Word: harrington
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...England lept into modern sanitation when Sir John Harrington, godson of Elizabeth I, published Metamorphosis of Ajax, in which he described a new kind of water closet: a raised cistern with a small pipe down which water ran when released by a valve. The Queen installed Harrington's invention in her palace at Richmond, but it took another 200 years before a man named Alexander Cummings developed the S-shaped pipe underneath the basin to keep out foul odors. At the end of the 18th century, the flushable toilet went mainstream...
Sanders has a point: prosecutors build cases around eyewitnesses and uncooperative informants; holding them accountable for others' attempts to impede justice would hamper the entire judicial system. And yet, what of Harrington and McGhee? They were only 17 years old when they were convicted, and their story reads like something out of a John Grisham novel...
...black teenagers whose only connection to the murder came from the testimony of a teenage boy who was arrested for stealing a car. The boy gave three alternate versions of the murder, admitted to lying on multiple occasions, and was allegedly pressured by Hrvol and Richter into naming Harrington and McGhee...
Hrvol and Richter cannot be tried for knowingly putting a dishonest witness on the stand. They don't have to own up to the fact that they presented false evidence or coerced a witness's testimony. But fortunately for McGhee and Harrington, they did something on which the law is not completely clear - they didn't just present the evidence at trial, but also helped gather it. In an unusual move, the prosecutors aided detectives by canvassing the neighborhood and interviewing witnesses, and so their actions may not be covered by absolute immunity. That is what the Supreme Court will...
...McGhee and Harrington, it does matter. They spent 25 years behind bars for a crime that they almost certainly did not commit. And now the men have gone to the Supreme Court not for justice but for the simple right to seek...