Ryan Ferguson Loses Appeal
I have been following the Ryan Ferguson case since 2006 when I first saw it air on 48 Hours. I immediately believed Ryan Ferguson was innocent from the very first interview I saw of him, and I was sad that he was serving time for a crime that he didn’t commit.
I held out great hope that Ryan would be freed as people came out and started backtracking on their stories–the stories that were used to convicted Ryan. And I held out the greatest hope that his latest appeal by Kathleen Zellner, who I highly respect, would be granted, but sadly last week while I was out of town training professionals, I got the word his appeal was denied.
To say that I am very upset is an understatement. This is a huge injustice being done to an innocent man. The judge in the case, Green stated in his ruling that Ryan did not prove his “actual innocence” in the killing of Kent Heitholt, a sports editor at the Columbia Daily Tribune.
Eriely, Green’s ruling came exactly 11 years to the day that Heitholt was killed.
As someone who is an expert in deception, I have always struggled with proving, and showing innocence. How do you do it? I think for someone to have to prove this standard, we need to define exactly how this is done because the only way I know to prove innocence is to show any lack of involvement, which Ryan has proven without a doubt.
I’d personally like to ask the judge, how does one meet this standard of actual innocence? How does one prove it? What are the guidelines for this?
It’s easy to prove guilt. It is much, much more difficult to prove innocence.
