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An Oklahoma man used pandemic relief funds to have his name cleared of murder_我的网站

A |     GREENWOOD, Ark. -- Ricky Dority spends most of his days playing with his grandchildren, feeding chickens and working in the yard where he lives with his son's family.It's a jarring change from where he was just several months ago, locked in a cell serving a life prison sentence at Oklahoma's Joseph Harp Correctional Center in a killing he said he didn't commit. After more than two decades behind bars, Dority had no chance at being released — until he used his pandemic relief funds to hire a dogged private investigator. The investigator and students at the Oklahoma Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University, which is dedicated to exonerating wrongful convictions in the state, found inconsistencies in the state's account of a 1997 cold-case killing, and Dority's conviction was vacated in June by a Sequoyah County judge.Now, the 65-year-old says he’s enjoying the 5-acre property in a quiet neighborhood of well-to-do homes in the rolling, forested hills of the Arkansas River Valley outside of Fort Smith. “If you’re gone for a lot of years, you don’t take it for granted anymore.”Dority is one of nearly 3,400 people who have been exonerated across the country since 1989, mostly over murder convictions, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. In Oklahoma, there have been more than 43 exonerations in that time, not including three new exonerations this year. The cases underscore a serious problem facing a judicial system in which many old convictions resulted from overworked defense attorneys, shoddy forensic work, overzealous prosecutors and outdated investigative techniques.The problem is particularly acute given Oklahoma's history of sending people to death row, where 11 inmates have been exonerated since 1981. The issue has pushed a Republican-led legislative panel to consider whether a death penalty moratorium should be imposed.In Oklahoma County, Glynn Ray Simmons was freed after spending nearly 50 years in prison, including time on death row, in a 1974 killing after a judge determined prosecutors failed to turn over evidence in the case, including a police report that showed an eyewitness might have identified other suspects.And just this week, Perry Lott, who served more than 30 years in prison, had his rape and burglary conviction vacated in Pontotoc County after new DNA testing excluded him as the perpetrator. Pontotoc County, in particular, has come under intense scrutiny for a series of wrongful convictions in the 1980s that have been the subject of numerous books, including John Grisham’s “The Innocent Man,” which he produced into a six-part documentary on Netflix. The most common causes of wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentification, misapplication of forensic science, false confessions, coerced pleas and official misconduct, generally by police or prosecutors, according to the Innocence Project, a national organization based in New York.In Dority's case, he said he was railroaded by an overzealous sheriff and a state prosecutor eager to solve the killing of 28-year-old Mitchell Nixon, who was found beaten to death in 1997.Investigators who reopened the case in 2014 coerced a confession from another man, Rex Robbins, according to Andrea Miller, the legal director of the Oklahoma Innocence Project. Robbins, who would plead guilty to manslaughter in Nixon's killing, implicated Dority, who at the time was in a federal prison on a firearms conviction. Dority said he knew he didn't have anything to do with the crime and found paperwork that proved he had been arrested on the day of the killing.“I thought I was clear because I knew I didn’t have anything do with that murder,” Dority said. “But they tried me for it and found me guilty of it.”Jurors heard about Robbins' confession and testimony from a police informant who said Dority had changed bloody clothes at his house the night of the killing. They convicted him of first-degree murder and recommended a sentence of life without parole.After years in prison, while most inmates spent their federal COVID-19 relief check in the commissary, Dority used his to hire a private investigator, he said. Bobby Staton had mostly investigated insurance fraud, but he took on the case and realized quickly that it was riddled with holes, Staton said. He eventually turned to the university's Oklahoma Innocence Project, which assigned a law student, Abby Brawner, to help investigate.Their investigation turned when Staton and Brawner visited Robbins in the maximum-security Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite, and he recanted his statement implicating Dority. “It was pretty intimidating,” Brawner said. “Especially when you're going in to meet someone who doesn't know you're coming and doesn't want to talk to you.”Brawner and Staton also learned the informant didn't live at the home where he told investigators Staton showed up in bloody clothes. When the actual homeowner testified at a hearing this summer, the judge dismissed the case.Dority's original attorneys were ineffective for not discovering the informant didn't live at the home, the judge said, giving prosecutors 90 days to decide whether they will retry him. That three months has been extended, and prosecutors have said they intend to ask the judge for more time for DNA testing. Dority, confident in his innocence, said he's not concerned about additional forensic testing.Sequoyah County District Attorney Jack Thorp and former Sheriff Ron Lockhart did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. But Assistant District Attorney James Dunn, who is overseeing the case and was not in the office when it was originally prosecuted, said he agreed with the judge's dismissal after hearing the homeowner's testimony and learning a witness “was not credible.” “The last thing I want to see is an innocent person in prison for a crime they didn't commit," Dunn said. "Because that means the person who actually did commit the crime, or those persons, are still out there.” Meanwhile, Dority is learning to use a smartphone and the television remote control, he said. He's thankful to Staton and the Innocence Project and says his case proves others are wrongfully imprisoned in Oklahoma.“After they’ve done what they’ve done to me, I know there are people in that prison who are innocent that need to be out and need help getting out,” he said. “If they hadn’t gotten me out, I’d have been in there for the rest of my life.”。    12月12日，国家统计局发布2024年粮食产量数据公告。数据显示，我省粮食产量达500.06亿斤，位居全国第十二；粮食单产为931.88斤/亩，位居全国第四、粮食主产省第二，亩产比全国平均水平高142.4斤；播种面积达5366.25万亩。         　　从全国来看，粮食总产量达到14130亿斤，同比增长1.6%，首次迈上1.4万亿斤新台阶。

B | 今年我省粮食产量继续稳定在500亿斤以上，表明我省粮食主产省的地位持续巩固。

C |          　　毫不松懈稳面积。我省始终把粮食生产作为“三农”工作的头等大事，及时出台支持粮食生产一揽子政策，向农户发放玉米大豆生产者补贴、稻谷生产者补贴、耕地地力保护补贴资金84.1亿元，调动农民种粮积极性，今年全省粮食播种面积继续稳定在5300万亩以上，为夺取丰收奠定了坚实基础。         　　全力以赴降损失。今年汛期，我省局部地区降雨偏多，全省上下以汛为令，积极采取有力措施降低影响，第一时间筹措省级救灾资金1000万元、争取中央救灾资金1亿元，支持疏通沟渠、抢排积水、追施肥料、恢复生产。认真实施“一喷多促”项目，落实资金8310万元，组织喷施叶面肥、植物生长调节剂等肥料药剂877.9万亩，促进作物灾后恢复、生长发育、灌浆成熟和产量提升。         　　全力以赴提单产。我省指导辽西地区和排水条件较好地区等未受灾地区，切实加强中后期田间管理，提高单产水平，弥补受灾地区损失。同时，大力实施“藏粮于地、藏粮于技”各项举措，新建和改造提升高标准农田316万亩，实施黑土地保护工程1000万亩，耕地地力进一步提升。玉米、大豆单产提升工程项目县由2个增加到11个，阜新、朝阳等地涌现一批“吨粮田”，大豆300亩连片项目区实现亩产681.1斤，创造了东北地区大豆大面积实测高产纪录。此外，未受灾地块“以丰补歉”和众多工程项目的有力支撑，也为我省今年粮食单产水平继续稳定在较高水平创造了条件。                    责任编辑：李丹。

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