Hilo
About Ireland case
When DNA testing became available, a lot of cold cases were revisited, and all over the country people were released from jail because the new tests indicated that they had been wrongly convicted. Too often, the prosecuting attorneys continued to maintain that they had been correct and fought being overturned. They saw winning as more important than actual justice.
Locally, things were a little different. We had the Dana Ireland case, in which three men were convicted, even though the DNA evidence indicated that someone else had committed the rape.
In your newspaper article (Tribune-Herald, Dec. 31), I would much rather have read about what the scientific community thinks about the DNA evidence, instead of hearing the prosecutors’ spin on the situation.
At the end of the last trial, the prosecutors said that they needed to revisit the DNA evidence, but I haven’t heard anything further from them until this article 20 years later. Some fact-checking might be in order, because some of the things I read don’t match what I remember about the trials.
Frank Pauline Jr. never did “confess.” He indicated that he could identify the perpetrators in exchange for a deal releasing his brother from a drug-dealing charge. There was no talk about degraded DNA at the time of the trial; the evidence was presented as factual and then disregarded.
The bloody T-shirt that was mentioned by a prosecutor as proof of guilt was something found at the scene and was never proven to belong to anyone.
Our government officials mismanaged this case from the beginning to end. The almost irresistible incentives that were offered to obtain Shaun Schweitzer’s confession were part of the process to legitimize the situation. He didn’t offer any new information to answer lingering questions because he didn’t know anything. I certainly don’t recall that his confession was vetted using a polygraph test.
Unfortunately, the public here is gullible enough to believe the official story, and two innocent men are now in jail.
Charles Hanson
Mountain View
Dishonest beggers?
Has anyone noticed that it has become very popular to stand near Walmart with a cardboard sign asking for money or offering work? I offered one man a job, and he actually laughed at me.
I have been observing many of these people, and I think many of you would be interested in what I have seen. I have sympathy for destitute people, but many of these people are not destitute.
I witnessed, among others, three separate people on three separate occasions. A healthy young blonde man who, when he appeared to give up for the day, got into a lowered Lexus that he had parked on the other end of the parking lot and drove away. Another accepted a handout and immediately walked to a nice Chevy pickup, where his buddy was waiting with a beer and a smoke. A third took the money and immediately went into the store and came out with two huge beers.
Please, do not support this type of soliciting! There are many religious organizations and charitable groups that will help them. Why support a healthy young kid’s drug habit? Or a man’s alcoholism? It doesn’t help them. It hurts them.
Gregory Williams
Hilo