Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Durham-in-Wonderland

Criminal Law

: Durham-in-Wonderland

Pottawatamie County & Nifong

By K.C. Johnson

In 1978, in Iowa?s Pottawattamie County, a retired police officer working as a security guard was murdered. Police and prosecutorial attention rapidly focused on Curtis McGhee and Terry Harrington. The two suspects were tried, convicted, and imprisoned for more than two decades. But, it turns out, massive misconduct occurred in the case. The prosecutors never informed defense lawyers that police had another suspect in the killing. Nor did they reveal that they seem to have coached a key witness in the case to give fabricated evidence against McGhee and Harrington. When this information surfaced, in 2002, the Iowa Supreme Court vacated one conviction, and the other defendant accepted a plea bargain allowing him to go free immediately. Both McGhee and Harrington then filed suit against the police department and against the two prosecutors, Joseph Hrvol and David Richter, who had manufactured the evidence against them...continue to full post

Full post as published by Durham-in-Wonderland on October 19, 2009 (boomark / email).