wanted to hear. get chills." Legal experts say Davis' Williams said for weeks now Erykah has anticipated case serves as an example her mother's homecom- in the debate over eyewiting and she's so pleased the ness reliability, particularly school could help make that in death penalty cases, when scientific studies day special. Erykah's father, Eric Hyatt, show the human memory helped Dannelly staffers co- can be surprisingly faulty. "There's going to be ordinate Monday's parade, even as his wife was unaware some broader discussions about whether the death of the details. He said it's been difficult penalty is viable at all, but for his family while his wife before that happens there's going to be efforts to rehas been away. "It's hard being a single form and see what can be parent," he said, adding done in states that believe he doesn't know how oth- in it and regularly use it," said Richard Dieter, execuers do it. Eric said he constantly tive director of the Death found himself trying to con- Penalty Information Censole his daughter and pro- ter, which opposes capivide her with information tal punishment. Even before Davis' exabout her mother and when ecution last Wednesday, she would be home. Now that she is home several states had reduced and in time to celebrate reliance on eyewitnesses. The Supreme Court of Erykah's ninth birthday, New Jersey, which abolthe Hyatts said they likely ished the death penalty in will celebrate with a quiet 2007, last month issued a family night. making it easier for "Whatever Erykah ruling criminal defendants in its wants to do," Catina state courts to get pre-trial Hyatt said. hearings challenging eye- Alabama soldier surprises daughter in parade writer I Associated Press 9 THE SIGNPOST witness evidence. It also requires judges to give juries more detailed instructions about potential flaws in eyewitness identifications. In 2009, Maryland lawmakers prohibited prosecutors from seeking death unless they have DNA evidence, a videotape of the crime or a videotaped confession from the suspect. "Eyewitness testimony is so horribly inaccurate - even under the very best of circumstances," said Rob Warden, director of the Chicago-based Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. "We should never depend on eyewitness testimony in death penalty cases." The center says that nationally, out of 138 defendants sentenced to death for murder and then later exonerated since the mid1970s, 32 had been convicted in whole or in part based on erroneous eyewitness testimony. As Illinois moved to abolish its death penalty in March, state officials cited Anthony Porter, who was condemned for a 1982 double murder based on eyewitness testimony that authorities later determined was false. Porter got a reprieve just two days before his execution in 1998, and was released from prison the following year. Meanwhile, a researcher who's been studying eyewitness issues for 30 years released a study this month that shows police can reduce chances that witnesses will mistakenly point to innocent people in lineups by adopting a few simple procedures. Gary Wells, an Iowa State University psychology professor, studied 497 instances of witnesses to real crimes looking at lineups on police computers in four states. He found that when witnesses looked at a group of photos all at once, they were more likely to compare faces and pick the one that most resembled the suspect - whether it was correct or not. The rate of wrong identifications declined, from 18 percent to 12 percent, when witnesses viewed the photos one at a time. Willis says the one-byone approach would also make in-person lineups more reliable. It also helps if the officer working with the witness doesn't know the suspect is, to avoid influencing the outcome. He says police should also tell witnesses it's OK if they can't pick a suspect out of a lineup. "These kinds of events that people witness, whether a victim or a bystander, often happen very quickly, they're unexpected," Wells said. "It's not like the only thing to look at is the perpetrator's face. There are other things going on; people fear for their safety." Prosecutors balk at the idea that people are sentenced to death based purely on eyewitness testimony. In Davis' case, for example, prosecutors used shell casings recovered from the scenes of two different shootings hours apart to link the crimes to Davis, who admitted being at both places when shots were fired. A firearms examiner testified it was likely, but not certain, the casings came from the same gun. Some witnesses who identified Davis as the killer have never backed off their stories. Scott Burns, director of the National District Attorneys Association, said advances in crime scene investigating technology have made it tougher for prosecutors to lean too heavily on eyewitnesses. He said he prosecuted a car-theft case in Utah years ago in which jurors asked if he had any DNA evidence. "It has raised the expectations of juries," Burns said. "People want all of their senses stimulated. They want to see pictures, they want to watch video." But eyewitness testimony remains a cornerstone of prosecutions, with many cases yielding very little physical evidence, said Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia. In his recent book "Convicting The Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong," Garrett looked at 190 criminal cases where eyewitnesses helped win convictions for a range of crimes that were later overturned by DNA evidence. He found that witnesses often seemed more confident in identifying suspects from the witness stand years later than they were when interviewed by police right after a crime. "You had these eyewitnesses almost without exception come into the courtroom and say they were absolutely certain they saw the defendant do the crime," Garrett said. "But more than half remembered being unsure at the time they saw their first lineup." Among the exoneration Garrett studied was that of John Jerome White, who spent nearly 30 years in a Georgia prison for rape until he was exonerated by DNA testing in 2007. The case came with a startling twist: after White's release, police arrested another man for the same crime - a man who had stood in the same police lineup with White in 1979. Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, said the legal system is poised to change how it handles eyewitness evidence. The U.S. Supreme Court in November is slated to hear a New Hampshire case that asks whether courts should throw out eyewitness testimony that's been influenced by friends and neighbors in the same way they would reject witnesses tainted by police. "The Troy Davis execution came at a time where we're at tipping point or there's critical mass concerning eyewitness reform," Scheck said, noting the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on the issue since 1977. "Thirtyfour years later, the science dictates it has to change." |