GIST: 'Troy Mansfield had barely sat down in his new lawyer’s office before his voice started cracking with emotion. The married father of two grown sons
choked back tears as he told Austin attorney Kristin Etter how he had
spent two decades living with a scarlet letter for a sin he didn’t
commit. He’d been cast out of homes, thrown out of his boys’ basketball
games and even rejected at churches. Clutching the hand of his soft-spoken
wife, the clean-cut man with salt-and-pepper hair wept as he described
how his family was forced into poverty, living off as little as $16,000 a
year. In 1993, he explained, he had been
convicted in Williamson County of molesting a 4-year-old girl, forced to
register on the state’s list of rapists and pedophiles. He pleaded
guilty to a crime he said he could never imagine committing because
police and prosecutors relentlessly badgered him and threatened to
destroy his family. As Etter listened intently and
scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad during their 2014 meeting,
Mansfield explained that he had learned about a new law that might
finally free him from his life of shame and help him get off the
registry. “As soon as I learned there might a chance, I tried to figure out a way,” he says. Regrettably, Etter told him, the law wouldn’t help. But something about the 48-year-old man’s sincerity tugged at her. “He was just very credible,” she says. There was more than a feeling. Etter quickly realized
her new client had been convicted of molesting the girl during a dark
period in Williamson County criminal justice. Ken Anderson, the former
district attorney and judge, since disgraced and disbarred for
concealing evidence that led to the wrongful murder conviction of
Michael Morton, had overseen Mansfield’s case. Etter couldn’t help wondering if the
tearful man sitting on the other side of her desk was another victim of
an agency corrupted by a lock-them-up culture that prized winning over
justice. She would soon start pondering a more
alarming question: Had anyone thoroughly reviewed Anderson’s cases to
ensure that more innocent people like Morton weren’t unjustly convicted? She told Mansfield and his wife,
careful not to set them up for yet another disappointment, that she
would look into his case but probably wouldn’t find much. “We won’t know until we try,” she said. Etter began pursuing Mansfield’s
21-year-old case file, logging countless phone calls and emails to the
county just north of Austin. Six months passed before she was
invited to review it in a conference room at the district attorney’s
office. There, she opened a shockingly thin brown folder and saw pages
of handwritten prosecutor notes from interviews with the little girl who
accused Mansfield of touching her. Scrawled in the prosecutor’s handwriting across the pages was exactly what she expected. “She told me she doesn’t remember what happened! At one point, told me nothing happened.” Shocking interrogation: Mansfield was 25 in 1992, living with
his wife and two young sons, John and Mason, in a wood-framed rented
duplex in a middle class Round Rock neighborhood. He was a manager at an
auto parts store in Round Rock, in line for a promotion to regional
manager. Amy, his childhood sweetheart, was a stay-at-home mother. When a Round Rock police officer
called Mansfield and asked him to come to the station, he figured he
knew why. A few weeks earlier, he had been arrested with a small amount
of marijuana. Mansfield sometimes smoked pot to
dull the pain of a back injury he suffered while loading a B-1 bomber on
a flight line in the U.S. Air Force. He had served in the military from
1986 to 1988, when his career was sidelined because of the injury. He
eventually moved to Austin, then to Round Rock, so he would be closer to
work. The officer, he thought, probably
wanted to know where Mansfield had gotten the pot. He agreed to meet
with Detective Dan LeMay that August afternoon. Inside the windowless interrogation
room, though, the conversation took a shocking turn, according to
Mansfield and the police report Etter found in the file. LeMay informed him that a 4-year-old
girl, who lived in a neighboring duplex, had told her parents that
Mansfield had tickled her and fondled her through her underwear. Mansfield was dumbfounded. The girl
and his 4-year-old son had played at his home just a few days earlier.
The children roughhoused on the two beds in his son’s room, hiding under
the covers while Mansfield tossed them from bed to bed. He hadn’t
inappropriately touched her, he told the officers, as he racked his
brain to think of how or why the little girl could have said such a
thing. But that didn’t satisfy LeMay." What do you do when you are 25 years old and a county like Williamson County comes after you and you don’t have any money? The officer badgered
Mansfield for hours, trying to force him to admit he had molested the
girl. LeMay told Mansfield, who was visibly shaken by the alarming turn
of events, that he could leave anytime. But the officer promised that if
Mansfield left, he would make sure Child Protective Services took his
children. At one point, LeMay, who did not
return messages seeking comment, told Mansfield that he could admit to
fondling the girl, go next door to a mental health facility (Mansfield
didn’t know it was fictitious) and bring back a receipt for an $80
therapy session for “child molesters.” In exchange, the detective
offered to drop his entire investigation. For hours, Mansfield went back and
forth with the officers. Over and over, he insisted on his innocence.
But the officers’ dogged insistence and increasingly frightening threats
made it clear the only way he could leave was by admitting to the
crime. Emotionally exhausted and terrified
that police would break apart his family, Mansfield caved after several
hours, admitting he’d touched the girl. Mansfield says he felt tricked by police, but he and his family had faith in the justice system. “I thought, ‘Surely this is going to work out — there is no way that this can go any further than it is,’ ” Mansfield says. On to the plea agreement. (You are on your own. HL).
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STORY: "How to make an innocent client plead guilty," by Jeffrey D. Stein, published by The Washington Post on January 12, 2018. Jeffrey D. Stein is a Public Defender in Washington D.C.
SUB-HEADING: "Plea bargains are a bad deal for defendants and their lawyers."
ACCOMPANYING VIDEO: "The Plea Bargain Trap."
GIST: "The
conversation almost always begins in jail. Sitting with your client in
the visitation room, you start preparing them for the most important
decision the person has ever made. Though the case is just a few days
old, the prosecution has already extended a plea offer that will expire
within the week. And, because local laws might require detention for
certain charges at the prosecutor's request, or because criminal justice
systems punish those unable to pay bail, your client will have to make
that decision while sitting in a cage. Your
client is desperate, stripped of freedom and isolated from family.
Such circumstances make those accused of crimes more likely to claim
responsibility, even for crimes they did not commit.........................................The
judge turns to you and asks, "Does either counsel know of any reason
that I should not accept the defendant's guilty plea?" You hesitate. You
want to shout: "Yes, your honor! This plea is the product of an
extortive system of devastating mandatory minimums and lopsided access
to evidence. My client faced an impossible choice and is just trying to
avoid losing his life to prison." But
you stand by your client's decision, which was made based on
experiences and emotions only they can know. You reply: "No, your
honor." The marshals lead your shackled client to a cage behind the courtroom. And the judge moves on to the next case."
PUBLISHER'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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.""
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191210/da-drops-murder-charge-against-taunton-man-who-served-35-years-for-1979-slaying
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