"THE WRONGED MAN' (World Television Premiere)
Airs Sunday, January 17th at 8:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM PT on Lifetime Movie Network
Janet Gregory (Ormond), a single mother with a haunting past, is a paralegal struggling to overcome doubts about Calvin Willis (Ali), an African-American husband and father wrongfully accused of raping a neighborhood girl. Eventually convinced of his innocence, Janet takes Calvin’s pro bono case and wages a dramatic and stormy 22-year battle with the justice system that ultimately redeems an unjustly accused man and cements a life-long friendship.
Watch a Preview on YouTube.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Liberty Has Been Lost by Paul Craig Roberts
The following opinion was originally published by OpEd News on January 5, 2010.
Liberty Has Been Lost
By Paul Craig Roberts
I had just finished reading the uncensored edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book, In The First Circle (Harper Perennial, 2009), when I came across Chris Hedges' article, "One Day We'll All Be Terrorists" (Truthdig, Dec. 28, 2009). In Hedges' description of the US government's treatment of American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi, I recognized the Stalinist legal system as portrayed by Solzhenitsyn.
Hashmi has been held in solitary confinement going on three years. Guantanamo's practices have migrated to the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan where Hashmi is held in the Special Housing Unit. His access to attorneys, family, and other prisoners is prevented or severely curtailed. He must clean himself and use toilet facilities on camera. He is let out of solitary for one hour every 24 hours to exercise in a cage.
Hashmi is a US citizen but his government has violated every right guaranteed to him by the Constitution. The US government, in violation of US law, is also subjecting Hashmi to psychological torture known as extreme sensory deprivation. The bogus "evidence" against him is classified and denied to him. Like Joseph K. in Kafka's The Trial, Hashmi is under arrest on secret evidence. As the case against him is unknown or non-existent, defense is impossible.
Hashmi's rights have been abrogated by his government with the allegation that he is a potential terrorist or perhaps just a terrorist sympathizer. Another American citizen, Junaid Babar stayed with Hashmi for two weeks and allegedly delivered ponchos and socks to al Qaeda in Pakistan. Allegedly Babar used Hashmi's cell phone to reach others aiding terrorists. The US government says that this suffices to implicate Hashmi in Babar's activities.
Babar made a plea bargain to five counts of "material support" for terrorism, but is working off his prison sentence by testifying as a government witness in other terror trials, including in Canada and the UK, and as the US government's only evidence against Hashmi.
Hashmi's real offense is that he is a Muslim activist defending Muslim civil liberties and making provocative statements about the US. As Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has pointed out, federal courts have given the US government wide latitude to use Hashmi's exercise of his constitutionally protected rights to free speech and association as evidence of a terrorist frame of mind and, thereby, of intent to commit terrorism.
Brooklyn College professor Jeanne Theoharis warns us that an American citizen can now be tried on secret evidence. "You can spend years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantanamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi."
Indeed, Hedges reports that "radical activists in the environmental, [anti]-globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism." Hedges warns: "This corruption of our legal system will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later."
The silence of bar associations and law schools indicates an astounding insouciance to Thomas Paine's warning: "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." Some of my Republican and conservative acquaintances are even gleeful that, finally, we are going to get tough and deal forcibly with "these people." They naively believe that they themselves will remain safe when law ceases to be a shield of the people and becomes a weapon in the hands of government.
In "A Man For All Seasons," Sir Thomas More cautions against cutting the law down in order to chase after devils, for with the law cut down, where do we stand when the devil turns on us?
Clearly, these fundamental questions are of no concern to the US Department of Justice (sic), to Congress or the White House, to the "mainstream media," to the American people, or even to very much of the federal judiciary.
Glenn Greenwald pointed out in Salon (Dec. 4, 2009) that the Convention Against Torture, championed and signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the US Senate, states: "Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency may be invoked as a justification of torture. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offenses under its criminal law."
Two decades later the US government tortures at will. Justice (sic) Department officials write memos authorizing torture despite the ratified Convention Against Torture, US law, and the Geneva Conventions. The Pew Poll reports that 67 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of Democrats support the use of torture.
And Americans think they have freedom and democracy and live under the protection of the rule of law.
The law is lost, and with it American liberty.
___________________________________________________
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous academic appointments. He has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, was published by Random House in March, 2008.
Liberty Has Been Lost
By Paul Craig Roberts
I had just finished reading the uncensored edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book, In The First Circle (Harper Perennial, 2009), when I came across Chris Hedges' article, "One Day We'll All Be Terrorists" (Truthdig, Dec. 28, 2009). In Hedges' description of the US government's treatment of American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi, I recognized the Stalinist legal system as portrayed by Solzhenitsyn.
Hashmi has been held in solitary confinement going on three years. Guantanamo's practices have migrated to the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan where Hashmi is held in the Special Housing Unit. His access to attorneys, family, and other prisoners is prevented or severely curtailed. He must clean himself and use toilet facilities on camera. He is let out of solitary for one hour every 24 hours to exercise in a cage.
Hashmi is a US citizen but his government has violated every right guaranteed to him by the Constitution. The US government, in violation of US law, is also subjecting Hashmi to psychological torture known as extreme sensory deprivation. The bogus "evidence" against him is classified and denied to him. Like Joseph K. in Kafka's The Trial, Hashmi is under arrest on secret evidence. As the case against him is unknown or non-existent, defense is impossible.
Hashmi's rights have been abrogated by his government with the allegation that he is a potential terrorist or perhaps just a terrorist sympathizer. Another American citizen, Junaid Babar stayed with Hashmi for two weeks and allegedly delivered ponchos and socks to al Qaeda in Pakistan. Allegedly Babar used Hashmi's cell phone to reach others aiding terrorists. The US government says that this suffices to implicate Hashmi in Babar's activities.
Babar made a plea bargain to five counts of "material support" for terrorism, but is working off his prison sentence by testifying as a government witness in other terror trials, including in Canada and the UK, and as the US government's only evidence against Hashmi.
Hashmi's real offense is that he is a Muslim activist defending Muslim civil liberties and making provocative statements about the US. As Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has pointed out, federal courts have given the US government wide latitude to use Hashmi's exercise of his constitutionally protected rights to free speech and association as evidence of a terrorist frame of mind and, thereby, of intent to commit terrorism.
Brooklyn College professor Jeanne Theoharis warns us that an American citizen can now be tried on secret evidence. "You can spend years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantanamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi."
Indeed, Hedges reports that "radical activists in the environmental, [anti]-globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism." Hedges warns: "This corruption of our legal system will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later."
The silence of bar associations and law schools indicates an astounding insouciance to Thomas Paine's warning: "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." Some of my Republican and conservative acquaintances are even gleeful that, finally, we are going to get tough and deal forcibly with "these people." They naively believe that they themselves will remain safe when law ceases to be a shield of the people and becomes a weapon in the hands of government.
In "A Man For All Seasons," Sir Thomas More cautions against cutting the law down in order to chase after devils, for with the law cut down, where do we stand when the devil turns on us?
Clearly, these fundamental questions are of no concern to the US Department of Justice (sic), to Congress or the White House, to the "mainstream media," to the American people, or even to very much of the federal judiciary.
Glenn Greenwald pointed out in Salon (Dec. 4, 2009) that the Convention Against Torture, championed and signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the US Senate, states: "Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency may be invoked as a justification of torture. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offenses under its criminal law."
Two decades later the US government tortures at will. Justice (sic) Department officials write memos authorizing torture despite the ratified Convention Against Torture, US law, and the Geneva Conventions. The Pew Poll reports that 67 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of Democrats support the use of torture.
And Americans think they have freedom and democracy and live under the protection of the rule of law.
The law is lost, and with it American liberty.
___________________________________________________
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous academic appointments. He has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, was published by Random House in March, 2008.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Philadelphia Inquirer: Death Row Diminished
The following editorial was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on January 4, 2010.
Editorial: Death row diminished
States are sentencing fewer defendants to death, a likely result of a system that is increasingly costly and unreliable.
Nationwide last year, the fewest death sentences were handed out - 106 - since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. It is the seventh straight year of decline. Ten years ago, 284 defendants were sentenced to death.
Since the use of DNA evidence has become more prevalent, it is growing clearer with each passing year that the death penalty is unreliable. Since 1973, 139 people have been freed from death row, primarily due to to irrefutable scientific evidence of their innocence. Ninety-one of those condemned prisoners have been released since 1993.
Nine men were freed from death row last year alone, after spending a combined 121 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.
A system that sentences 139 innocent people to death cannot be counted on to deliver justice fairly. Those 139 defendants avoided execution, but there's convincing evidence that at least one person, Cameron Todd Willingham of Texas, was put to death in 2004 for arson deaths that turned out not to be a case of arson at all. Undoubtedly there have been more like him.
Eleven states last year considered abolishing the death penalty; New Mexico was the only one of those states to outlaw capital punishment. New Jersey abolished it in 2007, after spending more than $200 million on a system that executed no prisoners.
Thirty-five states, including Pennsylvania and Delaware, still have the death penalty. But of those 35, only 11 carried out executions in 2009. Nearly half of them occurred in Texas.
The number of executions rose in 2009 to 52, from 37 the previous year. But that was largely due to an unofficial moratorium for several months in 2008 while the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of lethal injections. The number of executions last year was 47 percent lower than 10 years ago.
Pennsylvania has executed three men since 1976, none since Gary Heidnick in 1999. Twice as many people, six, have been freed from death row during that time because they were innocent. Since 1983, 21 death-row inmates in the state died of natural causes or suicide.
Yet the state has the fourth-largest death row in the nation, with 225 inmates as of July 1. And the cost of maintaining the capital-punishment system is enormous. A study in Maryland in 2008 estimated that the average cost to taxpayers of each case in which a death sentence was imposed was $3 million.
The death penalty is costly and unreliable, but it is not a deterrent. Texas, which leads the nation in executions, had a murder rate in 2008 of 5.6 per 100,000 population - the same rate as Pennsylvania. New Jersey and New York, which no longer have the death penalty, have murder rates of 4.3 per 100,000. Massachusetts, also without capital punishment, has a murder rate of 2.6 per 100,000.
Of the states that don't have capital punishment, only Michigan had a murder rate higher than 5.0.
The death penalty is too costly, it jeopardizes innocent people, and it doesn't deter crime. Increasingly, judges and juries are coming to the same sensible conclusion.
Editorial: Death row diminished
States are sentencing fewer defendants to death, a likely result of a system that is increasingly costly and unreliable.
Nationwide last year, the fewest death sentences were handed out - 106 - since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. It is the seventh straight year of decline. Ten years ago, 284 defendants were sentenced to death.
Since the use of DNA evidence has become more prevalent, it is growing clearer with each passing year that the death penalty is unreliable. Since 1973, 139 people have been freed from death row, primarily due to to irrefutable scientific evidence of their innocence. Ninety-one of those condemned prisoners have been released since 1993.
Nine men were freed from death row last year alone, after spending a combined 121 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.
A system that sentences 139 innocent people to death cannot be counted on to deliver justice fairly. Those 139 defendants avoided execution, but there's convincing evidence that at least one person, Cameron Todd Willingham of Texas, was put to death in 2004 for arson deaths that turned out not to be a case of arson at all. Undoubtedly there have been more like him.
Eleven states last year considered abolishing the death penalty; New Mexico was the only one of those states to outlaw capital punishment. New Jersey abolished it in 2007, after spending more than $200 million on a system that executed no prisoners.
Thirty-five states, including Pennsylvania and Delaware, still have the death penalty. But of those 35, only 11 carried out executions in 2009. Nearly half of them occurred in Texas.
The number of executions rose in 2009 to 52, from 37 the previous year. But that was largely due to an unofficial moratorium for several months in 2008 while the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of lethal injections. The number of executions last year was 47 percent lower than 10 years ago.
Pennsylvania has executed three men since 1976, none since Gary Heidnick in 1999. Twice as many people, six, have been freed from death row during that time because they were innocent. Since 1983, 21 death-row inmates in the state died of natural causes or suicide.
Yet the state has the fourth-largest death row in the nation, with 225 inmates as of July 1. And the cost of maintaining the capital-punishment system is enormous. A study in Maryland in 2008 estimated that the average cost to taxpayers of each case in which a death sentence was imposed was $3 million.
The death penalty is costly and unreliable, but it is not a deterrent. Texas, which leads the nation in executions, had a murder rate in 2008 of 5.6 per 100,000 population - the same rate as Pennsylvania. New Jersey and New York, which no longer have the death penalty, have murder rates of 4.3 per 100,000. Massachusetts, also without capital punishment, has a murder rate of 2.6 per 100,000.
Of the states that don't have capital punishment, only Michigan had a murder rate higher than 5.0.
The death penalty is too costly, it jeopardizes innocent people, and it doesn't deter crime. Increasingly, judges and juries are coming to the same sensible conclusion.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Washington Post: Innocents in prison
The following editorial was published by the Washington Post on December 27, 2009.
THREE DAYS after Donald E. Gates was released from prison after serving 28 years for a murder he didn't commit, federal prosecutors acknowledged that they received, but failed to act on, information discrediting testimony key to his conviction. In the same week, a Florida man imprisoned for 35 years for kidnapping and rape was freed after DNA tests proved his innocence. As appalling as the two cases are, what's even scarier is the thought that imperfections in the criminal justice system will go uncorrected and more people could be wrongly jailed.
The wrongful conviction of Mr. Gates in the 1981 rape and murder of a D.C. woman and that of James Bain in the 1974 assault of a 9-year-old boy could serve as primers for what's wrong with the system. In Mr. Bain's case, it was reliance on identification from an unreliable eyewitness: a traumatized 9-year-old. Witness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions, contributing to more than 75 percent of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide, the Innocence Project reported.
The second biggest cause is faulty forensics, and that played a starring role in Mr. Gates's conviction. A FBI special agent testified that two pubic hairs found on the victim's body were microscopically identical to those of Mr. Gates. Even if, as later examination showed, the agent hadn't basically been making up his findings, the science behind the technology is suspect. Indeed, a report this year from the National Research Council found such serious deficiencies in the nation's forensic science system that it called for major reforms and new research.
It's also clear from Mr. Gates's case that improvements are needed in how the government discloses information. Even after a 1997 inspector general's report questioned the credibility of FBI agent Michael P. Malone, prosecutors were still, as late as this year, touting his findings. Only after the D.C. public defender's office did its own digging were the problems with Mr. Malone's performance, and the government's failure to disclose them, brought to light.
In a letter to the court admitting that they had received information almost six years ago that called Mr. Gates's conviction into doubt, prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office said that they have referred the matter to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. They also should follow the lead of states such as North Carolina in establishing innocence commissions that bring together judges, police, prosecutors, defense attorneys and victim's advocates in an attempt to identify the practices that lead to wrongful convictions and to recommend reforms.
THREE DAYS after Donald E. Gates was released from prison after serving 28 years for a murder he didn't commit, federal prosecutors acknowledged that they received, but failed to act on, information discrediting testimony key to his conviction. In the same week, a Florida man imprisoned for 35 years for kidnapping and rape was freed after DNA tests proved his innocence. As appalling as the two cases are, what's even scarier is the thought that imperfections in the criminal justice system will go uncorrected and more people could be wrongly jailed.
The wrongful conviction of Mr. Gates in the 1981 rape and murder of a D.C. woman and that of James Bain in the 1974 assault of a 9-year-old boy could serve as primers for what's wrong with the system. In Mr. Bain's case, it was reliance on identification from an unreliable eyewitness: a traumatized 9-year-old. Witness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions, contributing to more than 75 percent of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide, the Innocence Project reported.
The second biggest cause is faulty forensics, and that played a starring role in Mr. Gates's conviction. A FBI special agent testified that two pubic hairs found on the victim's body were microscopically identical to those of Mr. Gates. Even if, as later examination showed, the agent hadn't basically been making up his findings, the science behind the technology is suspect. Indeed, a report this year from the National Research Council found such serious deficiencies in the nation's forensic science system that it called for major reforms and new research.
It's also clear from Mr. Gates's case that improvements are needed in how the government discloses information. Even after a 1997 inspector general's report questioned the credibility of FBI agent Michael P. Malone, prosecutors were still, as late as this year, touting his findings. Only after the D.C. public defender's office did its own digging were the problems with Mr. Malone's performance, and the government's failure to disclose them, brought to light.
In a letter to the court admitting that they had received information almost six years ago that called Mr. Gates's conviction into doubt, prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office said that they have referred the matter to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. They also should follow the lead of states such as North Carolina in establishing innocence commissions that bring together judges, police, prosecutors, defense attorneys and victim's advocates in an attempt to identify the practices that lead to wrongful convictions and to recommend reforms.
Friday, December 25, 2009
When justice system crashes
The following editorial was published in the Palm Beach (Florida) Post on December 23, 2009.
When justice system crashes
James Bain is enjoying his first Christmas as a free man since 1973, even though for all those years he was an innocent man. Florida must create a commission to investigate such catastrophic failures of the criminal justice system.
In 1974, Mr. Bain was arrested for the kidnap and rape of a 9-year-old boy. Polk County prosecutors got a conviction, despite relying only on what was a very shaky eyewitness identification. Attorneys for The Innocence Project of Florida pressed for DNA testing, which prosecutors rejected several times before agreeing. Results confirmed Mr. Bain's innocence, and he went home last week.
The state owes Mr. Bain $1.75 million, based on $50,000 for each stolen year. The Florida Supreme Court owes it to the state justice system to create an Innocence Commission.
Mr. Bain became just the latest example of system failure. In 2004, it was Wilton Dedge (22 years). In 2005, it was Luis Diaz (26 years). In 2008, it was Alan Crotzer (24 years) and William Dillon (28 years). Then there are the 23 exonerations from Florida's Death Row.
As Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck has noted, these cases are to the justice system what a crash is to the airline industry: a tragedy, but also a chance to learn. When a ValuJet plane crashed in the Everglades 13 years ago, for example, we learned the dangers of outsourcing maintenance. Miscommunication led to the storing of full oxygen canisters in the hold. They ignited.
One week before Mr. Bain's release, Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to create a Florida Actual Innocence Commission. According to the petition, the commission would "investigate the circumstances of cases where actual innocence of a crime has been demonstrated and to develop recommendations for reforms to reduce wrongful convictions." Mr. D'Alemberte is a former president of the American Bar Association and Florida State University, where he also was law school dean. Joining the petition at this point are roughly 70 lawyers, among them prosecutors and former Florida Supreme Court justices. Fifty are required for the court to consider a petition.
The petition suggests that the court establish a commission modeled after the one in North Carolina. The court has no timetable to decide, but Mark Schlackman, who works with Mr. D'Alemberte at the Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, said, "We are very optimistic."
Other studies, one by the ABA in 2006, identified flaws with the state's criminal justice system. When that system gets it so wrong, so badly, so often, the search for justice demands that the system understand why.
When justice system crashes
James Bain is enjoying his first Christmas as a free man since 1973, even though for all those years he was an innocent man. Florida must create a commission to investigate such catastrophic failures of the criminal justice system.
In 1974, Mr. Bain was arrested for the kidnap and rape of a 9-year-old boy. Polk County prosecutors got a conviction, despite relying only on what was a very shaky eyewitness identification. Attorneys for The Innocence Project of Florida pressed for DNA testing, which prosecutors rejected several times before agreeing. Results confirmed Mr. Bain's innocence, and he went home last week.
The state owes Mr. Bain $1.75 million, based on $50,000 for each stolen year. The Florida Supreme Court owes it to the state justice system to create an Innocence Commission.
Mr. Bain became just the latest example of system failure. In 2004, it was Wilton Dedge (22 years). In 2005, it was Luis Diaz (26 years). In 2008, it was Alan Crotzer (24 years) and William Dillon (28 years). Then there are the 23 exonerations from Florida's Death Row.
As Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck has noted, these cases are to the justice system what a crash is to the airline industry: a tragedy, but also a chance to learn. When a ValuJet plane crashed in the Everglades 13 years ago, for example, we learned the dangers of outsourcing maintenance. Miscommunication led to the storing of full oxygen canisters in the hold. They ignited.
One week before Mr. Bain's release, Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to create a Florida Actual Innocence Commission. According to the petition, the commission would "investigate the circumstances of cases where actual innocence of a crime has been demonstrated and to develop recommendations for reforms to reduce wrongful convictions." Mr. D'Alemberte is a former president of the American Bar Association and Florida State University, where he also was law school dean. Joining the petition at this point are roughly 70 lawyers, among them prosecutors and former Florida Supreme Court justices. Fifty are required for the court to consider a petition.
The petition suggests that the court establish a commission modeled after the one in North Carolina. The court has no timetable to decide, but Mark Schlackman, who works with Mr. D'Alemberte at the Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, said, "We are very optimistic."
Other studies, one by the ABA in 2006, identified flaws with the state's criminal justice system. When that system gets it so wrong, so badly, so often, the search for justice demands that the system understand why.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Where’s the Justice for Wrongly Imprisoned Man?
The following editorial was published by the Jacksonville (FL) Observer on December 18, 2009.
Where’s the justice in this?
Donald Eugene Gates spent 28 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Convicted in 1981 of the brutal rape and murder of Catherine Schilling, a 21-year-old Georgetown University student, Gates got 20 years to life and was sent to federal prison in Arizona.
Gates was released a few days ago after DNA testing proved he didn’t commit that crime. To help him restart his life, the government gave Gates some winter clothes, $75 and a bus ticket to his hometown, Akron, Ohio. The cab ride from the Tucson prison to the Greyhound bus station cost him $35.
Gates was forced to spend nearly half his 58 years behind bars after an FBI crime lab analyst linked two pubic hairs found at the crime scene to Gates. The reliability of that analyst, Michael Malone, was called into question in several subsequent cases.
A 1997 FBI inspector general’s report concluded Malone and other analysts in the bureau’s Washington crime lab had submitted false reports and performed inaccurate tests in criminal cases. In 2003, a forensic scientist found problems with Malone’s work in the Gates case, but prosecutors never gave that information to Gates’ lawyer.
Gates languished in prison for six more years until the District of Columbia’s Public Defenders Service persuaded the judge who had sentenced him to order a DNA test on the pubic hairs. An earlier test, using a less reliable method, had proved inconclusive. The new test exonerated Gates.
Now, with whatever’s left of his $75 from the federal government, Gates is expected to get on with his life.
When he went to prison in 1981, Ronald Reagan was in the first year of his presidency. “Dallas” was the top-rated television show. The Oakland Raiders had won the Super Bowl, and 5-year-old Tiger Woods appeared on the TV show “That’s Incredible.” Motorola didn’t introduce the first commercial cell phone until two years later.
The world Gates has just entered bears little resemblance to the one he left behind after his wrongful conviction. The nature of work – and the skills needed to land a job – have changed dramatically over the past quarter-century. There’s little chance Gates will find a job that will make him self-sufficient without some special training.
And there’s little hope he won’t fall back into the clutches of the criminal justice system if something isn’t done to compensate him for his lost years.
Such an act of contrition shouldn’t be slow in coming.
The District of Columbia allows people who were wrongfully convicted to seek compensation, but why make Gates go through the motions? Why make him get a lawyer and litigate this in court? Why force him to sue for the help he needs to recover from the injustice he’s suffered?
In ordering Gates’ release, D.C. Superior Court Judge Fred Ugast said, “We are fortunate … that the technology has been developed that permits us to at least try to right a wrong.” But while setting Gates free may soothe the judge’s conscience, much more needs to be done to free him from the ravages of his wrongful conviction.
Where’s the justice in this?
Donald Eugene Gates spent 28 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Convicted in 1981 of the brutal rape and murder of Catherine Schilling, a 21-year-old Georgetown University student, Gates got 20 years to life and was sent to federal prison in Arizona.
Gates was released a few days ago after DNA testing proved he didn’t commit that crime. To help him restart his life, the government gave Gates some winter clothes, $75 and a bus ticket to his hometown, Akron, Ohio. The cab ride from the Tucson prison to the Greyhound bus station cost him $35.
Gates was forced to spend nearly half his 58 years behind bars after an FBI crime lab analyst linked two pubic hairs found at the crime scene to Gates. The reliability of that analyst, Michael Malone, was called into question in several subsequent cases.
A 1997 FBI inspector general’s report concluded Malone and other analysts in the bureau’s Washington crime lab had submitted false reports and performed inaccurate tests in criminal cases. In 2003, a forensic scientist found problems with Malone’s work in the Gates case, but prosecutors never gave that information to Gates’ lawyer.
Gates languished in prison for six more years until the District of Columbia’s Public Defenders Service persuaded the judge who had sentenced him to order a DNA test on the pubic hairs. An earlier test, using a less reliable method, had proved inconclusive. The new test exonerated Gates.
Now, with whatever’s left of his $75 from the federal government, Gates is expected to get on with his life.
When he went to prison in 1981, Ronald Reagan was in the first year of his presidency. “Dallas” was the top-rated television show. The Oakland Raiders had won the Super Bowl, and 5-year-old Tiger Woods appeared on the TV show “That’s Incredible.” Motorola didn’t introduce the first commercial cell phone until two years later.
The world Gates has just entered bears little resemblance to the one he left behind after his wrongful conviction. The nature of work – and the skills needed to land a job – have changed dramatically over the past quarter-century. There’s little chance Gates will find a job that will make him self-sufficient without some special training.
And there’s little hope he won’t fall back into the clutches of the criminal justice system if something isn’t done to compensate him for his lost years.
Such an act of contrition shouldn’t be slow in coming.
The District of Columbia allows people who were wrongfully convicted to seek compensation, but why make Gates go through the motions? Why make him get a lawyer and litigate this in court? Why force him to sue for the help he needs to recover from the injustice he’s suffered?
In ordering Gates’ release, D.C. Superior Court Judge Fred Ugast said, “We are fortunate … that the technology has been developed that permits us to at least try to right a wrong.” But while setting Gates free may soothe the judge’s conscience, much more needs to be done to free him from the ravages of his wrongful conviction.
Guest Shot: Eric Schneiderman: NY Bill would let wrongly convicted prove innocence
The following opinion was originally published in the Buffalo News on December 19, 2009.
Another Voice / Criminal justice
Eric Schneiderman: Bill would let wrongly convicted prove innocence
By Eric Schneiderman
December 19, 2009
Three weeks ago, Fernando Bermudez became a free man after serving 18 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. This will be his first Christmas at home since 1991.
A Manhattan judge threw out his conviction after a cooperating witness lied in court, and witnesses were improperly allowed to discuss a mug shot of Bermudez before identifying him as the shooter. Each one has since recanted.
In a powerfully worded decision, Judge John Cataldo found “clear and convincing evidence” that Bermudez demonstrated his “actual innocence.”
This decision represents a major turning point in the actual innocence movement — an effort to make courts weigh convincing evidence of innocence without procedural roadblocks in cases like this. Here in New York, as in most other states, too many technical obstacles are preventing innocent people like Bermudez from getting the justice they deserve. And when an innocent man is sent to prison, the real criminal remains free to terrorize new victims.
To fix this problem, I have introduced a bill in the State Legislature to establish “actual innocence” as a lawful basis for vacating a prior conviction, giving the wrongfully convicted an opportunity to directly prove their innocence.
Innocent people locked up in prison deserve a hearing when they can produce evidence conclusively proving they are not guilty.
This bill prevents the rejection of innocence claims on technicalities. Had this law been in place in the 1990s, it’s possible that Bermudez could have been a free man years ago.
Indeed, his first application to have the court re-examine evidence establishing his innocence — 14 years ago — and nine subsequent applicants were all denied.
Despite the recantation of five witnesses who had previously identified Bermudez as the killer, and the advocacy of many public officials including Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, Bermudez’s 10 previous attempts to establish his innocence were denied based on a series of technicalities.
This legislation is particularly important in cases like this one, where there is no DNA evidence. In the last five years, approximately 64 percent of all the exonerations in the United States were based on non-DNA evidence.
Experts observe that the percentage of exonerations based on non-DNA evidence in New York State is only increasing.
The Bermudez case is a wake-up call. It is completely inconsistent with American values of justice and fairness to imprison innocent people without giving them a chance to reverse wrongful convictions where convincing evidence exists.
We have the momentum — it’s time to reform our criminal justice system and ensure that no one does time for a crime he didn’t commit.
Eric Schneiderman, D-New York City, representsthe 31st State Senate District.
Another Voice / Criminal justice
Eric Schneiderman: Bill would let wrongly convicted prove innocence
By Eric Schneiderman
December 19, 2009
Three weeks ago, Fernando Bermudez became a free man after serving 18 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. This will be his first Christmas at home since 1991.
A Manhattan judge threw out his conviction after a cooperating witness lied in court, and witnesses were improperly allowed to discuss a mug shot of Bermudez before identifying him as the shooter. Each one has since recanted.
In a powerfully worded decision, Judge John Cataldo found “clear and convincing evidence” that Bermudez demonstrated his “actual innocence.”
This decision represents a major turning point in the actual innocence movement — an effort to make courts weigh convincing evidence of innocence without procedural roadblocks in cases like this. Here in New York, as in most other states, too many technical obstacles are preventing innocent people like Bermudez from getting the justice they deserve. And when an innocent man is sent to prison, the real criminal remains free to terrorize new victims.
To fix this problem, I have introduced a bill in the State Legislature to establish “actual innocence” as a lawful basis for vacating a prior conviction, giving the wrongfully convicted an opportunity to directly prove their innocence.
Innocent people locked up in prison deserve a hearing when they can produce evidence conclusively proving they are not guilty.
This bill prevents the rejection of innocence claims on technicalities. Had this law been in place in the 1990s, it’s possible that Bermudez could have been a free man years ago.
Indeed, his first application to have the court re-examine evidence establishing his innocence — 14 years ago — and nine subsequent applicants were all denied.
Despite the recantation of five witnesses who had previously identified Bermudez as the killer, and the advocacy of many public officials including Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, Bermudez’s 10 previous attempts to establish his innocence were denied based on a series of technicalities.
This legislation is particularly important in cases like this one, where there is no DNA evidence. In the last five years, approximately 64 percent of all the exonerations in the United States were based on non-DNA evidence.
Experts observe that the percentage of exonerations based on non-DNA evidence in New York State is only increasing.
The Bermudez case is a wake-up call. It is completely inconsistent with American values of justice and fairness to imprison innocent people without giving them a chance to reverse wrongful convictions where convincing evidence exists.
We have the momentum — it’s time to reform our criminal justice system and ensure that no one does time for a crime he didn’t commit.
Eric Schneiderman, D-New York City, representsthe 31st State Senate District.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
David Protess: Reaction to State's Filing
The following was sent out over a Northwestern University listserve. David Protess is responding the the Cook County DA's subpoena for grades and similar records of his journalism students who investigated Anthony McKinney's innocence claims.
Reaction to the state's filing
David Protess
November 16, 2009
On October 10, the State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) filed a 54-page document alleging my students paid witnesses in their investigation of the Anthony McKinney case. Breathless accounts by journalists rapidly appeared in print, broadcast and on-line publications across the country. Unfortunately, reporters focused almost entirely on the prosecutors’ allegations in the first part of the document and ignored the actual interviews with the witnesses, which were recounted as exhibits at the end of the court filing.
Here’s what we know from those exhibits — the SAO’s own investigative reports:
1. Two alleged witnesses — and no others — claimed my students and our private detective paid them money. One is convicted killer and armed robber Tony Drake, who, after murdering a disabled man in 1985, has been re-incarcerated twice for aggravated domestic battery. The other is a Wisconsin drug dealer, Michael Lane.
2. Tony Drake was interviewed, in prison, by two prosecutors and a state's attorney's investigator, and questioned about the videotaped interview with my students in which he confessed to being present for the murder of Donald Lundahl. It is not surprising that, under the circumstances, Drake recanted.
3. Even though he stated on the videotape that he had not received any compensation for talking with my students, Drake told the trio from the SAO that he'd been paid $100. Yet, the state's evidence of the alleged payment was a $60 cab fare given to the driver, for which we have a receipt. When prosecutors asked Drake about being paid for the interview, here's how he responded, according to their own report: ". . . the students told him they could not give him money for an interview." (emphasis added.)
4. Anthony McKinney's lawyers have filed seven affidavits from our sources indicating that Drake confessed the Lundahl murder to them. There is no reference to this corroborative evidence in the SAO report.
5. The second witness, Michael Lane, told a state's attorney's investigator that my students had paid him "a couple hundred dollars." The investigator was openly dubious of this claim. According to his report, he said that "it seemed unlikely the students gave him a couple hundred dollars."
6. Lane described the investigator who accompanied the students as "a male black with a ponytail maybe in his late forties." Sergio Serritella, the only investigator I have worked with since 2000, is a male white with short wavy hair and (at the time) was in his mid-twenties. Since the SAO investigator knows Serritella, he must have wondered who Lane was talking about.
7. The SAO investigator gave Lane $10 "as a travel expense," according to his report. The reason: "[Lane] was driving a Denali and it was costly to operate."
8. The SAO interview with Lane took place on June 22, 2009 — one month after the state issued a subpoena for grades because prosecutors purportedly had hard evidence that questioned Medill students’ "motivation." But the sole pre-subpoena evidence regarding motivation was their interview with Tony Drake.
9. The only other source to raise the issue of money was Robert McGruder, who was named by Tony Drake as an alternative suspect in the crime. In response to questioning by a SAO investigator, McGruder did not claim that Medill students paid him at any point for their two interviews. However, McGruder did report that the lead detectives in the McKinney case paid him “30.00 to 40.00 dollars.” When asked to explain, McGruder said it was their way of apologizing “for hitting him in the police station.”
In sum, except for Tony Drake’s claims, no witness offered any evidence that my student-journalists paid for interviews, while two witnesses said they were paid by law enforcement. And, in the case of Tony Drake, SAO investigators acknowledged Drake was specifically told by the students that “they could not give him money for an interview.”
Why would law enforcement officers believe a convicted killer's account over my student-journalists — unless their motivation was to discredit the students and to direct attention away from the powerful evidence of Anthony McKinney's innocence?
Moreover, in view of the filing, it seems the state has undermined its own legal position on the subpoena by acknowledging they have live witnesses who are available to impeach the evidence we tendered to them. So why do they need our notes and grades? Let their witnesses take the stand, and let the truth be known.
David Protess
Northwestern University
d-protess@northwestern.edu
Reaction to the state's filing
David Protess
November 16, 2009
On October 10, the State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) filed a 54-page document alleging my students paid witnesses in their investigation of the Anthony McKinney case. Breathless accounts by journalists rapidly appeared in print, broadcast and on-line publications across the country. Unfortunately, reporters focused almost entirely on the prosecutors’ allegations in the first part of the document and ignored the actual interviews with the witnesses, which were recounted as exhibits at the end of the court filing.
Here’s what we know from those exhibits — the SAO’s own investigative reports:
1. Two alleged witnesses — and no others — claimed my students and our private detective paid them money. One is convicted killer and armed robber Tony Drake, who, after murdering a disabled man in 1985, has been re-incarcerated twice for aggravated domestic battery. The other is a Wisconsin drug dealer, Michael Lane.
2. Tony Drake was interviewed, in prison, by two prosecutors and a state's attorney's investigator, and questioned about the videotaped interview with my students in which he confessed to being present for the murder of Donald Lundahl. It is not surprising that, under the circumstances, Drake recanted.
3. Even though he stated on the videotape that he had not received any compensation for talking with my students, Drake told the trio from the SAO that he'd been paid $100. Yet, the state's evidence of the alleged payment was a $60 cab fare given to the driver, for which we have a receipt. When prosecutors asked Drake about being paid for the interview, here's how he responded, according to their own report: ". . . the students told him they could not give him money for an interview." (emphasis added.)
4. Anthony McKinney's lawyers have filed seven affidavits from our sources indicating that Drake confessed the Lundahl murder to them. There is no reference to this corroborative evidence in the SAO report.
5. The second witness, Michael Lane, told a state's attorney's investigator that my students had paid him "a couple hundred dollars." The investigator was openly dubious of this claim. According to his report, he said that "it seemed unlikely the students gave him a couple hundred dollars."
6. Lane described the investigator who accompanied the students as "a male black with a ponytail maybe in his late forties." Sergio Serritella, the only investigator I have worked with since 2000, is a male white with short wavy hair and (at the time) was in his mid-twenties. Since the SAO investigator knows Serritella, he must have wondered who Lane was talking about.
7. The SAO investigator gave Lane $10 "as a travel expense," according to his report. The reason: "[Lane] was driving a Denali and it was costly to operate."
8. The SAO interview with Lane took place on June 22, 2009 — one month after the state issued a subpoena for grades because prosecutors purportedly had hard evidence that questioned Medill students’ "motivation." But the sole pre-subpoena evidence regarding motivation was their interview with Tony Drake.
9. The only other source to raise the issue of money was Robert McGruder, who was named by Tony Drake as an alternative suspect in the crime. In response to questioning by a SAO investigator, McGruder did not claim that Medill students paid him at any point for their two interviews. However, McGruder did report that the lead detectives in the McKinney case paid him “30.00 to 40.00 dollars.” When asked to explain, McGruder said it was their way of apologizing “for hitting him in the police station.”
In sum, except for Tony Drake’s claims, no witness offered any evidence that my student-journalists paid for interviews, while two witnesses said they were paid by law enforcement. And, in the case of Tony Drake, SAO investigators acknowledged Drake was specifically told by the students that “they could not give him money for an interview.”
Why would law enforcement officers believe a convicted killer's account over my student-journalists — unless their motivation was to discredit the students and to direct attention away from the powerful evidence of Anthony McKinney's innocence?
Moreover, in view of the filing, it seems the state has undermined its own legal position on the subpoena by acknowledging they have live witnesses who are available to impeach the evidence we tendered to them. So why do they need our notes and grades? Let their witnesses take the stand, and let the truth be known.
David Protess
Northwestern University
d-protess@northwestern.edu
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Editorial: Prosecutor misconduct has a high public cost
The following op-ed was published by the San Jose, CA Mercury-News on November 11, 2009.
Prosecutor misconduct has a high public cost
By Kathleen 'Cookie' Ridolfi and Maurice Possley
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 11/11/2009 08:00:00 PM PST
For the fourth time in as many years, Santa Clara County residents must cough up hundreds of thousands of their tax dollars due to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
Last month, the county authorized paying $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Donna Auguste, whose Colorado home was illegally searched by police six years ago. As the citizens of Santa Clara County feel the sting of the $750,000 settlement, they should realize that this is not an isolated instance. It raises the cost to taxpayers due to prosecutorial misconduct accusations since 2005 to more than $5 million.
Earlier this year, the county forked over $1 million to settle a lawsuit alleging, in part, prosecutorial misconduct brought by Jeffrey Rodriguez, who was wrongfully convicted and released after five years in prison.
Two years ago, the county settled a similar suit brought by Rick Walker, who served 12 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Santa Clara County paid $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars on top of $1.45 million paid by the county's insurance carrier. The state of California paid an additional $409,500 to compensate him for the 12 years he lost.
In 2005, the county paid nearly $1 million to Glen Nickerson, who spent nearly 19 years behind bars before his murder conviction was overturned following evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Remarkably, not a single prosecutor faced discipline in these prosecutions, with the exception of Santa Clara County prosecutor Ben Field. Field, who orchestrated the illegal search in the Auguste case and whose multiple prosecutorial misdeeds have been exposed by the Mercury News, has been ordered to surrender his law license for four years.
But the cost of prosecutorial misconduct goes far beyond the dollars removed from taxpayer wallets.
Donna Auguste, for example, spent $900,000 to free her nephew. There is the cost of the hundreds of hours racked up by attorneys in the office of Santa Clara County Counsel who defended the lawsuit. This is time that could have been spent on other matters of importance to the citizenry.
And what price do you put on the more than 40 years that Walker, Nickerson, Rodriguez and Damon Auguste spent behind bars before they were exonerated? The cost of housing them alone is more than $1 million. The personal cost to these men cannot be quantified. Those years are gone.
Perhaps most significant is the immeasurable cost and risk to society of having the real perpetrators still out there.
Prosecutors rarely suffer personal consequences for engaging in misconduct. They have absolute immunity for their official conduct as advocates, and when acting as investigators, they can be held liable for their misconduct only if it violates the law.
A recent study by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice examined California appellate court rulings and found that during the ten year period ending in 2007, prosecutors committed misconduct in 444 cases, yet only two were disciplined. Thirty of them committed misconduct more than once. Two of them did it three times. Virtually all of these prosecutors walked away unscathed.
In these difficult economic times, taxpayers might well wonder if they can continue to spend this kind of money to support a criminal justice system that allows prosecutors to avoid personal responsibility, innocent defendants to be locked up, and true criminals to go free. But this is not a decision that should be based solely on dollars, no matter what the economy is doing.
Too much is at stake.
KATHLEEN RIDOLFI is executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law. MAURICE POSSLEY, a Pulitzer Prize winning former investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, is an investigator and researcher with the project. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.
Prosecutor misconduct has a high public cost
By Kathleen 'Cookie' Ridolfi and Maurice Possley
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 11/11/2009 08:00:00 PM PST
For the fourth time in as many years, Santa Clara County residents must cough up hundreds of thousands of their tax dollars due to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
Last month, the county authorized paying $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Donna Auguste, whose Colorado home was illegally searched by police six years ago. As the citizens of Santa Clara County feel the sting of the $750,000 settlement, they should realize that this is not an isolated instance. It raises the cost to taxpayers due to prosecutorial misconduct accusations since 2005 to more than $5 million.
Earlier this year, the county forked over $1 million to settle a lawsuit alleging, in part, prosecutorial misconduct brought by Jeffrey Rodriguez, who was wrongfully convicted and released after five years in prison.
Two years ago, the county settled a similar suit brought by Rick Walker, who served 12 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Santa Clara County paid $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars on top of $1.45 million paid by the county's insurance carrier. The state of California paid an additional $409,500 to compensate him for the 12 years he lost.
In 2005, the county paid nearly $1 million to Glen Nickerson, who spent nearly 19 years behind bars before his murder conviction was overturned following evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Remarkably, not a single prosecutor faced discipline in these prosecutions, with the exception of Santa Clara County prosecutor Ben Field. Field, who orchestrated the illegal search in the Auguste case and whose multiple prosecutorial misdeeds have been exposed by the Mercury News, has been ordered to surrender his law license for four years.
But the cost of prosecutorial misconduct goes far beyond the dollars removed from taxpayer wallets.
Donna Auguste, for example, spent $900,000 to free her nephew. There is the cost of the hundreds of hours racked up by attorneys in the office of Santa Clara County Counsel who defended the lawsuit. This is time that could have been spent on other matters of importance to the citizenry.
And what price do you put on the more than 40 years that Walker, Nickerson, Rodriguez and Damon Auguste spent behind bars before they were exonerated? The cost of housing them alone is more than $1 million. The personal cost to these men cannot be quantified. Those years are gone.
Perhaps most significant is the immeasurable cost and risk to society of having the real perpetrators still out there.
Prosecutors rarely suffer personal consequences for engaging in misconduct. They have absolute immunity for their official conduct as advocates, and when acting as investigators, they can be held liable for their misconduct only if it violates the law.
A recent study by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice examined California appellate court rulings and found that during the ten year period ending in 2007, prosecutors committed misconduct in 444 cases, yet only two were disciplined. Thirty of them committed misconduct more than once. Two of them did it three times. Virtually all of these prosecutors walked away unscathed.
In these difficult economic times, taxpayers might well wonder if they can continue to spend this kind of money to support a criminal justice system that allows prosecutors to avoid personal responsibility, innocent defendants to be locked up, and true criminals to go free. But this is not a decision that should be based solely on dollars, no matter what the economy is doing.
Too much is at stake.
KATHLEEN RIDOLFI is executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law. MAURICE POSSLEY, a Pulitzer Prize winning former investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, is an investigator and researcher with the project. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Editorial: The right not to be framed
The following editorial was published by the Washington Post on November 2, 2009.
The right not to be framed
Can prosecutors be sued?
Monday, November 2, 2009
"THERE IS NO Freestanding Constitutional 'Right Not To Be Framed.' " So states a brief filed by Iowa prosecutors hoping to persuade the Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit against them for allegedly fabricating evidence that led to the 25-year incarceration of two innocent men. It's a breathtaking proposition that the justices should roundly reject when they hear the case Wednesday.
According to court documents, the prosecutors took a leading role in 1977 in investigating the murder of a recently retired white police officer at an Iowa automobile dealership where he was working security. The prosecutors allegedly coaxed a witness to offer a version of events that implicated two African American men, Curtis W. McGhee Jr. and Terry J. Harrington; the witness gave several different statements over time and had trouble keeping his facts straight. Prosecutors also allegedly coerced other witnesses to lie and withheld evidence that pointed to a different culprit.
These contradictions and prosecutors' apparent hand in the alleged fabrications came to light years after the men were sentenced to life without parole when a prison barber made a public records request of police files in the case and came across exculpatory information that had been kept from defense lawyers. The witness ultimately recanted his story. Mr. Harrington's conviction was overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court, which concluded that the star witness was a "liar and perjurer," and Mr. Harrington was freed. Mr. McGhee petitioned for a new trial but ultimately entered a conditional guilty plea that allowed him to go free with time served.
Mr. McGhee and Mr. Harrington, who say that they were targeted because of their race, later sued the two prosecutors and the Iowa county that employed them, using a Reconstruction-era law that gives individuals the right to seek damages from government officials who knowingly deprive them of their constitutional rights. The prosecutors argue that they should be immune from such lawsuits and point to a line of Supreme Court cases that shield prosecutors from legal consequences when they carry out their duties. They argue that state and bar disciplinary structures are best able to deal with accusations of prosecutorial misconduct and that prosecutors will be chilled in doing their jobs if they worry about being sued for innocent missteps.
Prosecutors need to be able carry out their duties without fear that they'll become the targets of personal lawsuits if defendants are found not guilty or charges are dropped. But such lawsuits face high hurdles. The Supreme Court has recently -- and correctly -- made it even more difficult for plaintiffs to make officials personally liable unless there's convincing evidence that they were directly involved in knowingly violating a clearly established constitutional right. Mr. McGhee and Mr. Harrington have shouldered that burden and should be allowed to proceed with their case.
The vast majority of prosecutors perform honorably and understand that they are duty-bound not just to secure convictions but to seek justice. Those who don't often suffer no consequences at the hands of state or bar organizations, as a brief in support of Mr. McGhee and Mr. Harrington convincingly argues. For these few renegades, perhaps the prospect of being held liable will help to keep them in line or, at least, hold them accountable.
The right not to be framed
Can prosecutors be sued?
Monday, November 2, 2009
"THERE IS NO Freestanding Constitutional 'Right Not To Be Framed.' " So states a brief filed by Iowa prosecutors hoping to persuade the Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit against them for allegedly fabricating evidence that led to the 25-year incarceration of two innocent men. It's a breathtaking proposition that the justices should roundly reject when they hear the case Wednesday.
According to court documents, the prosecutors took a leading role in 1977 in investigating the murder of a recently retired white police officer at an Iowa automobile dealership where he was working security. The prosecutors allegedly coaxed a witness to offer a version of events that implicated two African American men, Curtis W. McGhee Jr. and Terry J. Harrington; the witness gave several different statements over time and had trouble keeping his facts straight. Prosecutors also allegedly coerced other witnesses to lie and withheld evidence that pointed to a different culprit.
These contradictions and prosecutors' apparent hand in the alleged fabrications came to light years after the men were sentenced to life without parole when a prison barber made a public records request of police files in the case and came across exculpatory information that had been kept from defense lawyers. The witness ultimately recanted his story. Mr. Harrington's conviction was overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court, which concluded that the star witness was a "liar and perjurer," and Mr. Harrington was freed. Mr. McGhee petitioned for a new trial but ultimately entered a conditional guilty plea that allowed him to go free with time served.
Mr. McGhee and Mr. Harrington, who say that they were targeted because of their race, later sued the two prosecutors and the Iowa county that employed them, using a Reconstruction-era law that gives individuals the right to seek damages from government officials who knowingly deprive them of their constitutional rights. The prosecutors argue that they should be immune from such lawsuits and point to a line of Supreme Court cases that shield prosecutors from legal consequences when they carry out their duties. They argue that state and bar disciplinary structures are best able to deal with accusations of prosecutorial misconduct and that prosecutors will be chilled in doing their jobs if they worry about being sued for innocent missteps.
Prosecutors need to be able carry out their duties without fear that they'll become the targets of personal lawsuits if defendants are found not guilty or charges are dropped. But such lawsuits face high hurdles. The Supreme Court has recently -- and correctly -- made it even more difficult for plaintiffs to make officials personally liable unless there's convincing evidence that they were directly involved in knowingly violating a clearly established constitutional right. Mr. McGhee and Mr. Harrington have shouldered that burden and should be allowed to proceed with their case.
The vast majority of prosecutors perform honorably and understand that they are duty-bound not just to secure convictions but to seek justice. Those who don't often suffer no consequences at the hands of state or bar organizations, as a brief in support of Mr. McGhee and Mr. Harrington convincingly argues. For these few renegades, perhaps the prospect of being held liable will help to keep them in line or, at least, hold them accountable.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Editorial: Justice restored by university volunteers
The following editorial was published by the Dallas Morning News on October 27, 2009.
DNA speaks an unshakeable truth. It seals the fate of the guilty and, most profoundly, gives liberating testimony for those who suffer injustice.
But who speaks the truth about injustice when DNA evidence is nowhere to be found?
For two innocent Dallas men who entered prison 12 years ago, freedom came only through the commitment of volunteer, university-affiliated investigators who followed their instincts.
Newly freed Chris Scott and Claude Simmons said last week that their faith in God sustained them in the face of their hideously unfair life sentences for a robbery-murder they did not commit.
The UT-Arlington Innocence Network and the UT-Austin Actual Innocence Clinic were the answer to their prayers. Both deserve the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment they enjoy today.
At UTA, the effort spanned three years and involved a half-dozen students enrolled in classes taught by Dr. John Stickels. They are titled, appropriately, Innocence 1 and Innocence 2.
The volunteers comb through written claims of innocence to find cases worth pursuing. Their senses told them that things weren't right with the Scott-Simmons cases, and the trail led them through stacks of documents and into prison interview rooms. Finally they had a presentation for the Dallas County district attorney's office, which agreed to reopen the case, as did the Dallas Police Department.
It's a credit to both prosecutors and cops that they allowed for the possibility of grave error in the matter, then invested resources in an effort that might lay bare their own inadequacies. But that's how people and organizations improve. Certainly, DNA technology has proved the criminal justice system far from fail-safe and, at times, even incompetent.
It's noteworthy that this latest reversal revealed faulty witness identification procedures by Dallas police. Most of Texas' nation-leading DNA exonerations involve cases with that same flaw. Every such revelation casts more shame on state lawmakers for failing to pass legislation to clean up slipshod police practices across the state.
Last week's release of Scott and Simmons means that two other suspects, now implicated, have escaped justice in the case for years.
It also leads to the disquieting question of what might have happened if Scott and Simmons had been sent to death row instead of prison for life. The crime for which they were convicted was a capital offense and could have resulted in executions.
Think of how easy it might have been. It took six minutes for a jury to decide Anderson's guilt at his trial in 1997. No biological material was available as evidence in the case, so DNA technology could provide no immunity to injustice. That is the case with the vast majority of crimes.
Based on the incidence of DNA exonerations, criminologists have devised formulas to estimate the number of unjust convictions in American courts. In Texas, which confines 150,000-plus prisoners, some educated guesses would put the number at several thousand people.
The numbers are debatable. The fact of widespread error is not.
Credit goes to those who are most troubled by intolerable flaws and who, for little or no personal gain, devote themselves to doing something about it.
DNA speaks an unshakeable truth. It seals the fate of the guilty and, most profoundly, gives liberating testimony for those who suffer injustice.
But who speaks the truth about injustice when DNA evidence is nowhere to be found?
For two innocent Dallas men who entered prison 12 years ago, freedom came only through the commitment of volunteer, university-affiliated investigators who followed their instincts.
Newly freed Chris Scott and Claude Simmons said last week that their faith in God sustained them in the face of their hideously unfair life sentences for a robbery-murder they did not commit.
The UT-Arlington Innocence Network and the UT-Austin Actual Innocence Clinic were the answer to their prayers. Both deserve the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment they enjoy today.
At UTA, the effort spanned three years and involved a half-dozen students enrolled in classes taught by Dr. John Stickels. They are titled, appropriately, Innocence 1 and Innocence 2.
The volunteers comb through written claims of innocence to find cases worth pursuing. Their senses told them that things weren't right with the Scott-Simmons cases, and the trail led them through stacks of documents and into prison interview rooms. Finally they had a presentation for the Dallas County district attorney's office, which agreed to reopen the case, as did the Dallas Police Department.
It's a credit to both prosecutors and cops that they allowed for the possibility of grave error in the matter, then invested resources in an effort that might lay bare their own inadequacies. But that's how people and organizations improve. Certainly, DNA technology has proved the criminal justice system far from fail-safe and, at times, even incompetent.
It's noteworthy that this latest reversal revealed faulty witness identification procedures by Dallas police. Most of Texas' nation-leading DNA exonerations involve cases with that same flaw. Every such revelation casts more shame on state lawmakers for failing to pass legislation to clean up slipshod police practices across the state.
Last week's release of Scott and Simmons means that two other suspects, now implicated, have escaped justice in the case for years.
It also leads to the disquieting question of what might have happened if Scott and Simmons had been sent to death row instead of prison for life. The crime for which they were convicted was a capital offense and could have resulted in executions.
Think of how easy it might have been. It took six minutes for a jury to decide Anderson's guilt at his trial in 1997. No biological material was available as evidence in the case, so DNA technology could provide no immunity to injustice. That is the case with the vast majority of crimes.
Based on the incidence of DNA exonerations, criminologists have devised formulas to estimate the number of unjust convictions in American courts. In Texas, which confines 150,000-plus prisoners, some educated guesses would put the number at several thousand people.
The numbers are debatable. The fact of widespread error is not.
Credit goes to those who are most troubled by intolerable flaws and who, for little or no personal gain, devote themselves to doing something about it.
Opinion | Editorial - An Unjust Prosecution
The following editorial was published in the Cornell Daily Sun on October 28, 2009.
Students at Northwestern’s graduate school of journalism are doing more than learning to write ledes, conduct interviews and blog. Instead, they have worked toward and succeeded at exonerating innocent inmates who have been wrongfully accused. But now, the group of students who take part in the Medill Innocence Project are being threatened by a demand by local prosecution to hand over information surrounding a current investigation.
As student journalists, we are appalled by the Cook County Circuit Court, which has demanded the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages sent by students in the course, according to The New York Times. By encroaching on the students’ independent investigation into the case of Anthony McKinney, who was charged with murder in 1978, the court is undermining the legitimacy of the project.
In this most recent investigation, the students exposed in a videotaped interview that a key eyewitness in McKinney’s trial had been beaten by the police during his testimony “until he made made up a story against Anthony McKinney,” according to the Innocence Project’s website. The students further identified a number of other leading suspects, including a convicted killer who admits to being present at the murder and upholds McKinney’s innocence. But prosecutors doubt the validity of the study and are taking extraneous measures to derail the project’s findings.
Prosecutors are alleging that the students may be motivated by grades and thus might be inclined to interview specific suspects who would suggest a suspect’s innocence. McKinney’s case is open and ongoing and thus, the information obtained by the students is critical evidence. But the success of the Innocence Project, which has spearheaded investigations that have led to the release of 11 wrongfully accused inmates since 1999, suggests that these students are doing this for more than a grade.
Those at Medill have proven that they are fulfilling the role of the journalist — student or professional. As their efforts are unjustly policed, we feel a more broad attack is being made on journalism as a whole. Rather than dig into and verify the information being revealed, the prosecution is attacking those doing the uncovering, posing an immediate threat to the dissemination of truth.
Professors’ syllabi and students’ grades are purely data of academic significance. That the prosecution is seeking to intrude into this realm proves that they have an alternative motive that goes beyond the scope of a criminal investigation.
By providing confidential material to the court, the student journalists run the risk of becoming “an arm of the government,” as stated by David Protess, director of the Medill Innocence Project. “It would destroy our autonomy,” Protess told The New York Times. “We function with journalism standards and practices to guide our work.”
We stand behind those involved in the Innocence Project and the more than 50 other groups that are part of the Innocence Network. Further, we condemn the Cook County Circuit Court for the threats they are posing all those out there seeking to uncover the truth.
Students at Northwestern’s graduate school of journalism are doing more than learning to write ledes, conduct interviews and blog. Instead, they have worked toward and succeeded at exonerating innocent inmates who have been wrongfully accused. But now, the group of students who take part in the Medill Innocence Project are being threatened by a demand by local prosecution to hand over information surrounding a current investigation.
As student journalists, we are appalled by the Cook County Circuit Court, which has demanded the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages sent by students in the course, according to The New York Times. By encroaching on the students’ independent investigation into the case of Anthony McKinney, who was charged with murder in 1978, the court is undermining the legitimacy of the project.
In this most recent investigation, the students exposed in a videotaped interview that a key eyewitness in McKinney’s trial had been beaten by the police during his testimony “until he made made up a story against Anthony McKinney,” according to the Innocence Project’s website. The students further identified a number of other leading suspects, including a convicted killer who admits to being present at the murder and upholds McKinney’s innocence. But prosecutors doubt the validity of the study and are taking extraneous measures to derail the project’s findings.
Prosecutors are alleging that the students may be motivated by grades and thus might be inclined to interview specific suspects who would suggest a suspect’s innocence. McKinney’s case is open and ongoing and thus, the information obtained by the students is critical evidence. But the success of the Innocence Project, which has spearheaded investigations that have led to the release of 11 wrongfully accused inmates since 1999, suggests that these students are doing this for more than a grade.
Those at Medill have proven that they are fulfilling the role of the journalist — student or professional. As their efforts are unjustly policed, we feel a more broad attack is being made on journalism as a whole. Rather than dig into and verify the information being revealed, the prosecution is attacking those doing the uncovering, posing an immediate threat to the dissemination of truth.
Professors’ syllabi and students’ grades are purely data of academic significance. That the prosecution is seeking to intrude into this realm proves that they have an alternative motive that goes beyond the scope of a criminal investigation.
By providing confidential material to the court, the student journalists run the risk of becoming “an arm of the government,” as stated by David Protess, director of the Medill Innocence Project. “It would destroy our autonomy,” Protess told The New York Times. “We function with journalism standards and practices to guide our work.”
We stand behind those involved in the Innocence Project and the more than 50 other groups that are part of the Innocence Network. Further, we condemn the Cook County Circuit Court for the threats they are posing all those out there seeking to uncover the truth.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A Tribute to Pete Shellem, by Steve Drizin
It is with great sadness that I inform you all of the death of Pete Shellem. Pete Shellem was one of the finest investigative journalists I have ever encountered. Writing for the Harrisburg Patriot-News, in the middle of Pennsylvania, Pete’s work led to at least four exonerations.
He was at his best when he wrote about the problem of false confessions, a difficult issue for many in the public to understand. His work (and I mean his work not the work of lawyers) led to the exoneration of Barry Laughman, a mentally limited man who had confessed to murdering and raping his aunt. Shellem tracked down the DNA evidence to the refrigerator of a lab analyst at Penn State who had moved abroad; his writing pressured the judges and prosecutors to agree to testing which ultimately exonerated Laughman. Shellem’s brilliant work in Laughman is featured in True Stories of False Confessions (co-edited by Rob Warden and I). In another case, his investigative work helped to clear William Kelly, another man who falsely confessed before Kelly could be convicted. Both of these men were of low intelligence and had only a modicum of support for them in the community. They would still be in prison today if not for Pete’s work.
Pete often called me to discuss his investigations and frequently used me as a source as I began to develop some expertise in the area of false confessions. I recall these conversations well. Pete was on fire, firing questions at me that revealed not only a tremendous knowledge of police investigations and police misconduct, but also a tenacity that almost made me feel sorry for those who he would soon take to task for their roles in these wrongful convictions. I can honestly say he taught me much more than I taught him. It’s a terribly sad day for his loved ones but also a sad day for the criminal justice system in Central Pennsylvania and for the Innocence Movement as a whole.
_________________________________________________________
Editor's Note: Truth in Justice proudly maintains Pete's investigative reports regarding the cases of Barry Laughman, Steven Crawford, Jay Smith, Patti Carbone, William Kelly, David Gladden and Ted Dubbs. Use our site search engine on the main page to locate these articles. Read Pete's own commentary on the Dubbs case HERE to get a glimpse into the kind of man Pete Shellem was.
He was at his best when he wrote about the problem of false confessions, a difficult issue for many in the public to understand. His work (and I mean his work not the work of lawyers) led to the exoneration of Barry Laughman, a mentally limited man who had confessed to murdering and raping his aunt. Shellem tracked down the DNA evidence to the refrigerator of a lab analyst at Penn State who had moved abroad; his writing pressured the judges and prosecutors to agree to testing which ultimately exonerated Laughman. Shellem’s brilliant work in Laughman is featured in True Stories of False Confessions (co-edited by Rob Warden and I). In another case, his investigative work helped to clear William Kelly, another man who falsely confessed before Kelly could be convicted. Both of these men were of low intelligence and had only a modicum of support for them in the community. They would still be in prison today if not for Pete’s work.
Pete often called me to discuss his investigations and frequently used me as a source as I began to develop some expertise in the area of false confessions. I recall these conversations well. Pete was on fire, firing questions at me that revealed not only a tremendous knowledge of police investigations and police misconduct, but also a tenacity that almost made me feel sorry for those who he would soon take to task for their roles in these wrongful convictions. I can honestly say he taught me much more than I taught him. It’s a terribly sad day for his loved ones but also a sad day for the criminal justice system in Central Pennsylvania and for the Innocence Movement as a whole.
_________________________________________________________
Editor's Note: Truth in Justice proudly maintains Pete's investigative reports regarding the cases of Barry Laughman, Steven Crawford, Jay Smith, Patti Carbone, William Kelly, David Gladden and Ted Dubbs. Use our site search engine on the main page to locate these articles. Read Pete's own commentary on the Dubbs case HERE to get a glimpse into the kind of man Pete Shellem was.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Guest Shot: Jaded Justice
The following editorial was published in the Washington Post on October 19, 2009.
Jaded justice
Reexamining a Bush-era policy on plea bargains and DNA
ON ITS FACE the proposition seems reasonable enough: Anyone who pleads guilty to a federal crime must give up the right to use DNA evidence in the future to challenge that conviction. This Bush-era policy would work just fine in a perfect world, where only those who actually committed crimes pleaded guilty to those offenses.
But the facts show that this is not always the case. Defendants sometimes cop to a plea for reasons having nothing to do with guilt. Some are coerced or intimidated into a confession and subsequent plea bargain. Others accept a plea offer if it provides for a much lighter sentence than could be expected if convicted at trial. In short, not everyone who pleads guilty is guilty -- and prosecutors understand this.
Yet according to The Post's Jerry Markon, the Bush Justice Department lobbied strenuously during the early part of this decade against legislation to assure inmates of access to post-conviction DNA evidence that could prove their innocence. When the bill appeared on the verge of passing, the administration succeeded in jamming through a provision that allows defendants to waive that right. Prosecutors in the Bush administration were then instructed to insist on such waivers when negotiating a plea bargain. While not all U.S. attorneys in the country went along, many routinely abided by the mandate, including federal prosecutors in the District and in Alexandria.
Attorney General Eric J. Holder Jr. has called for a reexamination of the Bush policy -- and rightly so.
DNA evidence has become an invaluable tool in the criminal justice system, providing prosecutors, defendants and victims with more certainty about guilt or innocence. The technology has been used to prove the innocence of some 240 or so wrongly convicted people, including some who had entered guilty pleas and some who were sentenced to death. It has been used countless more times to put actual offenders behind bars.
It takes a special kind of callousness and disregard for the truth to insist that a defendant give up his rights to scientific tests that could definitively prove guilt or innocence.
Mr. Holder should rebuff this jaded approach to justice by throwing out the Bush policy as soon as possible.
Jaded justice
Reexamining a Bush-era policy on plea bargains and DNA
ON ITS FACE the proposition seems reasonable enough: Anyone who pleads guilty to a federal crime must give up the right to use DNA evidence in the future to challenge that conviction. This Bush-era policy would work just fine in a perfect world, where only those who actually committed crimes pleaded guilty to those offenses.
But the facts show that this is not always the case. Defendants sometimes cop to a plea for reasons having nothing to do with guilt. Some are coerced or intimidated into a confession and subsequent plea bargain. Others accept a plea offer if it provides for a much lighter sentence than could be expected if convicted at trial. In short, not everyone who pleads guilty is guilty -- and prosecutors understand this.
Yet according to The Post's Jerry Markon, the Bush Justice Department lobbied strenuously during the early part of this decade against legislation to assure inmates of access to post-conviction DNA evidence that could prove their innocence. When the bill appeared on the verge of passing, the administration succeeded in jamming through a provision that allows defendants to waive that right. Prosecutors in the Bush administration were then instructed to insist on such waivers when negotiating a plea bargain. While not all U.S. attorneys in the country went along, many routinely abided by the mandate, including federal prosecutors in the District and in Alexandria.
Attorney General Eric J. Holder Jr. has called for a reexamination of the Bush policy -- and rightly so.
DNA evidence has become an invaluable tool in the criminal justice system, providing prosecutors, defendants and victims with more certainty about guilt or innocence. The technology has been used to prove the innocence of some 240 or so wrongly convicted people, including some who had entered guilty pleas and some who were sentenced to death. It has been used countless more times to put actual offenders behind bars.
It takes a special kind of callousness and disregard for the truth to insist that a defendant give up his rights to scientific tests that could definitively prove guilt or innocence.
Mr. Holder should rebuff this jaded approach to justice by throwing out the Bush policy as soon as possible.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal Editorial: A tardy exoneration
October 15, 2009
A tardy exoneration
The exoneration of Edwin Chandler, who served nine years in prison for a Louisville homicide 16 years ago that he did not commit, may be an instance of justice ultimately prevailing. But it is not affirmation that the legal system worked as it should or that it has overcome inherent shortcomings.
Indeed, Mr. Chandler should never have been convicted, or probably even prosecuted. The physical evidence — fingerprints on a bottle of beer, and ownership of a knit cap and sunglasses — could not be matched to him. A man who had been pumping gasoline outside the convenience store where a clerk was shot and killed insisted that Mr. Chandler was not the perpetrator, but police largely ignored him, and he was not called to testify at trial. The police interrogator assumed from the outset that Mr. Chandler was guilty. Mr. Chandler said police used scare tactics to coerce a false confession.
The wrongful prison sentence stripped years from Mr. Chandler's life that can never be returned. It also forces the shooting victim's family to relive a nightmare that should have been closed years ago. But the biggest tragedy is that cases such as this are not a rarity in the United States.
The Innocence Project, whose Kentucky branch handled the Chandler case, says on its Web site that there have been 244 post-conviction exonerations since the venture was begun in 1992 in affiliation with Yeshiva University. Mr. Chandler's conviction seems typical of the miscarriages of justice that the project addresses. Seventy percent of the wrongfully convicted defendants are racial minorities (Mr. Chandler is black), for example, and 40 percent of the cases result in the real perpetrator being identified (a repeat offender has been indicted for the Louisville murder).
In the face of such statistics, it is appalling that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that inmates in the six states that do not allow post-conviction access to DNA evidence cannot use federal civil rights laws to obtain advanced DNA testing. (The Chandler case was rectified based on fingerprints, but DNA produces most post-conviction reversals.)
The justice system is charged with getting things right — for the benefit of victims, defendants and society. The courts must recognize that this doesn't always happen, and do whatever it can, whenever it can, to prevent or reverse life-altering errors.
A tardy exoneration
The exoneration of Edwin Chandler, who served nine years in prison for a Louisville homicide 16 years ago that he did not commit, may be an instance of justice ultimately prevailing. But it is not affirmation that the legal system worked as it should or that it has overcome inherent shortcomings.
Indeed, Mr. Chandler should never have been convicted, or probably even prosecuted. The physical evidence — fingerprints on a bottle of beer, and ownership of a knit cap and sunglasses — could not be matched to him. A man who had been pumping gasoline outside the convenience store where a clerk was shot and killed insisted that Mr. Chandler was not the perpetrator, but police largely ignored him, and he was not called to testify at trial. The police interrogator assumed from the outset that Mr. Chandler was guilty. Mr. Chandler said police used scare tactics to coerce a false confession.
The wrongful prison sentence stripped years from Mr. Chandler's life that can never be returned. It also forces the shooting victim's family to relive a nightmare that should have been closed years ago. But the biggest tragedy is that cases such as this are not a rarity in the United States.
The Innocence Project, whose Kentucky branch handled the Chandler case, says on its Web site that there have been 244 post-conviction exonerations since the venture was begun in 1992 in affiliation with Yeshiva University. Mr. Chandler's conviction seems typical of the miscarriages of justice that the project addresses. Seventy percent of the wrongfully convicted defendants are racial minorities (Mr. Chandler is black), for example, and 40 percent of the cases result in the real perpetrator being identified (a repeat offender has been indicted for the Louisville murder).
In the face of such statistics, it is appalling that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that inmates in the six states that do not allow post-conviction access to DNA evidence cannot use federal civil rights laws to obtain advanced DNA testing. (The Chandler case was rectified based on fingerprints, but DNA produces most post-conviction reversals.)
The justice system is charged with getting things right — for the benefit of victims, defendants and society. The courts must recognize that this doesn't always happen, and do whatever it can, whenever it can, to prevent or reverse life-altering errors.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Paul Craig Roberts: How the Feds Imprison the Innocent
The following article was originally published on October 5, 2009 at LewRockwell.com
How the Feds Imprison the Innocent
by Paul Craig Roberts
Authors of serious books seldom have cause to celebrate, but Larry Stratton and I have two reasons to open the champagne. Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, has announced a second printing of the second edition of The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and the noted civil libertarian and defense attorney, Harvey Silverglate, has just published a book covering many of the same legal cases and vetting our conclusion that in the United States every American is in grave danger from unscrupulous prosecutors who target the innocent.
For two decades I have been attempting to make Americans aware that the danger to their liberty comes not from foreign adversaries, terrorists, or criminals, but from prosecutors, who have destroyed law as a shield of the innocent and turned law into a weapon against the innocent. The Tyranny of Good Intentions (the publisher’s title) documents how the legal principles that protect our civil liberties were eroded by prosecutors even before the Bush regime obliterated what remained of the Bill of Rights.
The struggle has been uphill, because neither the right-wing nor the left-wing is emotionally content with the facts that Stratton and I present. Conservatives tend to see civil liberties as liberal coddling devices for criminals and, today, for terrorists. Predisposed to "law and order," conservatives align with police and prosecutors. They object to accounts of police misbehavior and prosecutorial abuse as propaganda in behalf of the criminal class.
The left-wing tends to see law as a tool of oppression that "the rich" use to control the lower classes, and liberals fret that "the rich" get off by hiring good lawyers, while the poor and minorities are ground under. Consequently, leftists object to the demonstration that even the very rich, such as Michael Milken, Martha Stewart, and Leona Helmsley, and even law and accounting firms, are victims of wrongful prosecution. Confusing wealth with villainy, leftists cannot free themselves from the emotional predilection that a convicted rich person must have been so guilty that not even the best lawyers could get them off.
The Tyranny of Good Intentions had a second printing of a second edition because of word of mouth, not because of reviews. Neither the right nor the left objects to wrongful prosecution as long as the victim is a bête noire. Sir Thomas More’s question (A Man For All Seasons) – what will happen to the innocent if we cut down the law in pursuit of devils? – rings no warning among right or left.
With this point made, I have come not to praise myself and my coauthor, but to praise Harvey Silverglate. If The Tyranny of Good Intentions cannot convince you, then perhaps Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent can, and, if not, then both together surely will.
The Tyranny of Good Intentions is a broad stroke. It demonstrates how each civil liberty has been eroded away. Prosecutorial abuse is one chapter in the book.
Silverglate’s Three Felonies A Day focuses on how federal prosecutors invent creative interpretations of statutes, sometimes creating new felonies out of vague language or thin air, felonies never legislated by Congress. Federal criminal law is today so vast and so poorly worded that Silverglate reports, truthfully, that each of us, every American, commits three felonies every day without knowing it.
Federal judges, an increasing number of whom are former federal prosecutors, permit the prosecution of Americans for crimes that the defendants did not know were crimes, crimes that never before existed until the federal prosecutor brought the charge. The invention of crimes by prosecutors violates every known legal principle in Anglo-American law. Yet, it has become commonplace. Defense attorneys, a group that also increasingly consists of former federal prosecutors, as Silverglate accurately reports, have lost confidence that it is possible to defend a client from a federal prosecution and see their role, not as the defense, but as negotiator of a plea bargain that reduces the charges and prison time of the defendant, no matter how innocent.
Silverglate shows that many of the plea bargains create precedents that prosecutors can exploit to trap more innocent victims.
The reader by now is asking why prosecutors would waste time on the innocent when there are so many real crimes. Silverglate provides conclusive answers. For example, politically ambitious federal prosecutors, such as Rudy Giuliani and William Weld, pick high-profile targets to frame in order to build name recognition for political careers. Giuliani picked Michael Milken and Leona Helmsley. Weld picked Boston mayor Kevin White. Giuliani went on to be Mayor of New York and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Weld went on to be a two-term governor of Massachusetts. Leura Canary, perhaps at the urging of Karl Rove, picked Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Michael J. Sullivan picked Thomas Finneran, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and so on.
From Silverglate’s book, the reader can learn how federal prosecutors manage their frame-ups of innocents. For a targeted city or state political figure, the prosecutor first hunts for a criminal act somewhere in the bureaucracy. Perhaps some low-level person has extorted a bribe for a permit. Once such a person is caught, he or she is told that charges will be dropped if information is given that can be used to implicate the mayor or Speaker of the House or governor. As federal district court judges now permit hearsay and uncorroborated testimony, a totally innocent high-profile person can be snared on the basis of testimony by a petty crook low in the bureaucracy.
This is the way America works today. Just as state and local police cannot stand up to the FBI, elected state and local officials are powerless in the face of their pursuit by corrupt federal prosecutors.
Silverglate himself was the attorney in some of the landmark cases that he reports. The reader, even one with the usual illusions and delusions that blind Americans to their predicament, will be scared by Silverglate’s documented account, case by case, of how easy it is in "freedom and democracy" America to frame the totally innocent.
In Silverglate’s concluding chapter, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," the answer is obvious even to a naïf: "It tolls for all."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.
How the Feds Imprison the Innocent
by Paul Craig Roberts
Authors of serious books seldom have cause to celebrate, but Larry Stratton and I have two reasons to open the champagne. Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, has announced a second printing of the second edition of The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and the noted civil libertarian and defense attorney, Harvey Silverglate, has just published a book covering many of the same legal cases and vetting our conclusion that in the United States every American is in grave danger from unscrupulous prosecutors who target the innocent.
For two decades I have been attempting to make Americans aware that the danger to their liberty comes not from foreign adversaries, terrorists, or criminals, but from prosecutors, who have destroyed law as a shield of the innocent and turned law into a weapon against the innocent. The Tyranny of Good Intentions (the publisher’s title) documents how the legal principles that protect our civil liberties were eroded by prosecutors even before the Bush regime obliterated what remained of the Bill of Rights.
The struggle has been uphill, because neither the right-wing nor the left-wing is emotionally content with the facts that Stratton and I present. Conservatives tend to see civil liberties as liberal coddling devices for criminals and, today, for terrorists. Predisposed to "law and order," conservatives align with police and prosecutors. They object to accounts of police misbehavior and prosecutorial abuse as propaganda in behalf of the criminal class.
The left-wing tends to see law as a tool of oppression that "the rich" use to control the lower classes, and liberals fret that "the rich" get off by hiring good lawyers, while the poor and minorities are ground under. Consequently, leftists object to the demonstration that even the very rich, such as Michael Milken, Martha Stewart, and Leona Helmsley, and even law and accounting firms, are victims of wrongful prosecution. Confusing wealth with villainy, leftists cannot free themselves from the emotional predilection that a convicted rich person must have been so guilty that not even the best lawyers could get them off.
The Tyranny of Good Intentions had a second printing of a second edition because of word of mouth, not because of reviews. Neither the right nor the left objects to wrongful prosecution as long as the victim is a bête noire. Sir Thomas More’s question (A Man For All Seasons) – what will happen to the innocent if we cut down the law in pursuit of devils? – rings no warning among right or left.
With this point made, I have come not to praise myself and my coauthor, but to praise Harvey Silverglate. If The Tyranny of Good Intentions cannot convince you, then perhaps Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent can, and, if not, then both together surely will.
The Tyranny of Good Intentions is a broad stroke. It demonstrates how each civil liberty has been eroded away. Prosecutorial abuse is one chapter in the book.
Silverglate’s Three Felonies A Day focuses on how federal prosecutors invent creative interpretations of statutes, sometimes creating new felonies out of vague language or thin air, felonies never legislated by Congress. Federal criminal law is today so vast and so poorly worded that Silverglate reports, truthfully, that each of us, every American, commits three felonies every day without knowing it.
Federal judges, an increasing number of whom are former federal prosecutors, permit the prosecution of Americans for crimes that the defendants did not know were crimes, crimes that never before existed until the federal prosecutor brought the charge. The invention of crimes by prosecutors violates every known legal principle in Anglo-American law. Yet, it has become commonplace. Defense attorneys, a group that also increasingly consists of former federal prosecutors, as Silverglate accurately reports, have lost confidence that it is possible to defend a client from a federal prosecution and see their role, not as the defense, but as negotiator of a plea bargain that reduces the charges and prison time of the defendant, no matter how innocent.
Silverglate shows that many of the plea bargains create precedents that prosecutors can exploit to trap more innocent victims.
The reader by now is asking why prosecutors would waste time on the innocent when there are so many real crimes. Silverglate provides conclusive answers. For example, politically ambitious federal prosecutors, such as Rudy Giuliani and William Weld, pick high-profile targets to frame in order to build name recognition for political careers. Giuliani picked Michael Milken and Leona Helmsley. Weld picked Boston mayor Kevin White. Giuliani went on to be Mayor of New York and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Weld went on to be a two-term governor of Massachusetts. Leura Canary, perhaps at the urging of Karl Rove, picked Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Michael J. Sullivan picked Thomas Finneran, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and so on.
From Silverglate’s book, the reader can learn how federal prosecutors manage their frame-ups of innocents. For a targeted city or state political figure, the prosecutor first hunts for a criminal act somewhere in the bureaucracy. Perhaps some low-level person has extorted a bribe for a permit. Once such a person is caught, he or she is told that charges will be dropped if information is given that can be used to implicate the mayor or Speaker of the House or governor. As federal district court judges now permit hearsay and uncorroborated testimony, a totally innocent high-profile person can be snared on the basis of testimony by a petty crook low in the bureaucracy.
This is the way America works today. Just as state and local police cannot stand up to the FBI, elected state and local officials are powerless in the face of their pursuit by corrupt federal prosecutors.
Silverglate himself was the attorney in some of the landmark cases that he reports. The reader, even one with the usual illusions and delusions that blind Americans to their predicament, will be scared by Silverglate’s documented account, case by case, of how easy it is in "freedom and democracy" America to frame the totally innocent.
In Silverglate’s concluding chapter, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," the answer is obvious even to a naïf: "It tolls for all."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Guest Shot: No help for the innocent
The following editorial was published in the Detroit (MI) Free Press on October 8, 2009.
No help for the innocent
Freed after a wrongful conviction, ex-prisoners get no redress
By JEFF GERRITT
Had DeShawn Reed been paroled from prison, instead of walking out under a court order, the state would have given him $75, a bus ride home, and maybe a little help finding a job or apartment. Instead, the wrongly convicted prisoner got nada, after serving eight years of a 20-year sentence for assault with intent to murder. Reed, 34, of Ecorse, who's unemployed and living with his disabled mother, wasn't even eligible for a boost from the Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Initiative.
In July, Wayne County Circuit Judge Patricia Fresard threw out the conviction of Reed and his uncle Marvin Reed for a 2000 shooting that left Shannon Gholston a quadriplegic. Gholston recanted his testimony, and the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School produced evidence that another man -- found dead with the gun that was used in Gholston's shooting -- was the shooter. On July 31, inmate number 376440 became a free man.
"At least someone should have apologized to my mother and kids," Reed, who had maintained his innocence in prison, told me last week. "I heard nothing from the governor, nothing from (Wayne County Prosecutor) Kym Worthy."
And nothing from the Michigan Department of Treasury.
Nearly 20 states now have laws granting compensation to people wrongly convicted. Even Texas, with an express lane to Death Row, pays $25,000 a year.
It's time this state did what politicians and the state Parole Board expect prisoners to do: Admit a mistake and own up to it.
A bill introduced by state Sen. Martha Scott, D-Highland Park, would bring Michigan in line with the federal Innocence Protection Act, which gives the wrongly convicted $50,000 for every year they were in prison. It would also make inmates with court-vacated convictions eligible for education benefits and court costs.
Wrongful convictions occur far more often than people realize, especially with Michigan's limp indigent defense system. Incontestable DNA or other compelling evidence reverses only a tiny fraction of wrongful conviction cases. Still, dozens of Michigan inmates have had convictions overturned, including the high-profile DNA exonerations of Kenneth Wyniemko, who served nine years for a rape he didn't commit, and Eddie Joe Lloyd, wrongly imprisoned for 17 years for rape and murder.
More are coming. The new Michigan Innocence Clinic may be the nation's sole innocence project that takes only non-DNA cases, said co-founder David Moran. The clinic is now pressing for the release of another prisoner, Karl Vinson, 54, who was wrongly convicted 23 years ago of rape.
Nothing can repay people for time spent in prison for a crime they didn't commit. Still, the government that carried out the injustice should help them get their lives back. The money acknowledges a wrong and gives much needed assistance to ex-inmates who have lost their assets and savings.
"Someone should pay," Reed told me. "It's really easy to go to prison for something you didn't do. Unless it happens to you or to someone you love, you don't think about it."
JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer. Contact him at gerritt@freepress.com or 313-222-6585.
No help for the innocent
Freed after a wrongful conviction, ex-prisoners get no redress
By JEFF GERRITT
Had DeShawn Reed been paroled from prison, instead of walking out under a court order, the state would have given him $75, a bus ride home, and maybe a little help finding a job or apartment. Instead, the wrongly convicted prisoner got nada, after serving eight years of a 20-year sentence for assault with intent to murder. Reed, 34, of Ecorse, who's unemployed and living with his disabled mother, wasn't even eligible for a boost from the Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Initiative.
In July, Wayne County Circuit Judge Patricia Fresard threw out the conviction of Reed and his uncle Marvin Reed for a 2000 shooting that left Shannon Gholston a quadriplegic. Gholston recanted his testimony, and the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School produced evidence that another man -- found dead with the gun that was used in Gholston's shooting -- was the shooter. On July 31, inmate number 376440 became a free man.
"At least someone should have apologized to my mother and kids," Reed, who had maintained his innocence in prison, told me last week. "I heard nothing from the governor, nothing from (Wayne County Prosecutor) Kym Worthy."
And nothing from the Michigan Department of Treasury.
Nearly 20 states now have laws granting compensation to people wrongly convicted. Even Texas, with an express lane to Death Row, pays $25,000 a year.
It's time this state did what politicians and the state Parole Board expect prisoners to do: Admit a mistake and own up to it.
A bill introduced by state Sen. Martha Scott, D-Highland Park, would bring Michigan in line with the federal Innocence Protection Act, which gives the wrongly convicted $50,000 for every year they were in prison. It would also make inmates with court-vacated convictions eligible for education benefits and court costs.
Wrongful convictions occur far more often than people realize, especially with Michigan's limp indigent defense system. Incontestable DNA or other compelling evidence reverses only a tiny fraction of wrongful conviction cases. Still, dozens of Michigan inmates have had convictions overturned, including the high-profile DNA exonerations of Kenneth Wyniemko, who served nine years for a rape he didn't commit, and Eddie Joe Lloyd, wrongly imprisoned for 17 years for rape and murder.
More are coming. The new Michigan Innocence Clinic may be the nation's sole innocence project that takes only non-DNA cases, said co-founder David Moran. The clinic is now pressing for the release of another prisoner, Karl Vinson, 54, who was wrongly convicted 23 years ago of rape.
Nothing can repay people for time spent in prison for a crime they didn't commit. Still, the government that carried out the injustice should help them get their lives back. The money acknowledges a wrong and gives much needed assistance to ex-inmates who have lost their assets and savings.
"Someone should pay," Reed told me. "It's really easy to go to prison for something you didn't do. Unless it happens to you or to someone you love, you don't think about it."
JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer. Contact him at gerritt@freepress.com or 313-222-6585.
Guest Shot: 'Due process' often sends the innocent to jail
The following editorial was published in the Miami (FL) Herald on October 6, 2009.
'Due process' often sends the innocent to jail
By RONALD FRASER Guest Columnist
On paper at least, the Constitution's "due process" clause is the citizen's guarantee against wrongful conviction and imprisonment. But once inside a courtroom, all bets are off. Research shows that eyewitness misidentification, false confessions and government use of snitches as witnesses -- all part of due process -- too often put innocent people behind bars.
According to Innocence Project attorneys at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City, courts in 34 states have used DNA testing to reverse more than 230 criminal convictions and free wrongly convicted persons who, on average, spent 12 years in prison.
In Florida, 10 prior convictions have been nullified. The state's first reversal took place in 2000 but was too late to free Frank Lee Smith, who died of cancer in prison after serving 14 years for a murder he did not commit. In part, Smith was convicted based on eyewitness testimony that he was seen leaving the scene of the crime.
The latest reversal in Florida occurred in 2008 when, after serving 26 years in prison, William Dillon was cleared of a 1981 murder conviction. Prosecutors had used eyewitness testimony from a former girlfriend that placed Dillon at the crime scene and the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who said Dillon admitted guilt while in jail awaiting trial.
These cases expose serious breakdowns in America's justice systems. If the courtroom failures found in these cases are at work in all state and local justice systems, what good are constitutional guarantees?
Each year many thousands of cases are decided in which DNA evidence is not available as a technical check on the reliability of traditional evidence. In these cases a person's guilt or innocence may very well be determined by error-prone eyewitness testimony, unreliable forensic procedures, government snitches and false, self-incriminating statements often obtained under heavy duress.
"These DNA exoneration cases," says the Innocence Project, "have provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events, but arise from systemic defects that can be precisely identified and addressed."
Eyewitness misidentification testimony was a factor in 74 percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases, making it the leading cause of these wrongful convictions. And two in five of these eyewitness identifications involved cross-racial identification. Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own.
Traditional eyewitness identification procedures are known to give unintended clues that result in misidentifications. The project recommends using double-blind lineups, where neither the witness nor the lineup administrators know the suspect.
Invalidated forensic evidence played a role in about 50 percent of the wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA testing. Unlike DNA testing, which is based on solid scientific research, according to the project, other forensic techniques used in courtrooms, such as hair microscopy, bite-mark comparisons and shoe-print comparisons have never been subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation.
In addition to the need to validate all forensic techniques scientifically, the technicians using techniques that are already validated, such as blood typing, need to be well trained to ensure that test results are accurate.
False confessions lead to wrongful convictions in approximately 25 percent of the cases, many involving defendants under 18 years of age or younger or developmentally disabled persons. To prevent coercion and to provide an accurate record, all police interrogations should be electronically recorded, says the project. In homicide cases, the states of Illinois, Maine and New Mexico already require taping of interrogations.
Snitches contributed to wrongful conviction in 16 percent of the cases. Snitch testimony is unreliable because it may be offered in return for deals, special treatment or the dropping of charges. All communications between snitches and prosecutors should be recorded and judges should instruct juries that snitch testimony is unreliable.
Governments exist to protect the rights of individuals. But when federal, state and local government prosecutors and judges knowingly tolerate judicial processes that violate the constitutional rights of citizens they, themselves, become rights violators.
Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington- based civil liberties organization. E-mail: fraserr@erols.com
'Due process' often sends the innocent to jail
By RONALD FRASER Guest Columnist
On paper at least, the Constitution's "due process" clause is the citizen's guarantee against wrongful conviction and imprisonment. But once inside a courtroom, all bets are off. Research shows that eyewitness misidentification, false confessions and government use of snitches as witnesses -- all part of due process -- too often put innocent people behind bars.
According to Innocence Project attorneys at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City, courts in 34 states have used DNA testing to reverse more than 230 criminal convictions and free wrongly convicted persons who, on average, spent 12 years in prison.
In Florida, 10 prior convictions have been nullified. The state's first reversal took place in 2000 but was too late to free Frank Lee Smith, who died of cancer in prison after serving 14 years for a murder he did not commit. In part, Smith was convicted based on eyewitness testimony that he was seen leaving the scene of the crime.
The latest reversal in Florida occurred in 2008 when, after serving 26 years in prison, William Dillon was cleared of a 1981 murder conviction. Prosecutors had used eyewitness testimony from a former girlfriend that placed Dillon at the crime scene and the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who said Dillon admitted guilt while in jail awaiting trial.
These cases expose serious breakdowns in America's justice systems. If the courtroom failures found in these cases are at work in all state and local justice systems, what good are constitutional guarantees?
Each year many thousands of cases are decided in which DNA evidence is not available as a technical check on the reliability of traditional evidence. In these cases a person's guilt or innocence may very well be determined by error-prone eyewitness testimony, unreliable forensic procedures, government snitches and false, self-incriminating statements often obtained under heavy duress.
"These DNA exoneration cases," says the Innocence Project, "have provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events, but arise from systemic defects that can be precisely identified and addressed."
Eyewitness misidentification testimony was a factor in 74 percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases, making it the leading cause of these wrongful convictions. And two in five of these eyewitness identifications involved cross-racial identification. Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own.
Traditional eyewitness identification procedures are known to give unintended clues that result in misidentifications. The project recommends using double-blind lineups, where neither the witness nor the lineup administrators know the suspect.
Invalidated forensic evidence played a role in about 50 percent of the wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA testing. Unlike DNA testing, which is based on solid scientific research, according to the project, other forensic techniques used in courtrooms, such as hair microscopy, bite-mark comparisons and shoe-print comparisons have never been subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation.
In addition to the need to validate all forensic techniques scientifically, the technicians using techniques that are already validated, such as blood typing, need to be well trained to ensure that test results are accurate.
False confessions lead to wrongful convictions in approximately 25 percent of the cases, many involving defendants under 18 years of age or younger or developmentally disabled persons. To prevent coercion and to provide an accurate record, all police interrogations should be electronically recorded, says the project. In homicide cases, the states of Illinois, Maine and New Mexico already require taping of interrogations.
Snitches contributed to wrongful conviction in 16 percent of the cases. Snitch testimony is unreliable because it may be offered in return for deals, special treatment or the dropping of charges. All communications between snitches and prosecutors should be recorded and judges should instruct juries that snitch testimony is unreliable.
Governments exist to protect the rights of individuals. But when federal, state and local government prosecutors and judges knowingly tolerate judicial processes that violate the constitutional rights of citizens they, themselves, become rights violators.
Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington- based civil liberties organization. E-mail: fraserr@erols.com
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Guest Shot: Why Wrongful Convictions Must Decrease
Why Wrongful Convictions Must Decrease
by Adrienne Carlson
It’s worse when an innocent person is convicted than when a guilty one is let free, as any victim of a wrongful conviction will tell you. When you know in your heart that you’re innocent, when the system has worked against you simply because you were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you feel a burning sense of anger and helplessness at the criminal justice system that ruined your life. Wrongful convictions are now being overthrown with the surfacing of new evidence, mainly where DNA is available and can clear innocent people of crimes they had been convicted for when forensic science was not as developed as it is now.
While the guilty must be punished, the innocent must not be convicted, and the number of wrongful convictions must decrease because:
• They let the guilty party get away: This is the worst side effect of wrongful convictions – when an innocent person is convicted, it automatically implies that the one guilty of the crime goes scot-free. This allows him or her to continue to perpetrate crimes and bringing disaster to the lives of many others. When law enforcement officers let down their guard thinking that they have the guilty person, the one who actually committed the crime becomes emboldened to continue to hurt more innocent people.
• They ruin lives: The conviction of an innocent person is devastating for the victim and their family. Their entire lives are changed; for the victim, a life in jail is torture and sheer misery – he or she is not used to the rigors of the system and are broken mentally and physically by the time they complete their sentence or are released for good behavior or by new evidence which helps in their exoneration. As for the families, they are treated as outcasts by society and are shunned in their social and other circles. Their lives are never the same again, and even if the victim is exonerated, in the eyes of society, he or she is branded a criminal for life.
• They erode confidence in the legal system: When wrongful convictions happen, they decrease the confidence that the public has in the legal and criminal justice system. People start to believe that the system is deficient and full of faults; they are hesitant to report crimes and other offenses because they do not believe in the ability of the law enforcement officers to bring the right person to book.
• They dilute the authority of law enforcement officers: Most wrongful convictions happen because of cops and other law enforcement officers who do not do their job correctly and are misled by evidence that points to the wrong person. All they are interested in is convicting someone, and to them, it need not be the guilty party. Others are guilty of not investigating enough to find the real criminal. This dilutes their standing as authoritative figures in the public eye, and the entire community of law enforcement takes a beating.
By-line:
This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of forensic scientist schools. Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson83@yahoo.com
by Adrienne Carlson
It’s worse when an innocent person is convicted than when a guilty one is let free, as any victim of a wrongful conviction will tell you. When you know in your heart that you’re innocent, when the system has worked against you simply because you were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you feel a burning sense of anger and helplessness at the criminal justice system that ruined your life. Wrongful convictions are now being overthrown with the surfacing of new evidence, mainly where DNA is available and can clear innocent people of crimes they had been convicted for when forensic science was not as developed as it is now.
While the guilty must be punished, the innocent must not be convicted, and the number of wrongful convictions must decrease because:
• They let the guilty party get away: This is the worst side effect of wrongful convictions – when an innocent person is convicted, it automatically implies that the one guilty of the crime goes scot-free. This allows him or her to continue to perpetrate crimes and bringing disaster to the lives of many others. When law enforcement officers let down their guard thinking that they have the guilty person, the one who actually committed the crime becomes emboldened to continue to hurt more innocent people.
• They ruin lives: The conviction of an innocent person is devastating for the victim and their family. Their entire lives are changed; for the victim, a life in jail is torture and sheer misery – he or she is not used to the rigors of the system and are broken mentally and physically by the time they complete their sentence or are released for good behavior or by new evidence which helps in their exoneration. As for the families, they are treated as outcasts by society and are shunned in their social and other circles. Their lives are never the same again, and even if the victim is exonerated, in the eyes of society, he or she is branded a criminal for life.
• They erode confidence in the legal system: When wrongful convictions happen, they decrease the confidence that the public has in the legal and criminal justice system. People start to believe that the system is deficient and full of faults; they are hesitant to report crimes and other offenses because they do not believe in the ability of the law enforcement officers to bring the right person to book.
• They dilute the authority of law enforcement officers: Most wrongful convictions happen because of cops and other law enforcement officers who do not do their job correctly and are misled by evidence that points to the wrong person. All they are interested in is convicting someone, and to them, it need not be the guilty party. Others are guilty of not investigating enough to find the real criminal. This dilutes their standing as authoritative figures in the public eye, and the entire community of law enforcement takes a beating.
By-line:
This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of forensic scientist schools. Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson83@yahoo.com
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