Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Judge not, least ye shall be incarcerated for a terrible job.





From The Associated Press 4.17.2012

Innocent people may have been imprisoned and even executed because prosecutors kept quiet about questionable work at the FBI lab, The Washington Post reports.
One man, Donald Gates, now 60, was cleared by DNA testing in 2009 of raping and killing a Georgetown University student. Gates, who spent 28 years in prison, was not told that an inspector general's investigation that began in 1995 questioned the work of FBI Special Agent Michael Malone, an expert on hair and fiber analysis whose work was critical to Gates' conviction, the Post said.

Lawyers for John Huffington, who was sentenced to life in Maryland for a 1981 double homicide, said they learned of evidence that might clear him from the Post, not the Justice Department.

Justice Department officials told the Post they met their legal responsibility, alerting prosecutors to potentially exculpatory evidence, and were not required to notify the defense.

The newspaper said its review found some prosecutors never alerted defense lawyers to exculpatory material or did so very late. Others did so quickly.
The Post suggested the inspector general's investigation, which concluded in 2004, was too narrow. While officials allegedly knew there were problems with the lab's work generally in analyzing hair and fiber, including a lack of protocols, only Malone's findings were scrutinized.

Recent cases have put more attention on forensic science. They include that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004 after a respected arson expert found no real evidence the fire that killed his three daughters was deliberately set. The findings suggested arson investigators' work had frequently been based on false assumptions.
           
Recently I published a novel called Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, which dealt with prosecutors and police hiding evidence and materials that could free falsely convicted prisoners. Then I read John Grisham’s book, The Innocent Man, that followed the case of two men in Oklahoma, one on death row the other behind bars for life, for a crime they did not commit. Again a prosecutor and police investigators sitting on information that would have freed the two years before they were finally exonerated.

Now in Texas, we have a sitting state judge who was once a prosecutor in Williamson County who did the same thing.  Railroaded a man to prison on faulty evidence, shoddy police work and hiding materials from defense counsel that would have turned the tide of the trial. The state appointed prosecutor who came in to give the man a new trial soon realized the man’s innocence and called for his immediate release. How would you like to have been locked up for sixteen years?

This has got to stop. And the way it stops is to make the prosecutorial staffs responsible for misconduct. You hide evidence that sends someone to death row or to prison for life and you knew it, you take his or her place. How about that Mr. and Mrs. DA?

It is time justice reenter the justice system.  It is time we look for truth in trials rather than look for a quick easy answers.  All too often the ones who are getting locked up had nothing what-so-ever to do with the crime.  They were simply an easy target for the county or state DA to point to and say “Hang Them.” And usually in Texas our sophisticated juries do just that.

This is not justice. It is vindication. It is political. “Look at my record of convictions protecting you, while I run for a higher office.” It has got to stop.

So I am going to suggest to anyone in Austin who will hear me, that we go for a one for one restitution. If the DA and police screw up and send an innocent man or woman to prison knowing they had the evidence to free them, then the DA gets the time that was awarded the falsely convicted person to begin with.

Oh that stings!

Slip on some prison orange and see how you like it, Judge Ken Anderson. As far as I am concerned you are the worst of the worst of Texas criminals.


                       

1 comment:

  1. This issue covers so much ground. My sister-in-law works for the Dallas Co. DA and we talk about this often. Keeping in mind that she's working for a rather progressive DA, even she can't deny the fact that those folks are graded on convictions and always see the world through the eyes of a grieving family that desperately need closure.

    Then there are other layers like the disenfranchisement of black men (which, in it self has many layers including guns, drugs, education, racism).

    Just the idea that it's 'the state' vs an individual. The state is pretty fucking big and well-resourced. Scary.

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