Death Row is no place for cases of mistaken identity

April 28, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

An interesting milestone was reached this week, one you might have missed: The Innocence Project has just cleared its 200th client. Jerry Miller, a Chicago man, served 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. Miller had been paroled a few years back, but now, thanks to the Innocence Project, is name is clear and he no longer has to register as a sex offender.

If you don’t know about the work of the Innocence Project, you should. Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Project works to assist prisoners who claim DNA testing will prove their innocence. The Project has full-time staff attorneys who are assisted by Cardozo law students.

Here are some sobering statistics: Of the 200 people the Project has assisted, 14 had been on death row. The ex-inmates served an average of 12 years in prison before being exonerated.

We’d all like to believe our justice system is perfect, but the reality is that much can go wrong. To get a feel for how justice can go awry in America, read John Grisham’s latest book, a non-fiction work titled “The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town.” This tome has got to be scarier than anything Stephen King ever cranked out. (Warning: The next paragraph contains spoilers about the book.)

The book tells the story of Ron Williamson, an Ada, Okla., man imprisoned for 20 years for a horrific murder he did not commit. The evidence against Williamson (and another man who was also convicted) was slim. But the cops were feeling the heat, and the district attorney needed a conviction. Williamson was sent up the river and sentenced to death. Never of sound mind, he was medicated only sporadically in prison and slowly went insane. Although eventually released from prison and exonerated, he died not long after that.

I thought about Williamson recently when I read the reports of the Innocence Project’s latest success. The two cases share some disturbing parallels, mainly convictions based on shaky evidence.

Although he had no criminal record, Miller had the misfortune to resemble a man who sexually assaulted a businesswoman in a parking garage. The Philadelphia Daily News reported that two parking-lot attendants provided a description of the assailant that formed the basis of an artist’s drawing of the suspect.

A police officer who had stopped Miller once for looking into parked cars thought he matched the photo. He was arrested for the first and only time in his life. It wasn’t until last year, when the Innocence Project got the Cook County prosecutors’ office to test semen samples on the victim’s clothing, that Miller was exonerated.

The Daily News story points out that Miller was convicted largely on eyewitness testimony. Such testimony is notoriously unreliable. DNA testing, by contrast, is nearly foolproof. Forty states now have laws giving inmates access to DNA testing. The other 10 should pass them as well. These tests, after all, can determine guilt as well as innocence.

Grisham’s book isn’t meant to be political. It’s merely a fact-based tale that reads like one of his legal pot-boilers. But as I read it, I could not help but think that death-penalty advocates might learn a few things from it. Ron Williamson almost went to the electric chair for a crime he did not commit. (The real killer was eventually found, by the way.) Anyone who can blow that off as the price we have to pay for law and order has a heart of ice — and should not be permitted to serve on juries.

Oh come now Morbo … then why is it that Alberto Gonzales has never worked to overturn a death row conviction in his entire career given the capacity for human error in the process? … Besides the fact that Alberto is lazy, vindictive and just an all-around crappy lawyer and human being.

  • ***…the price we have to pay for law and order….***

    There “is” no price we have to pay for law and order; there is only the Order of the Law, in which an individual must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. That “Order of the Law,” when applied via the highly subjective tool of “eyewitness testimony” (think John McCaca and his attestment to Petraeus’ unarmed-hummer jaunts through beautiful downtown Baghdad), should never even contemplate the death penalty. Unless, of course, those who commit the inevitable atrocity of executing an innocent individual are prepared to pay “the ultimate penalty” in return for their actions.

    Make law enforcement criminally liable for their transgressions; make prosecuting attorneys criminally liable for coaching witnesses and producing “enhanced” evidence—and you’ll see a lot less wrongful convictions….

  • The worst case of “coddling criminals” is getting a death penalty case wrong.

    Consider, it’s a crime that shocks the community, frequently police and prosecutors are under pressure to get a conviction and juries are anxious to make someone pay. But when you get it wrong, the real criminal will still be free to commit other horrible crimes.

    What’s worse, when evidence surfaces that will exonerate the wrongfully convicted, the district attorney often is fighting every step of the way.

  • A big part of the book and other similar cases has to do not just with eyewitness identification, but also with “snitch” testimony and prosecutorial misconduct: using jailhouse informants who falsely claim they heard a confession from the (we now know to be) innocent arrestee. In some cases, the same prison witnesses were called to help convince scores of individuals in separate cases—in every instance, the “witness” simply made up a confession, and sent the innocent men to jail in return for better prison privileges and money.

    Beyond the obvious horror of completely innocent people being sent to death row on the word of a felon is the fact that the prosecutors often knew better, but refused to do anything about it.

    Some enlightening reading on the subject can be found in The Snitch System, put out by Northwestern law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions. A couple examples:

    Dan L. Bright
    Sentenced to death in 1996 for a murder in New Orleans.
    Snitch: A felon who testified in anticipation of leniency.
    Exonerated by: Disclosure of a suppressed FBI report indicating someone else committed the crime.
    Years lost: 8

    Randall Dale Adams
    Sentenced to death in 1977 for the murder of a police officer during a traffic stop in
    Dallas.
    Snitch: The actual killer who received immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying.
    Exonerated by: Killer’s recantation.
    Years lost: 13

  • Dennis Fritz is a man who needs to be noticed more also. His Book changed my views about the Death Penalty, Unwarranted Prosecutions and Wrongful Convictions. He is the Other Innocent Man in John Grisham’s The Innocent Man, he wrote a book called Journey Toward Justice Published by Seven Locks Press.

    A Companion book to The Innocent Man. Dennis Fritz writes his own story about unwarranted prosecution and wrongful conviction and is a true crime. Endorsed on Jacket by John Grisham which he states as Compelling and Fascinating.
    Journey Toward Justice is a testimony to the Triumph of the human Spirit and is a Memoir. Dennis Fritz was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder after a swift trail.
    The only thing that saved him from the Death Penalty was a lone vote from a juror. Dennis Fritz was the other Innocent man mentioned in John Grisham’s Book. which mainly is about Ronnie Williamson, Dennis Fritz’s co-defendant. Both were exonerated after spending 12 years in prison.

    The real killer was one of the Prosecution’s Key Witness. Read about why he went on a special diet of his while in prison, amazing and shocking. Dennis Fritz’s Story of unwarranted prosecution and wrongful conviction needs to be
    heard. Read about how he wrote hundreds of letters and appellate briefs in his own defense and immersed himself in an intense study of law.

    He was a school teacher and a ordinary man whose wife was brutally murdered in 1975 by a deranged 17 year old neighbor. On May 8th 1987, Five years after Debbie Sue Carter’s rape and murder he was home with his young daughter and put under arrest, handcuffed and on his way to jail on charges of rape and murder.

    After 10 years in prison he discovered The Innocence Project, a non-profit legal organization. With the aid of Barry Scheck and DNA evidence Dennis Fritz was exonerated on April 15,1999 Since then, it has been a long hard road filled with twist and turns and now on his Journey Toward Justice. He never blamed the Lord and solely relied on his faith in God to make it through.
    He waited for God’s time and never gave up.

    Please view my blog http://barbarasblogspot.blogspot.com Here for more on Dennis Fritz and many issues in his book.

  • DA Bill Peterson Suing The Innocent Man Dennis Fritz For Emotional Distress

    Dennis Fritz, who wrote the book, “Journey Toward Justice”, is named as a defendant in a libel lawsuit along with , John Grisham, author of “The Innocent Man”, Robert Mayer, author of “The Dreams of Ada”, and all their publishers, and New York City attorney Barry Scheck, Fritz’s former lawyer who once represented Fritz and is co-director of The Innocence Project. With the aid of Barry Scheck and irrefutable DNA evidence, Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson were exonerated in 1999.

    Pontotoc County District Attorney Bill Peterson and Gary Rogers, a former agent for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation filed the libel lawsuit.
    The lawsuit, seeks at least $75,000 compensation and demands a jury trial. Peterson and Rogers were instrumental in the conviction of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz in the murder of Debbie Sue Carter in Ada, Oklahoma in 1982. The conviction was later overturned on DNA evidence pursued by the Innocence Project, which Scheck heads, Dennis Fritz was wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit and spent 12 years in prison. Part of the lawsuit claims the defendants conspired to commit libel against the plaintiffs, generate publicity for self interest by placing them in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress upon them.

    So… Prosecutor with the help of Gary Rogers sent 2 innocent men, Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson to prison for 12 years. Both Innocent men freed by DNA evaluation of crime scene evidence. Innocent man, Dennis Fritz writes book about his experiences. Prosecutor and Gary Rogers sue the innocent man they wrongfully sent to prison and Prosecutor and Rogers sue for intentionally inflicting emotional distress upon them.

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