theredfaceofjustice

THE RED FACE OF JUSTICE

February 2007


              America’s judicial system may have found serious flaws judging by the baffling number of wrong convictions exposed these days thanks to DNA testing. But no one should gloat. Instead every nation should examine its own system, perhaps equally quick to convict on contrived or even fabricated evidence and prejudices.

              What has been happening in the U.S. justice system is acutely embarrassing one reason why these blatant miscarriages of justice have received subdued publicity when they should have served as a warning against ‘lynch mob justice.’ It now appears the 12 jurors at trials are ready to bring in guilty verdicts prompted by the persuasive skills of prosecutors who may be seeking re-election and are in a hurry to obtain a conviction for a heinous crime that has shocked their community.

               This quick-solving of headline-making crimes is certainly not endemic to the United States but a scourge in many countries as ambitious police and prosecutors combine to make spectacular arrests and then work together to ensure convictions.
                It took a group of courageous American lawyers who created the ‘Innocence Project’ to expose these flawed investigation methods and the horror of men and women condemned to life or long prison terms for crimes someone else had committed. The Project’s activity, based on irrefutable DNA testing, convinced some State governors to call for a moratorium on executions, obviously scared of jeopardizing their political future if one of those executed proved to be innocent.

                The statistics are shocking. In Dallas County alone so far 12 convicted men have been proven innocent through DNA evidence. Another 400 prisoners in the same U.S. region have requested DNA tests to prove they also were wrongfully jailed.
                A chilling example of how cavalier prosecutors can operate was the case of James Waller, now 50, convicted in 1983 of the rape of a 12 year old boy and sentenced to thirty years in jail. Waller was found guilty after the traumatized boy heard his voice - the day after the rape - in a supermarket store. The boy said his attacker wore a bandana and he never saw his face. He also described the assailant much taller and heavier then Waller who also happened to be the only African-American living in the boy’s apartment block.
                   Waller requested a DNA test as early as 1989 when such tests were first promoted as evidence but the request was denied until 204 when the Innocence Project took up his case and proved beyond doubt he was not the rapist.
                    The case of Roy Brown is even more gothic. When DNA tests proved he was not the killer of a woman neighbor last year the same Judge, Judge Peter Corning, who had convicted him in 1991 refused to rule on his release. And the same District Attorney who had prosecuted the original case indicated he might retry Brown if he was freed on the merit of the DNA test.

                     Brown had been convicted on evidence of ‘bite marks’ on the corpse. These marks were shown to be a ‘continuous line’ of upper teeth. An expert testified the marks matched Brown’s teeth - even though two of Brown’s upper teeth had been missing for years. In this case, as in most cases, the prosecutor’s charge was bolstered by the evidence of a jailbird snitch who told the court the accused had told him: “I did it.”
                     For 15 years, armed with a copy of the Freedom of Information Act law, a notebook and stamps to send letters, Brown doggedly fought to prove his innocence by finding the real killer. He did. It was the woman’s boyfriend, a man called Barry Bench. When Brown sent Bench a letter telling him he knew Bench was the killer Bench committed suicide. In the end DNA testing requested by the Innocence Project showed beyond doubt Brown was innocent and samples provided by Bench’s sister showed Bench was the real killer.
                    Brown is still waiting to be released.
                    The State sought the death penalty for Chad Heins in Mayport, Florida. He was accused of murdering his sister in law, stabbing her 27 times. The only evidence against Heins was his presence in the apartment – asleep so he said – when the woman was murdered.
                     The prosecutors dismissed the discovery of two strands of hair (not Heins’) under the dead woman’s nails as hair that must have come from the previous owner of the mattress, a highly unlikely theory. The prosecution also suppressed the discovery of a ‘stranger’s’ fingerprint on the tap of the bathroom but tendered as evidence the ubiquitous jailhouse snitch and his story Heins told him: “I did it.”
                   Even though there was no biological evidence Heins had committed the murder he was sentenced to 25 years though the jury refused to accept the death penalty.
                   DNA tests carried out recently showed Heins was innocent.
                   The wrongful convictions appear to occur in patches during certain local administrations. For example in the now notorious Dallas County the number of baffling miscarriages of justice occurred mainly during the mid 1980s, the Innocence Project found.
                   Today lawyers in the U.S. are lobbying to outlaw the validity of jailhouse snitches, inmates usually given ‘a deal’ in return for providing incriminating evidence. And with DNA testing accepted today as control on overly ambitious prosecutors and police the number of wrongful convictions on fabricated or flimsy evidence might soon be dwindling – a small consolation for those innocents still smarting in jail.
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