|
||
Another Innocent Man, Another Wake-up Call for the Criminal Justice System
Thanks to post-conviction DNA testing, Johnnie Earl Lindsey was freed from a Texas prison on Friday after serving 26 years for a crime he didn't commit. Every time I hear about people like Johnnie, I have deeply mixed emotions. Why? Because as the first person sentenced to die to be exonerated by DNA testing, I know what it's like to win your freedom after fighting for it for so long.
Johnnie overcame the longest of odds to win his freedom in a system that was convinced of his guilt for over a quarter century. Imagine the patience and persistence that took. Imagine the hardships he endured being isolated from friends and family. Imagine never knowing if the truth would come out. Somehow, Johnnie found the strength to persevere. And for this I am extremely happy.
But exonerations like Johnnie's are also deeply unsettling to me because they demonstrate once again the very serious problems confronting our criminal justice system. The fact is, for all the resources our country invests in investigating and prosecuting crime, we still get it wrong far more often than we should. And when that happens, everybody suffers. While Johnnie was behind bars, the real perpetrator went unpunished and may have committed even more crimes.
The victim in Johnnie's case, who was sexually assaulted in a park, mistakenly identified him in a photo lineup in which Johnnie was pictured shirtless, just as her attacker was. What's more, the police sent her the photos in the mail -- not exactly sound police procedure.
Johnnie maintained his innocence throughout his entire ordeal. He went before the Texas parole board seven times, and seven times he refused to say he was guilty of the crime, even when it could have meant his release from prison.
As it turns out, Johnnie was at work pressing pants at a commercial laundry when the attack occurred, and he had time cards to back up his alibi. But no one believed him -- not the police, not the prosecutors, not the jury, not the judges who heard his appeals, and not the parole board -- until post-conviction DNA testing proved his innocence.
During his incarceration, Johnnie wrote six letters to the Dallas District Attorney's office requesting DNA testing. None of his letters were answered until Craig Watkins took over as District Attorney last year. Once the DNA test was done, he was immediately excluded as the attacker -- something that could have been done years earlier. Thanks in part to Watkins' professionalism, Dallas County leads the nation with the most DNA exonerations.
There is a real price to be paid for delays like this. In August, police in Michigan announced that they had identified the real perpetrator in a 1994 rape for which Ken Wyniemko had been wrongfully convicted and later exonerated. But by the time the discovery was made the statute of limitations had run out, and the perpetrator could not be prosecuted.
Stories like Ken's are a real wake-up call to our criminal justice system.
My organization, The Justice Project, recently issued a series of recommendations to improve access to post-conviction DNA testing that should be adopted by every state in the country. The recommendations include a requirement to preserve all biological evidence throughout a defendant's sentence; to allow petitions for DNA testing regardless of a defendant's plea, confession or the nature of the crime; and that states should pay for DNA testing and provide legal counsel for indigents who can't afford to pay for it themselves. To view these and other recommendations, please visit our website at www.thejusticeproject.org.
Delaying or denying access to post-conviction DNA testing for people with claims of innocence is simply wrong, and we shouldn't tolerate a criminal justice system that refuses to use readily available technology to correct its mistakes.
We must take the necessary steps to make post-conviction DNA testing more accessible. Ask Johnnie Lindsey. He'll tell you it's worth it.
Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is the first person sentenced to death row in the United States to be exonerated by DNA evidence. He is the program officer of The Justice Project, a nonpartisan organization that works to increase fairness and accuracy in the criminal justice system, with a focus on the capital punishment system.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Why does my nation not make every reasonable resource available to anyone challenging their conviction? Who could possibly lose were we to to this?
IMHO when the government of the people, by the people, and for the people decides it needs to kill the people "to keep the peace" then something has gone terribly wrong.
I would say this proves the system WORKS! He was afforded his constitutional right to appeal, the evidence was reevaluated and he was set free. What about this went wrong? In any other country in the world he would not have been given that right. Strike one, you're out. In a great many countries he would have been executed within six months for the crime he was convicted of. And no, Texas is not one of those countries, we just believe in swift clean retribution.
By the way, all attorneys are considered "officers" of the court, and if they all acted that way, there would not be misconduct on either side. Instead trial work has become a game of "gotcha" on both sides when it should be an honor and privilege to be doing justice.
Btw has there ever been a woman in this situation? I would tend to guess that the vast majority of victims are men. I think people tend to think of racism in the courts but ignore the far greater sexism.
"The victim in Johnnie's case..."
I know what you mean but surely the only victim in his case was himself. The whole point is that there was no other victim in his case because he's innocent. There was a witness -- who didn't really witness anything at all but was prepared to put aside any doubts she might have had and contributed to this injustice. That does her no credit at all and the fact that she was a victim of some other crime doesn't change that.
Prosecutors and district attorneys who willfully and knowingly withhold evidence/prove of a persons
innocence should do A VERY LONG stretch of time since they are supposedly "officers" of the court. As
for innocent men being executed in the US you have to be kidding me!! This has happened at a bare minimum 100 times in the past and by that i mean prior to 1965. Who were these men? Mostly they were Black, some were Jewish, some Catholic, and some just had the bad luck to "get elected" as they used to say in the South to fulfill the role of "guilty" party. And i am not referring to the lynchings, these were duly adjudicated trials, only a "guilty" verdict was as sure as sunrise and all involved already knew the outcome. I have often wondered how these juries of "12 good men" slept at night
and as THEIR ends came near did they think and repent upon the innocent men THEY sent to death.
(Part One) Oh yeah--Our criminal justice system is so f---'ed up, and unfair. We all hate it until WE become a victim of crime, and then suddenly, we start asking, "Hey--what's taking them so long to catch the guy who victimized me?--Why haven't they convicted him yet?--Why haven't they locked him up and thrown away the key?"
I'm a lifelong liberal, but I was a prosecutor for 10 years. We constantly hear you and others squawking about police & prosecutor misconduct, "rushes to judgment," mishandled evidence, wrongly charged and convicted defendants--What we never hear about are all the countless--thousands upon thousands--of GUILTY defendants who are set free every day because of defense misconduct, gullible juries, legal technicalities, court systems who bend over backward to give the defense an unfair advantage, etc. In researching your bio, I just visited a "truth in justice" site that gleefully cackled and crowed about how most prosecutors and cops are dishonest and overzealous. In my 10 years I never met a prosecutor in my state who I felt was dishonest or who would risk his/her career to wrongly convict someone. I met many defense attorneys, on the other hand, who were dishonest and would deliberately mislead the judge & jury, and would pull just about any trick, no matter how ethically questionable, to get clients who were unquestionably quilty, off the hook.
After reading your response to Mr. Noble Bloodwrth's piece, I had a much better idea of what is truly wrong with the criminal justice system in its current state- the unprofessional, unscrupulous, uncaring minority that infects it. Although you try so hard to make the case, I really don't see how one innocent person losing his or her life to a needle or a system makes up for prosecutorial failure. Perhaps if prosecutors did a better job, there would be fewer innocent people in prison, and more guilty people in it. Let's try to stop misleading, mislaying responsibility, and blaming Mr. Lindsay,....shall we?
Well--at least you realize that it's a minority. The system (and I mean our entire democratic system--not just the criminal justice system) does the best it can in trying to avoid mistakes and rectifying mistakes already made. Some believe that the best solution is to abolish capital punishment altogether. Many Western societies have done so. I believe that historically in the U.S. the majority has supported the death penalty. That is changing however, and I think that inevitably it will be abolished here (nationally). I believe in capital punishment, but in my jurisdiction, it was abolished long ago. As a prosecutor, I had no problem with that, and believed that you work with what the law is, and follow it. If the majority doesn't like a law, then in most cases, the majority should rule. I had a couple cases where I had to enforce a law I personally did not agree with. Fortunately, they involved minor offenses, and no incarceration was involved (and the defendant's records were allowed to be expunged). If I was faced with prosecuting people for violating a serious criminal statute that involved serious punishment, I would have resigned. Most prosecutors I knew I think would have agreed with me on that.
How do you explain the ADA who insisted to the Court that they should not exonerate an innocent man (after a DNA based appeal) because it would adversely affect prosecutions? The fact that a prosecutor can stand before a Court and say that it is more important that procedural and state matters be held in good regard, than that an innocent man be freed, says much for the corruption at so many levels of the State. In my opinion the main cause of this corruption is the fact that DA's and Police Chiefs/Commissioners/Sheriffs etc are elected positions rather than public servants with a duty to the public, rather than to the special interests who funded their campaigns. With the best will in the world, if you take money from someone you cannot escape taint and bias.
While I appreciate your enthusiasm and zeal, you are misguided and simply wrong on the facts. All of the officials you mention are "public servants," no matter how they obtained their positions. Furthermore, it's not true that they are all elected positions. Probably the majority of D.A.s ARE elected, but in fact it is not unusual in some jurisdictions for the D.A. to be an appointed position. In my first 2 years as a deputy prosecutor, I worked in such a community, and I can vouch for the fact that appointed D.A.s carry as much "baggage" as do elected ones, if not more. They owe allegiance to the executive (mayor, governor) who gives them the job. Witness what happened when the Bush administration politicized the hiring/firing in the Justice Dept--Do you think it's any better on a smaller scale when the mayor pulls the strings within the D.A.'s office? Police Chiefs in the majority of jurisdictions are not elected. Sheriffs are elected more often than not. Problems occur both when judges are elected or appointed. We put a certain amount of trust that the criminal justice system is staffed by good people. Sometimes we are wrong. When we come across corruption or mistakes, we should remove the corrupt individual and correct as best we can the mistakes. But to condemn the entire system, or to assume all or most convicts are telling the truth about their "innocence" is counterproductive and naive.
(Part Two) If indeed you were innocent (and not just of the crime you were convicted of), you have my sympathy. But I know that there have been cases where DNA analysis has freed convicts who were not actually innocent, but merely because a legitimate reasonable doubt was raised that would have resulted in an acquittal had it been presented to the jury. That's fine, but it's like O.J. claiming he was "found innocent," when in fact the state merely failed to prove him "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." It's disingenuous and misleading.
While you should be commended for your work , you would have to agree that one innocent man who is sent to prison or put to death is one man too many.
(Part B) There is no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater by questioning the integrity of the majority of criminal justice workers. You don't attract good people to the field by constantly maligning it.
(Part A) I totally agree with that sentiment. What I don't agree with is the constant barrage of propaganda that the prisons and death rows are full of innocent men, and worse yet, that our police forces, district attorneys' offices and courts are full of dishonest, corrupt individuals who have nothing better to do than to wrongly arrest, prosecute and imprison innocent men & women. If you actually were to interview convicts in prison, you would find that the VAST majority claim innocence and having been railroaded. Do the math. Even in cases where DNA evidence conclusively proves guilt, defendants claim the evidence was mishandled, corrupted, or even "planted" (witness the ridiculous defense claims that got O.J. off). If you wade through the B.S. and actually research the claims made by the Innocence Project and many of the anti-death penalty advocacy groups, you will find that they misrepresent the actual documentary evidence, and that there is no evidence that an innocent convict was ever executed in the U.S. since the beginning of the 20th century. That's not to say it never happened--it just hasn't been proved. I'm sure innocent people have been imprisoned, but so far, even after lengthy periods, as this case illustrates, the system eventually works and many have been freed. I believe however that guilty ones have also been freed.
If he was on a Texas death row.....He would have been executed by now. They love that stuff down there!
But remember the US has never executed an innocent person. Ya, right!
Unfortunately, the people working these appeals have to spend their time and money on the living. God only knows how many people, that are already dead, would have been cleared, if they c ould do the tests.
See Lincoln assasination trials.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
