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Habe Lawson's Wrongful Conviction

In the early 1970s, a jury convicted Curtis Haybert “Habe” Lawson of a murder he claims he did not commit. Eyewitness testimonies and his previous criminal record persuaded the jury to convict him of murder. According to the Innocence Project , 2-5% of prisoners are innocent of the crime for which they were convicted. There are about 2 million prisoners in the U.S. Therefore, according to these statistics, 40,000-100,000 innocent people currently sit behind bars. Although Lawson claimed to be one of these people, he was never exonerated. Nevertheless, friends, family and Lawson himself - until his death in 2016 - have insisted he was wrongfully convicted. His story exemplifies some of the failings of the criminal justice system. According to Maurice Possley, the senior researcher for The National Exoneration Registry, there are six contributing factors to wrongful conviction. These factors are mistaken witness identification, false confession, false accusation (perju
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The Criminal Justice System Needs Improvement

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In 1981, Habe Lawson wrote to Dianne Tramutola-Lawson - a criminal justice activist - from prison, asking for her help. He had been convicted of a murder he didn’t commit in 1973. Dianne wrote back to him, then eventually started to visit him regularly. They got married by proxy in 1982. In 2001, the prison released Lawson to a halfway house, where he spent sixteen months before going home. After his homecoming, and up until his death in 2016, he mentored other recently released inmates. Tramutola-Lawson describes him as a very warm, loving person who did not deserve to be in jail for almost thirty years. Tramutola-Lawson thinks that the criminal justice system extends excessively long sentences. She believes that the maximum sentence should be for 20 years (except in outstanding cases), and that the system should do a better job in helping prisoners reintegrate into society. She says that “People are just people, they make mistakes.” Many people believe that the
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Sheriff Ken Katsaris on Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy: Ken Katsaris’ Perspective Between 1974 and 1978, serial killer Ted Bundy murdered at least 30 young women. He escaped captivity twice, then was finally captured a final time in 1978. Sheriff Ken Katsaris worked in Florida on the Ted Bundy case when Bundy committed murders there. One such case was at the Florida State University Chi Omega sorority house, where Bundy went into the house, murdered two women, and attacked several others. He oversaw Bundy’s capture, imprisonment, trial, and execution for the murders in Florida. How did you get into law enforcement? I was five years old when I had my first informant work. My father owned a restaurant around the corner from the police station. He always invited the police officers for leftover pie, donuts and coffee at the end of the day. They didn’t know, but he always made extra so that he’d have leftovers. I remember one detective said they were working a special case. The man, who was drunk, was half a block
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Collegiate Bullying - My Story

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*Warning - quotes have profanity In August 2017, at age 19, I transferred to the University of Colorado Boulder. Moving into my first apartment with a friend from high school and two unknown roommates seemed like an exciting step into the adult world. Little did I know that bullying doesn’t stop after 12th grade, and that this would be one of the hardest things I have ever endured. This adult experience that I was so excited for quickly turned into a nightmare. I signed the lease for one bedroom with high school friends. The leasing office  assigned two roommates to us, with the promise that, “ WE WILL ROOMMATE MATCH!” As it turned out, they matched me with my exact opposite. The apartment was two bedrooms, two bathrooms, with a shared living space for the four tenants. A measly 810 square feet, it offered just 202.5 square feet per person. Or 162 square feet, if you count a boyfriend living there illegally. I moved into the apartment, met one of the other gi
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