Last month, Frank Sterling was exonerated by DNA evidence after being incarcerated 18 years for a crime he did not commit. Sterling was wrongfully convicted of murdering an elderly woman in Rochester, New York in 1988. His conviction was based entirely on a false confession. In the meantime the actual killer remained free, and six years later he murdered four-year-old Kali Poulton. This tragedy leaves no question that addressing the flaws in our criminal justice system that lead to wrongful convictions is a public safety imperative.
On April 5th Ohio Governor Ted Strickland signed a reform bill that will help reduce wrongful convictions and improve the fairness and accuracy of our criminal justice system. Among the measures included are safeguards to improve the eyewitness identification process by requiring police to use a more accurate protocol for administering live and photo lineups. The new protocol reflects the growing awareness that eyewitness evidence is fragile, and much like trace physical evidence must be collected very carefully, or it may become tainted.
After seventeen years, Gregory Taylor was finally freed on February 17th when the three judge panel of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission unanimously ruled to exonerate him. North Carolina created the commission to investigate and evaluate post-conviction claims of innocence in 2006 and is the first of its kind in the United States. Taylor, wrongfully convicted of first degree murder in 1993, is the first person to be exonerated by the commission.
On March 1 Texas Governor Rick Perry officially pardoned Timothy Cole, who was wrongfully convicted over two decades ago. Tragically, the DNA tests that proved Cole's innocence came too late: he died in prison in 1999 while serving time for a rape he did not commit. A faulty lineup led to inaccurate eyewitness evidence in Cole's case, which serves as a reminder of the urgent need for eyewitness identification reforms that increase reliability and reduce the risk of mistakes. Cole's case was one of the thirty-nine Texas wrongful convictions exposed by DNA profiled in The Justice Project's report Convicting the Innocent: Texas Justice Derailed.
All too often, prosecutors' offices fall prey to a culture of conviction-seeking at all costs. Prosecutors who become singularly focused on conviction rates often neglect their ethical duty to protect the innocent and guard the rights of the accused. The Kern County District Attorney's Office in California provides a clear example of this pitfall, boasting that under District Attorney Ed Jagels' supervision, the office "has had the highest per capita prison commitment rate of any major California County." What the office fails to highlight is the startling twenty five wrongful convictions that the office has accrued during Jagels tenure as District Attorney. Jagels recently announced his retirement, and despite his appalling record, he hopes to personally select his successor.
The troubling culture apparent in the Kern County office is not the exception. Due in large part to the public pressure to convict and the widespread failure of state bars and disciplinary agencies to hold prosecutors accountable for ethical violations, this culture of "convict at all costs" is a nationwide problem.
Charged with dual roles as advocates and ministers of justice, prosecutors are the most powerful actors in our criminal justice system. They have sole responsibility for decisions regarding what charges to bring against an individual, what sentence to seek, what plea bargain to offer, and what evidence to present to a jury during trial. Clearly, these decisions have a lasting impact on all those under the purview of the justice system. However, despite the great power of prosecutors, few are held accountable for violations of their ethical obligations.
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, which is a wrongful conviction case about prosecutorial immunity. Specifically, the Court will decide whether the prosecutors in a 1978 murder trial may be sued as individuals for the wrongful conviction of Curtis McGhee Jr. and Terry Harrington. McGhee and Harrington allege that the prosecutors violated their rights by coercing false testimony during the investigation and using that testimony at trial. The attorneys representing the prosecutors in question argue that while prosecutors are immune from lawsuits when acting within the scope of their job, state bar and disciplinary agencies provide sufficient punitive mechanisms to punish prosecutors for misconduct. It has been our experience that state bars and disciplinary agencies fall woefully short of holding prosecutors accountable for their misconduct.
Texas has had more than its share of tragic wrongful convictions. Of the more than 40 people exonerated by DNA in Texas, one of the most heartbreaking cases is that of Timothy Cole. Cole was wrongly convicted in 1986 for a Lubbock rape. DNA testing conclusively exonerated him last year and identified the true perpetrator. But the exoneration came too late. In 1999, Cole died in prison of a severe asthma attack, an innocent man.
So far, Texas has been slow to respond to the long list of mistakes that exist in each of these wrongful convictions. These mistakes have forced innocent people to spend over 500 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. But that may be about to change. Last May, the Texas Legislature approved a bill creating the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions, and directing the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense to work with the panel on a report on needed reforms to prevent wrongful convictions. The Cole Panel's inaugural meeting is slated for today.
Twenty innocent men spent almost 170 years in prison in Georgia for crimes they did not commit. What does eight years mean to you? For these twenty innocent Georgians, eight years is the average length of time each spent behind bars for a crime they did not commit. Just as it is true in exonerations nationwide, mistaken eyewitness identification is the leading cause of Georgia's wrongful convictions.
Clearly, mistaken eyewitness identification is problem in Georgia. Eyewitness evidence, much like physical evidence, is highly subject to contamination and must be collected carefully according to scientific protocols. Without clear, written policies and procedures that instruct law enforcement agencies on the best practices for photo and live lineups, mistakes will continue to be made. And lives will continue to be destroyed.
Last week, the San Jose Mercury News reported that Jeffrey Rodriguez, a man from San Jose who spent five years in prison for a crime he did not commit, was awarded a $1 million settlement from Santa Clara County for his wrongful conviction. Jeffrey's wrongful conviction and his subsequent settlement is not a unique story in Santa Clara: since 2005 the county has paid more than $4.6 million in settlements for wrongful convictions by the District Attorney's office. Nor is Jeffrey's story unique to the state of California. Earlier this month a Louisiana circuit court of appeals upheld a $14 million jury settlement against the Orleans Parish DA for misconduct resulting in the wrongful conviction and death sentence of John Thompson.
Like clockwork, wrongful convictions continue to occur at the hands of a system that is prone to error. In addition to the unconscionable act of incarcerating a person for years for a crime they did not commit, wrongful convictions impose an enormous financial burden on taxpayers. Year after year, month after month, the criminal justice system must pay for its mistakes.
Another innocent man is free in Texas. Ernest Sonnier was released from custody on Friday after DNA testing implicated two different men in the 1986 rape for which Sonnier was convicted. Sonnier has spent twenty-three years in prison, always maintaining his innocence.
The release of Ernest Sonnier is just the latest case that highlights the ongoing problem of wrongful convictions in Texas. In May, Jerry Lee Evans was freed after DNA testing proved another man committed the crime. He spent twenty-two years in prison. And in March, The Justice Project published Convicting the Innocent: Texas Justice Derailed, which highlights thirty-nine other cases of wrongful conviction in Texas.
George Rodriguez is seeking justice. In 2004, DNA testing exonerated Rodriguez for the 1987 abduction and sexual assault he had been convicted of seventeen years earlier. During his trial, a Houston Police forensic analyst testified that biological evidence pointed to Rodriguez's guilt; it was later discovered that the analyst lied. Rodriguez is one of forty individuals exonerated by DNA in Texas, and one of six exonerated in Harris County. Read more about DNA exonerations in Texas.
A trial is now underway in Rodriguez's civil lawsuit against the City of Houston, and the city is claiming that there was nothing it could have done to prevent the misconduct of their lab analyst, whose lie led to Rodriguez's wrongful conviction. Houston city attorney Arturo Michel stated:
"I think what you have here is a person who was simply not honest and it doesn't matter how many funds you put into something, how good a program you have, that cannot guard against a person's dishonesty."
Last week, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia introduced The National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009-an important piece of legislation with broad bi-partisan support that would create a commission to "look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom." The legislation specifically gives the commission the important responsibility of examining why the United States has seen drastic increases in our prison population, particularly for individuals convicted of drug crimes and for the incarceration of the mentally ill. The commission would also be charged with examining the costs of our current prison system, as well as the current state, if any, of post-incarceration/prisoner re-entry programs. There is no doubt that the alarming number of individuals incarcerated, and the demonstrated lack of prison re-entry/rehabilitation programs, make it very clear that our criminal justice system is in drastic need of the kind of examination and reform that Senator Webb's legislation calls for. However, as written, the bill does not call for an examination of our criminal justice system at the front end, to see whether or not we convict and incarcerate individuals using a fair, accurate, and efficient process.
Unfortunately, in recent decades, DNA exonerations all over the country, as well as research on the causes and costs of wrongful convictions, reveals that our criminal justice system does not utilize fair, accurate, and reliable procedures during criminal investigations or criminal trials. We cannot be confident in the investigations and convictions that send so many people to prison in the first place.
It is difficult to fathom that thirty-nine innocent Texans have spent more than five hundred years in prison for crimes they did not commit. This alarming figure is detailed in a new report issued this week by The Justice Project: Convicting the Innocent: Texas Justice Derailed.
Unfortunately, five hundred years does not reflect the actual amount of time all innocent people have spent wrongfully imprisoned in Texas because the report only focuses on individuals who were exonerated by DNA evidence, which is available in only a fraction of cases. Each DNA exoneration exposes flaws in our criminal justice system that lead to unreliable evidence and inaccurate verdicts in our courts. It is time Texas and the rest of the country confront these flaws and learn from these costly mistakes.
The costs of wrongful convictions are profound, and begin with the devastation suffered by the wrongfully convicted person and family. Everyone involved in these cases is affected, from jurors who are presented with faulty evidence, to the crime victims who are denied the justice of seeing the real perpetrator convicted. Further, every wrongful conviction undermines public safety. When the wrong person is prosecuted and convicted, the actual perpetrator remains free to commit more crimes-crimes that could have been prevented.
Last year, Tim Masters was exonerated of a 1987 Fort Collins, Colo. murder following post-conviction DNA tests that pointed to his innocence.
Masters had already spent nearly a decade in prison when he was finally released.A lawsuit recently filed by Masters claims law enforcement and prosecutors involved in his case withheld key pieces of evidence indicating his innocence – leading to his wrongful conviction and imprisonment.
As the Associated Press reported last week, the lead detective in Masters’ case acknowledged that police knew about physical evidence that could exonerate him including evidence that fingerprints found on the victim’s purse, hair, and clothing did not belong to Masters.
Here are the top stories in criminal justice reform, taken from the Justice Newsladder.
Dallas prosecutor Mike Ware is backing the shift to mandatory double-blind photo lineups. Dallas County has overturned more wrongful convictions based on DNA evidence than any other county in America. (gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com)
STATE BLOGS
