Monday, July 20, 2015

Mark Weiner conviction vacated: Chelsea Steiniger text case finally overturned.

Mark Weiner conviction vacated: Chelsea Steiniger text case finally overturned.:
Three years ago, one of the strangest criminal cases in recent memory began in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live, when a young woman sent a series of text messages telling her boyfriend that a man had abducted her, followed by a series of texts, allegedly from her captor, taunting her boyfriend with threats of sexual violence.
Her story was strange, and the case was fraught with complications from the get-go, but the accused ended up in prison long after the doubts outweighed the evidence.
This story is bizarre, but it’s not all that unusual: 
Prosecutors can prosecute even the weakest, most clearly flawed cases relentlessly, and innocent people can end up in jail.
This week, after two and a half years in prison, Mark Weiner saw his conviction vacated.
It finally ended a saga in which Weiner was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to eight years in jail on charges of abducting a woman with the intent to sexually harm her.
The story began on a December night in 2012. Weiner, then a 52-year-old man who managed a local Food Lion and attended night classes at a local community college, stopped and picked up 20-year-old Chelsea Steiniger, who was walking from a convenience store to her mother’s house..."
Read on!

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