Legal group in Iowa aims to review convictions
The odds of a judge overturning a murder conviction in Iowa are minute, but a handful of lawyers are out to change that.
The lawyers have created the state's first innocence project to investigate alleged cases of wrongful conviction. The all-volunteer effort promises to increase the chances that more Iowa inmates will be exonerated for crimes they didn't commit, national experts say.
"There's no question that we have more of these cases now - there have been more than 1,300 documented exonerations in the U.S. going back to the 1800s," said Rob Warden, who heads one of the country's most successful innocence projects at Northwestern University. "Before we had modern science, they were rare. Now with DNA evidence and more innocence projects, they are much more common."
One case in Iowa that doesn't involve DNA but has the potential for a first-degree murder conviction being overturned is that of David Flores. Des Moines police admitted in court this month that they did not give Flores' lawyers a 1996 FBI report in which another man was named a suspect in the shooting death of bank executive Phyllis Davis.
Flores has served 12 years in prison. He is expected to have a hearing next month at which Polk County District Judge Don Nickerson will be asked to decide whether Flores' conviction should be vacated because the evidence that was withheld could have changed the outcome of his trial.