PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Indeed, there is a class of prosecutors that might fairly be called innocence deniers. These prosecutors do not “do justice” as the Supreme Court defines it. Instead, they delay justice and in some cases actively work against it. When a prisoner is exonerated by a lower court, these prosecutors double and triple down, filing appeal after appeal. Or they indict and prosecute the exoneree all over again, sometimes under a wildly different theory at the expense of time and resources that should be used to pursue the crime’s actual perpetrator. They may also threaten endless legal challenges to wring “no contest” pleas from innocent prisoners in exchange for time-served sentences. The prisoners, desperate to be free, accept these Faustian bargains, which brand them convicts for life and allow prosecutors to proclaim their guilt and the state to deny them compensation. Some prosecutors are so committed to adhering to the original mistake that they fail to prosecute the actual perpetrators, even when there is evidence to convict them. Innocence deniers are a diverse group: male and female, young and old, white and people of color. They are Democrats and Republicans from red, blue, and purple states. What they have in common is their insistence—in the face of all evidence to the contrary—that wrongfully convicted people are in fact guilty. Simply opposing an exoneration effort does not make a prosecutor an innocence denier. Some exoneration claims are bogus and others are murky, requiring rigorous legal testing to be proven conclusively. Increasingly, conscientious prosecutors are working collaboratively with defense attorneys to reinvestigate innocence claims, keeping an open mind and doing the right thing in the end. Innocence-denying prosecutors are different. The cases collected here are extreme, either because the prosecutor in question has a pattern of reflexively denying innocence or because, even in a single case, the evidence of innocence is so manifest as to make the fight against it profoundly misguided."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am grateful to Mark Godsey for bringing this insightful article to our attention on the Wrongful Convictions Blog, as follows: "Lara Bazelon writes: In an adversarial legal system, it’s natural to presume that prosecutors and defense attorneys are driven by the same goal: to win. They aren’t. In Berger v. United States, decided in 1935, the Supreme Court famously declared that the prosecution’s ultimate goal “is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.” A prosecutor, the court wrote, “is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.” [And yet] some prosecutors—the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system—refuse to correct life-altering errors."
https://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2018/01/10/the-innocence-deniers/
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:
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STORY: "The Innocence Deniers: Prosecutors who have refused to admit wrongful convictions," by Lara Bazelon, published by Slate on Jan. 10, 2018. (Lara Bazelon is an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and a contributing writer for Slate. Her book Rectify: A Story of Healing and Redemption After Wrongful Conviction will be published in the fall.)
SUB-HEADING: "When convictions are clearly wrong, these prosecutors don’t just hinder justice—they actively work against it."
GIST: Author Lara Bazelon does a huge public service by identifying the existence of a class of prosecutors who are innocence deniers. By defining this class, demonstrating the terrible miscarriages of justice they have callously caused, and illustrating the harm they cause to the public by allowing the real perpetrators to remain free in order to cover up the government's mistakes, maybe something will finally be done about them. This is a major piece of journalism filled with cases, such as the Davontae Sanford case, that are enough to make the most hardened reader weep. This important article cannot be reduced. It is well worth reading in its entirety at the link below.
The entire story can be read at:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/innocence-deniers-prosecutors-who-have-refused-to-admit-wrongful-convictions.htmlPUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
