Freeing the innocent

In 1996, a man from a neighboring town was convicted of kidnapping and rape and convicted to 27 years in prison. After six years of unsuccessful appeals, he contacted the Northern California Innocence Project and asked for help. In 2005, Peter Rose was exonerated of the crime based on DNA evidence obtained from the victim at the time of the crime.

A few days after Rose’s release, the rape victim (now 23 years old) contacted reporter Jeff Barker at the Stockton Record and recanted her 1994 identification of Rose. She told the reporter, “I’m not sure. I wasn’t sure,” and attributed her certainty on the witness stand at Rose’s trial to pressure by the police.

The young woman said she “went along with the police because they seemed to have evidence lined up against Rose.” (November 6, 2004, Stockton Record, Jeff Barker.)

Peter Rose was one of the lucky ones. In 1989, Texas executed Carlos de Luna, who proclaimed his innocence until the moment of his death; another man, Carlos Hernandez, has bragged that he committed the crime for which de Luna was executed. [Source]

“One would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned, and suffer capitally.” —  Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae

It’s an interesting maxim, Blackstone’s formulation, and not one we’ve much lived by here in the United States. In the past, particularly in the cases of vigilante justice, it has been deemed better to remove a potential threat; this mindset directs our current war in Iraq. Our prisons are overflowing, as are death rows across the country; while undoubtedly many, if not most, prisoners are guilty, it is the few innocent that most suffer from our justice system, and the problem with capital punishment is that it is irreversible.

The Justice Project, in Washington D.C., and the Innocence Project, in New York, are two organizations founded to address unfairness in the justice system, particularly wrongful convictions. According to the Justice Project, over 100 people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in the past thirty years. The Innocence Project has exonerated over 196 people, 14 sentenced to death; 70 percent are people of color, mostly black and Latino. [Source]

Up until now, though, these two projects and a handful of lawyers around the country have been working somewhat alone. However, the new district attorney of Dallas County, Texas has allowed the Innocence Project to begin a review of hundreds of cases.

Craig Watkins is still settling into his 11th-floor office overlooking the city skyline, hanging up pictures, arranging his plaques — and revolutionizing the criminal justice system he oversees.

Sworn in as Dallas County district attorney on Jan. 1 — he is the first elected black district attorney in Texas — Watkins fired or accepted the resignations of almost two dozen high-level white prosecutors and began hiring minorities and women.

And in an unprecedented act for any jurisdiction in the nation, he announced he would allow the Texas affiliate of the Innocence Project to review hundreds of Dallas County cases dating back to 1970 to decide whether DNA tests should be conducted to validate past convictions. At 12 in the past five years, Dallas has more post-conviction DNA exonerations than any county in the nation and more than at least two states. A 13th exoneration, of a Dallas County man, is expected to be announced within days. [Full story]

Law students in Fort Worth have already begun to review some cases. [Source]

This is a huge, huge step toward fixing a massive problem in the justice system. Many inmates, especially non-white inmates, have been convicted of crimes they did not commit, or charges that are above and beyond the crime. An official investigation by a governmental agency, even at the state level, and a move to address the inequality of hiring practices that may have led to these convictions is an enormous first step toward addressing that.

This may also lead to adopting some of the other goals of the Innocence Project and the Justice Project, namely preservation of evidence, criminal lab oversight, eyewitness reform, and new guidelines or even overturn of the death penalty.

Here’s hoping, anyway.

Link Roundup: 5 March 2007

Not up for a real post today. Sorry. I haven’t been feeling very good lately, and I’ve been doing a lot of reading and haven’t gotten to processing yet. Not an excuse, just an explanation.

Blog Links
White Indians Kick Black Indians Out of Cherokee Tribe — “I have written about the background of this case before, and even people who are know descendants of tribal leaders are being kicked out. The evidence that the Freedmen are of Cherokee descent is strong, and the leader of the Cherokees realizes that the Freedmen are indeed of Cherokee ancestry.” [Good analysis on the move.]

Women of Color Morphing Into Oppressor Status — “Women of color do not keep bringing up race to beat up poor defenseless white women. We bring race up because that is our lived experience. Because since the moment white people landed in this godforsaken country, WHITE WOMEN have been colluding with WHITE MEN to violate and subjugate women of color and our communities.” [Go read, if you haven't already.]

ACTION ALERT: Tell the NY Post to quit its transphobic “reporting” — “I’ve been kind of busy since posting this, so I wanted to post a quick thank you to everyone who’s written to the Post, and to everyone who’s reposted this. I didn’t expect such a great and large response, and it’s wonderful. Please keep reposting!” [Done.]

News Links
U.S. ‘erased Afghan attack footage’ — “The Associated Press is to complain to the US military after two journalists said US soldiers deleted footage of the aftermath of an attack in Afghanistan. Eight civilians died and 35 people were hurt in the incident, which has been condemned by President Hamid Karzai.” [We got nothing to hide, folks! Nothing to see here, move along!]

Don’t be black on my account — “How could I ever make my daughter understand why I wept through “The Color Purple” on Broadway a few weeks ago? Truth be told, I don’t even want her to understand how cathartic that was for someone born a poor and very black woman. I don’t want to force experiences on my son and daughter just to make them feel black. And that’s not because they look white. It’s because they’re half-white, features be damned.” [I'm ... hmm. I have some thoughts, but I'm going to raincheck on them, because I think I need to reread this when I'm more coherent.]

Growing white supremacist gang threatens police — “The white supremacist gang Public Enemy No. 1 began two decades ago as a group of teenage punk-rock fans from upper-middle class bedroom communities in Southern California. Now, the violent gang that deals in drugs, guns and identity theft is gaining clout across the West after forging an alliance with the notorious Aryan Brotherhood, authorities say.”

Supporting our troops

Shakespeare’s Sister and The Quaker Agitator broke the story of Walter Reed’s gross neglect of our injured veterans to the blogosphere last month.

Well, due to outrage by the public over a series of articles by the Washington Post, action is finally being taken.

Just in time for a fresh example of how we fail our troops.

It was a bad week for Aaron Chesley. He talked back to the staff at a Baltimore homeless shelter, got into an argument with a fellow veteran and missed an appointment for his post-traumatic stress disorder counseling session.

“Are you still watching the news?” his counselor, Anthony Holmes, asked.

Maybe that’s what had set Chesley off. He had been showing progress since he came to the program last fall. But television footage from the war could cast him back in Iraq in an instant, back to fingering the trigger of his machine gun, scanning the horizon for insurgents. And Holmes knew it wouldn’t take much for Chesley to land back on the streets.

“No. If the news is on, I turn my back,” Chesley said.

In a homeless shelter filled with Vietnam War veterans, Chesley, 26, a former Catonsville High School honors student who joined the West Virginia Army National Guard in 2000 to help pay for college, was the only one in the facility who fought in the country’s latest conflict. But across the nation, veterans of recent combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are slowly starting to trickle into shelters, officials say. [Full story]

These men and women are fighting in a war that, for the most part, they didn’t choose, often doing a job they didn’t sign up for (they signed up to protect the U.S., not invade other countries). When they get maimed, they are sent back to live in a moldy, crumbling medical facility with subpar care and bureaucracy hampering their treatments, or they are ending up on the streets.

This is how we failed our troops in another unjust war, Vietnam. It’s obvious that the Bush administration sees the troops only as tools to further their agenda in the Middle East. Are we really going to let them get away with turning people into tools, and throwing them out when they are no longer useful?