(While the Guilty Go Free)
Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong By Brandon L. Garrett Harvard University Press, 2011, 376 pages We’ll never know how many people are convicted of crimes they did not commit (while the guilty walked free), but it’s safe to say they are many. In the past two decades, DNA testing has not only exonerated wrongfully convicted citizens, some on death row; but also shown a spotlight on widespread prosecutorial abuse and corruption, errors and manipulation by forensic experts, the unreliability of eyewitnesses testimony, and incompetence among some court-appointed criminal defense lawyers.
In January 1984, for example, Earl Washington—defended for all of 40 minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. He spent another eight years in prison, however, before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and led to the conviction of the guilty man.
Brandon Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, analyzed the trial transcripts and evidence in 250 such cases of wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing, and the results are unsettling. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrate the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system.
Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on idiosyncratic human memory.
False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent By Jim Petro and Nancy Petro Kaplan Publishing, 2011, 304 pages Myth #6: “Conviction Errors Get Corrected On Appeal.” No, they don’t, says Jim Petro, a former attorney general of Ohio. Petro was a Republican who ran on a conservative, law-and-order platform. “Haunted by the thought of imprisoned innocent people,” he now crusades against wrongful criminal convictions, and in this book he shows how citizens can prevent this “terrifyingly common miscarriage of justice.” (Petro’s wife Nancy helped him with editing and research.)
The eight myths come at the end of False Justice. Were you inclined to believe the following statements?
Everyone in prison claims innocence.
Only the guilty confess.
Wrongful convictions are caused by innocent human error.
An eyewitness is the best kind of testimony.
It dishonors the victim to challenge a conviction.
If the justice system has problems, the professionals (judges, lawyers, administrators, police, etc.) will fix them.
Regarding that last myth, Petro says, “True justice requires constant vigilance on the part of every citizen.”
Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make it Right By Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer NAL Trade Publishing, 2003, 432 pages Schenck and Neufeld (co-directors of the Innocence Project ), and Dwyer (N.Y. Times reporter) place the blame for wrongful convictions squarely on lying prosecutors, slumbering defense attorneys, sloppy investigators, and biased eyewitnesses. Not to mention the great majority of citizens who feel better when someone—anyone—is locked up.
About the reviewer: Dave Freedman has worked as a legal and financial journalist since 1978. He lives in the Chicago area.