New York State To Wrongfully Convicted: It's Kinda Your Fault You Confessed

Albert Samaha

In 1996, Daniel Gristwood was convicted of attempted murder. He had been accused of viciously beating his wife in the upstate New York town of Clay. Prosecutors had presented a signed confession and the jury needed just six hours of deliberation before declaring him guilty.

But it turned out that Gristwood did not attack his wife, as state troopers had coerced a false confession. In 2003, another man, Mastho Davis, confessed to the attack, and two years later Gristwood was exonerated. In 2011, a New York Court of Claims judge ordered the state to pay him $5.5 million, citing that the coerced confession had caused the nine-year wrongful imprisonment.

New York state, however, does not think it should have to pay. The attorney general's office appealed the ruling in the Appellate Division of Rochester Supreme Court. The trial began on Wednesday.

Gristwood had discovered his wife's body when he returned home from work in January 1996. She had been beaten with a hammer, but was still living. She would be brain damaged and paralyzed. She died earlier this year.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/05/daniel_gristwood_wrongful_conviction_payment_state_appeal.php