The accused was arrested. They confessed to murder. Their guilty sentence led to life without parole. Others got the death penalty.
Justice has been served, right?
Nope! Not necessarily.
We want to see “the bad guys” off the streets. But the criminal justice system isn’t perfect. Mistakes are made. People are only human. But, then again, some errors aren’t mistakes. They’re deliberate, underhanded tactics to ensure a conviction, even when court personnel know the defendant is innocent.
Even people who confess to homicide can be innocent. (Read the current death penalty case of Melissa Lucio to see how this happens: https://innocenceproject.org/whats-next-for-melissa-lucio-texas-woman-on-death-row/ )
The Innocence Project estimates that 3% — 4% of all convicts are innocent. (For a chilling account read “Getting Life” by Michael Morton. He was wrongly convicted of killing his wife, Chris. He served 25 years for nothing in a sweltering Texas maximum security prison.)
Why should we all care?
We should care for a lot of reasons. One is, that convicting the innocent leaves the guilty running loose out there. They’re free to engage in more mayhem. (That’s what happened in Michael Morton and Jeffrey Deskovik’s situations. The true culprit killed again.)
A second reason is the waste of taxpayer money. While the cost of incarceration varies between states, the annual average-per-prisoner cost is about $208,000. (So the total cost of Michael Morton’s incarceration in today’s dollars is five million plus dollars. Those millions would have been better spent funding more public defenders.)
A third reason is the damage caused by the ripple effect of wrongful incarcerations. In the case of homicide survivor Michael Morton, his young son was adopted out to another family. The community lost an employee. The bank lost a mortgage. The government lost a taxpayer. Society lost a believer in “the system.” https://innocenceproject.org/cases/michael-morton/
Melissa Lucio’s children were scattered among relatives until they were old enough to be on their own.
A fourth reason is that homicide co-victims are cheated out of knowing who really killed their loved one. After we’re told “We convicted the wrong guy, oops” our natural next question is, “Then who is the right guy?” We homicide survivors are thrown back to square one.
And last, it’s just morally wrong.
Most of the wrongly convicted believed the justice system was just. They believed what they were taught in civic class. They thought the truth would set them free. It didn’t.
We all pay for wrongful incarcerations in one way or another.
So, what can be done?
Here are ten suggestions.
1. Eliminate the race of the detainee on all preliminary reports for the D.A. Why? Race should not matter, but it does. The biggest risk factor leading to wrongful incarceration is having the “guilty skin pigment.”
2. Stop using “death qualified” juries (made up of jurors who don’t object to a finding of a death sentence). Why? Death-qualified juries have fewer women and minorities. Moreover, death-qualified juries are more likely to vote for conviction. There’s a built-in bias.
3. Reduce eyewitness errors by telling witnesses that the detainee “may or may not be in the lineup.” This causes them to be more careful, more selective. A law enforcement officer who is not aware of who the guilty person is in the lineup should administer the procedure. This keeps the process neutral.
4. Outlaw jailhouse testimony. Prisoners have been given favorable treatment in exchange for their testimony. Essentially, their testimony can be “bought.” The jury will never know.
5. Make it illegal for police to lie to suspects. This is not acceptable in most Western countries, and for good reason. Besides, it’s a crime to lie to the police.
6. Require all interrogations to be filmed from start to finish. It’s the only way to know how valid and reliable the interrogation is, and if undue coercion was used.
7. Shift all forensic testimony under the authority of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). This way “junk science” and “junk expert testimony” would be far less frequent. NIST sets rigid standards for lab science to ensure accuracy.
8. Get serious about cracking down on prosecutorial misconduct. As it now stands, there are almost no legal avenues for seeking accountability from the criminal justice system when an egregious error has happened. Neither prosecutors, judges, investigators nor police can be sued for wrongdoing, brought up on criminal charges, or fined.
This special treatment of prosecutors is known as “prosecutorial immunity.” While it’s not in the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court did make immunity for this one group legal. At a minimum, there should be a database of prosecutors who have behaved unethically to get a conviction (such as withholding evidence that would favor the defendant’s “exculpatory evidence”). This would “out them.”
9. Invest in public defender programs so workloads can be reduced. Public defenders are underpaid and overworked. Guidelines are very outdated. Currently, their caseload averages 150 felony cases, 400 misdemeanor cases, and 25 appeal cases per year. Public defense attorneys work an average of 14 hours on each felony case and 5 hours for each misdemeanor. This equates to an 80-hour work week excluding appeal cases.
The 2023 average base salary in the U.S. for defense attorneys is $60,000. This means public defenders earn an average of $15 per hour. That’s staggering when you consider the average tuition for law school is about $40,000 plus books, room and board which can bring that figure to $80,000. Add some interest for the school loan and that figure easily swells to $100,000. How will they ever work that off at $15/hour?
Will someone that overworked be inclined to push plea bargains? You bet.
10. Replace algebra courses in high school with a course on basic law. Adults are woefully ignorant about their rights and obligations under the law. People need to know why it’s important to ask for an attorney and when. They need to understand what constitutes an illegal search and what to look for in the warrant. What are the special rights for minors, learning-impaired adults, and people who do not speak English as their first language? (Such a course could also include basic information on filing for bankruptcy, signing a lease, filing for divorce, and the usual dos and don’ts when pulled over for a routine traffic stop.) People need to understand it’s irrelevant to prove innocence to the police. They need to prove it to the judge and jury.
Wrongful convictions are shameful. There are ways to reduce them. If someone like Michael Morton can be railroaded into serving a life sentence in maximum security when he was a Safeway manager without a criminal history, so can anyone. If an abused wife and mother like Melissa Lucio can be threatened with death who is developmentally delayed without a history of legal problems, so can anyone.
The ultimate moral test of any government is how it treats children, those in the shadows of life — our needy, sick, handicapped and wrongly imprisoned — and those in the twilight of life.
