Michael Kenneth McAllister Case

Michael Kenneth McAlister is well known due to the fact that he was sent to prison for 30 years when, actually the real criminal was still out there, free.


A young South Richmond woman was sexually abused and at the moment of the crime, she was able to pull up the plaid-shirted attacker’s stocking mask and get a look at his lower face and she was able to detect some facial characteristics of her rapist. She went to the police station and made complaint about it. The police officers made her identify the aggressor by the eyewitness method. She was not at all sure of which one was his aggressor, and she stayed 45 minutes in order to barely "recognize" him. After this period of time, she decided that McAlister´s face was the one which she saw. It must be clarified that McAlister was dressed in the picture as the way she described the aggressor, the same type of t-shirt. It could be inferred that this was one of the reasons of the wrongful eyewitness. And furthermore, the police officers told the abused girl that it was their main suspect, and this made her even more confident about her decision.




The McAlister family tried it's best to actually show that Michael was innocent, until 29 years
later, when his one-time lookalike, serial rapist Norman Bruce Derr confessed.

Police photos of Michael Kenneth McAlister (left) and Norman Bruce Derr that were used in McAlister's 1986 trial.

In granting the pardon, McAuliffe, the governor, said, “My staff and I have carefully and thoroughly reviewed the documentation in this case and concluded that a pardon is appropriate in light of the overwhelming evidence, including a recent confession by another individual, pointing to Mr. McAlister’s actual innocence of the crime for which he was convicted."

Mitigación

La palabra mitigar significa, por definición, atenuar o suavizar una cosa negativa, especialmente una enfermedad. Cómo lo podemos relacionar con el impacto ambiental? Simple. La idea de mitigar incluye a cada individuo y cada empresa, el concepto seria el de disminuir poco a poco el impacto que producimos sobre nuestro planeta. El impacto es casi inevitable, pero con pequeños cambios en nuestra vida cotidiana (por ejemplo, bombillas de bajo consumo) podemos reducir drasticamente nuestra huella.

Para dar unos pocos ejemplos, abajo dejo unas propuestas hechas por Greenpeace para tratar de mitigar en nuestro dia a dia.



Construcción sostenible: El diseño de los barrios debe tener en cuenta el entorno. Debe potenciarse la utilización de materiales en cuya extracción no se haya producido un deterioro del medio ambiente, como la madera certificada FSC.



Compostaje: La materia orgánica debe volver a la tierra para evitar su progresivo empobrecimiento y el uso de abonos artificiales. Por ello la parte orgánica de nuestras basuras puede recuperarse a través de un impulso al compostaje.



Transporte: Greenpeace propone una limitación del uso del coche en las ciudades y que se promueva de manera preferente al peatón, el uso de la bicicleta y el transporte público. En la actualidad la mitad de los desplazamientos en coche se realizan a menos de 3 kms. de distancia, y un 10% son para trayectos de menos de 500 metros