Yesterday, in Grand Junction, Colorado, Robert Dewey walked out of a courtroom a free man after serving 18 years in prison for a crime that DNA evidence now shows he did not commit.
In 2009, James Bain was freed from a Florida prison after serving 35 years in prison, a result of DNA testing of the crime evidence.
In 1993, Floyd Brown was convicted of murdering an 80-year-old woman in North Carolina. He had the mental capacity of a 7 year old, and serviced 14 years in a mental hospital, the only thing convicting him was a false confession written by an investigating agent. He was ruled incompetent to stand trial, and the State of North Carolina rushed him into incarceration based on nothing but the prejudices of investigating agents. He was exonerated by DNA evidence in 2007.
In September 2010, Kevin Keith was granted clemency, just days before his execution, based on evidence gathered by the Innocence Project.
In many of these cases, DNA technology did not exist when the crime was committed, or it was not perfected enough to reliably test what evidence there was, however, in nearly every one of these cases it was found that the prosecution was more concerned with closing the case and winning a conviction than it was concerned with the truth.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was Perry Mason. Based on a series of books by Erle Stanley Gardner, it was about a handsome lawyer with a sassy secretary and an able-bodied assistant, who defended mostly innocent people against the evil District Attorney, Hamilton Burger.
Perry Mason was always able to foil the District Attorney, using evidence that was overlooked by the police, or considered insignificant by the DA’s office, and prove his client innocent. And this was back when DNA was more likely to be considered a monogram on someones suitcase than anything life altering.
On TV, this makes for a great show, full of suspense, and you were always on the edge of your seat until the very last-minute, trying to figure out the real “whodunit”. Marvelous entertainment, and even though TV and the movies have moved far into the world of special effects and fancy tricks, the basic storyline of most “whodunits” remain the same.
Unfortunately, for the men above, and I suspect thousands more like them, it’s more than a game, more than entertainment, and very scary. In some cases, these men are literally yanked out of bed and thrust into a life or death situation, and before they know what happened, they are left sitting in prison with very long sentences.
Part of the American Dream is that our system of law and order and justice is fair and impartial. That no matter how bad it looks, we all get our day in court, and if we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, nothing bad will happen to us and we can go home to our meatloaf on the table, checkered apron wearing wife at the door, 2.5 blonde and happy children in the yard home and continue on with our lives.
Well, something has happened to curdle that jar of milk for a lot of people. DA’s are no longer concerned with the truth, all they want is to get the case folder moved from the center of their desk to the “closed” filing cabinet. Even in this modern age where DNA technology can prove beyond any doubt at all what happened, we still rely “eyewitness” testimony. Despite the fact that study after study shows that “eyewitness” testimony is almost completely unreliable, it makes for great theater in a courtroom, and in front of a jury.
Then, because of various procedural rules and practices within the court system, much of which is completely beyond the understanding of common citizens, the lawyers only tell part of the story to a jury. I’ve served on two juries, and only after the fact do we learn the complete story from both sides. In the courtroom, only pieces of the whole story are told – and whichever side can weave together the best story from the pieces they are allowed to show, “wins”.
It’s like trying to play poker from a deck that has no clubs. You can make some pretty interesting hands, but you are missing some vital pieces that would make it a lot better or more complete.
If the courts are more interested in clearing cases than they are in discovering the truth, who has a chance anymore? Most of us don’t have anywhere near the money it can cost to get really good legal advice, and it is really scary to think that we are only just around the corner from being swept up into circumstances completely out of our control.
Sure, there are lots of bad people in the world, but if our police and court system has moved to a point where everyone needs to prove they are innocent instead of the police and court system having to prove someone guilty, we are going to see more injustices like the men above.
What is really scary, is to think of how many innocent people the State of Florida or Texas have put to death in their gas chambers or on the electric chair? As a society, we need to insist that our police and court system make every effort, reasonable or not, to determine the truth, from all the evidence available. We should not care a bit about shuffling paperwork to close a case just to make numbers look good.