James Joseph Richardson
   HOME
*





James Joseph Richardson
James Joseph Richardson (born December 26, 1935) is an African-American man who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1968 for the October 1967 mass murder of his seven children. They died after eating a poisoned breakfast containing the organic phosphate pesticide parathion. At the time of the murders, Richardson was a migrant farm worker in Arcadia, Florida living with his wife Annie Mae Richardson and their children. At a trial in Fort Myers, Florida, the jury found him guilty of murdering the children and sentenced him to death. As a result of the United States Supreme Court's 1972 ''Furman v. Georgia'' decision finding the death penalty unconstitutional, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was then exonerated in 1989 after 21 years, when his case was revisited by appointed Miami-Dade County prosecutor Janet Reno. Following Richardson's exoneration, the babysitter of the Richardson children, Bessie Reece, has been named as the key suspect. Reec ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Miscarriage Of Justice
A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal procedure, criminal or civil procedure, civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they actual innocence, did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation. Academic studies have found that the main factors contributing to miscarriages of justice are: eyewitness identification, eyewitness misidentification; faulty forensic analysis; false confessions by vulnerable suspects; perjury and lies stated by witnesses; police misconduct, misconduct by police, prosecutorial misconduct, prosecutors or judicial miscondu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida and Cuba; it is the only state that borders both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Spanning , Florida ranks 22nd in area among the 50 states, and with a population of over 21 million, it is the third-most populous. The state capital is Tallahassee, and the most populous city is Jacksonville. The Miami metropolitan area, with a population of almost 6.2 million, is the most populous urban area in Florida and the ninth-most populous in the United States; other urban conurbations with over one million people are Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Jacksonville. Various Native American groups have inhabited Florida for at least 14,000 years. In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León became the first k ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Brady Material
''Brady'' disclosure consists of exculpatory or impeaching information and evidence that is material to the guilt or innocence or to the punishment of a defendant. The term comes from the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case ''Brady v. Maryland'', in which the Supreme Court ruled that suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to a defendant who has requested it violates due process. Following ''Brady'', the prosecutor must disclose evidence or information that would prove the innocence of the defendant or would enable the defense to more effectively impeach the credibility of government witnesses. Evidence that would serve to reduce the defendant's sentence must also be disclosed by the prosecution. In practice this doctrine has often proved difficult to enforce. Some states have established their own laws to try to strengthen enforcement against prosecutorial misconduct in this area. Definition of the ''Brady'' rule The ''Brady'' doctrine is a pretrial discovery rule that wa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Robert Martinez
Robert Martinez (born December 25, 1934) is an American retired politician who served as the 40th governor of Florida from 1987 to 1991. A member of the Republican Party, Martinez was the first person of Spanish descent to be elected governor of Florida. Martinez was born and raised in Tampa, Florida, attended the University of Tampa, and began his career as an educator in the local public school system and then the University of Tampa. In 1965, he was named the director of the local teachers' union, a position he held during the Florida statewide teachers' strike of 1968. He first entered politics with an unsuccessful run for mayor of Tampa in 1974, then won the office in Tampa's next mayoral election in 1979 and was reelected in 1983. During his second term as mayor, Martinez switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, upsetting some supporters in heavily Democratic Tampa. He resigned the position in 1986 to focus on his ultimately successful campaign for the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term memory, remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include primary progressive aphasia, problems with language, Orientation (mental), disorientation (including easily getting lost), mood swings, loss of motivation, self-neglect, and challenging behaviour, behavioral issues. As a person's condition declines, they often withdraw from family and society. Gradually, bodily functions are lost, ultimately leading to death. Although the speed of progression can vary, the typical life expectancy following diagnosis is three to nine years. The cause of Alzheimer's disease is poorly understood. There are many environmental and genetic risk factors associated with its development. The strongest genetic risk factor is from an alle ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lee County, Florida
Lee County is located in Southwest Florida on the Gulf Coast. As of the 2020 census, the population was 760,822. The county seat is Fort Myers (with a population of 86,395 as of the 2020 census), and the largest city is Cape Coral with an estimated 2020 population of 194,016. The county comprises the Cape Coral–Fort Myers, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area. Lee County was created in 1887 from Monroe County. Fort Myers is the county seat and a center of tourism in Southwest Florida. It is about south of Tampa at the meeting point of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caloosahatchee River.Jane Colihan
"Spring Break", ''American Heritage'', February/March 2006
Lee County is the home for spring training of the

picture info

Writ Of Habeas Corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether the detention is lawful. The writ of ''habeas corpus'' was described in the eighteenth century by William Blackstone as a "great and efficacious writ in all manner of illegal confinement". It is a summons with the force of a court order; it is addressed to the custodian (a prison official, for example) and demands that a prisoner be brought before the court, and that the custodian present proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether the custodian has lawful authority to detain the prisoner. If the custodian is acting beyond their authority, then the prisoner must be released. Any prisoner, or another person acting on their behalf, may petition the court, or a judge, for a w ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Joel Atkins
Joel Elvin Atkins (d. October 5 1997) was the Senior Pastor of Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church for 42 years until his death in 1997. He was a church leader and local president of the Winter Haven, Florida chapter of the NAACP before becoming the NAACP's statewide leader. He was an organizer on integration and civil rights efforts in the state. Personal life Theodosia Sarah Owens Atkins was his wife of 50 years. His longtime friendship with Jack Young led to his involvement in advocating on behalf of James Joseph Richardson. He died in Miami on Sunday the October 5, 1997, at the age of 75. He left behind his wife and four children. Activism Joel Elvin Atkins was president of a local chapter of the NAACP in Winter Haven, Florida He became president of the state chapter and challenged Florida governor Claude Kirk's obstruction and delay attempts of school busing Race-integration busing in the United States (also known simply as busing, Integrated busing or by its critic ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells. Leaders of the organization included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins. Its mission in the 21st century is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination". National NAACP initiatives include political lobbying, publicity efforts and litigation strategies developed by its legal team. The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct, the status of black foreign refugees and questions of economic development. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the once common term ''colored people,'' referring to tho ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Mark Lane (author)
Mark Lane (February 24, 1927 – May 10, 2016) was an American attorney, New York state legislator, civil rights activist, and Vietnam war-crimes investigator. Sometimes referred to as a gadfly, Lane is best known as a leading researcher, author, and conspiracy theorist on the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. From his 1966 number-one bestselling critique of the Warren Commission, ''Rush to Judgment'', to ''Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK'', published in 2011, Lane wrote at least four major works on the JFK assassination and no fewer than ten books overall. Early career Mark Lane was born in The Bronx, New York, the son of Harry Arnold and Elizabeth Levin (Levin was changed to Lane in the 1920s), and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He served in United States Army after World War II from 1945 to 1946 and was stationed in Austria. After attending Long Island University, he received a Bachelor of Laws from Brooklyn Law School in 1951 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

DeSoto County, Florida
DeSoto County is a county located at the tropical/humid subtropical line which means the Florida Heartland, central portion of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 33,976. Its county seat is Arcadia. DeSoto County comprises the Arcadia, FL Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the North Port-Sarasota, FL Combined Statistical Area. History Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, what is now DeSoto County was within the territory of the Calusa Indians. In 1513, Ponce De Leon sailed into present-day Charlotte Harbor near the mouth of the Peace River to put in for repairs and maintenance on his ships. While there the Spanish encountered Calusa Indians and soon after an argument broke out and several died on both sides. Then the Spanish kidnapped several Calusa and departed Charlotte Harbor and sailed S.W. away from the west coast of Florida. This occurred within the original boundaries of DeSoto County. In 1521, Ponce De Leon atte ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Exoneration
Exoneration occurs when the conviction for a crime is reversed, either through demonstration of innocence, a flaw in the conviction, or otherwise. Attempts to exonerate convicts are particularly controversial in death penalty cases, especially where new evidence is put forth after the execution has taken place. The transitive verb, "to exonerate" can also mean to informally absolve one from blame. The term "exoneration" also is used in criminal law to indicate a surety bail bond has been satisfied, completed, and exonerated. The judge orders the bond exonerated; the clerk of court time stamps the original bail bond power and indicates exonerated as the judicial order. Based on DNA evidence DNA evidence is a relatively new instrument of exoneration. The first convicted defendant from a United States prison to be released on account of DNA testing was David Vasquez, who had been convicted of homicide, in 1989. Recently, DNA evidence has been used to exonerate a number of persons e ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]