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IF A SLAVE AUCTIONEER KNOWS A WRONGFUL CONVICTION IS IMMINENT BASED ON FALSE PLEAS, OFFICIAL MISCONDUCT, NO EVIDENCE, AND OTHER ACTUAL FACTORS IS THE SLAVE AUCTIONEER BOUND TO SOME ETHICAL, LEGAL, AND OR CONSTITUTIONAL OBLIGATION TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT....
Cohen on Judges, Ethics and Wrongful Convictions
https://www.stroock.com/news-and-insights/cohen-on-judges-ethics-and-wrongful-convictions
Commentators on injustice in the criminal justice system typically point their finger at the police or prosecutors or even, occasionally, defense lawyers. But rarely do they attack the judge.... In short, and while I have little doubt that most judges might say it is unnecessary, what would the impact be if there were actually an ethical rule that required judges to guard against wrongful convictions? ...
The Code of Conduct for U.S. judges tackles independence and integrity, political activity, impartiality and the avoidance of even the appearance of impropriety. All important issues. And the oath of a federal judge, in particular, requires a judge to “administer justice without respect to persons, and to equal right to the poor and the rich …” all under the Constitution and laws of the United States. 28 U.S.C. 453.
ABA’s Model Rules of Judicial Conduct, at 2.15, require a judge to take appropriate steps if he has knowledge that another judge or a lawyer took an action which raises questions about their honesty or fitness. The comment plainly notes: “Taking action to address known misconduct is a judge’s obligation.” Of course, there’s some benefit to deterring misconduct that might lead to injustices.
But ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct (for Lawyers), 3.8—Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor—requires something substantially more. Not only shall a prosecutor refrain from prosecuting a charge she knows is not supported by probable cause, but she must promptly disclose credible evidence that a convicted defendant did not commit the offence. See N.Y. Rules of Professional Conduct 3.8. ...
JUST AS USA INJUSTICE SYSTEM FORCE 95% OF ALL DEFENDANTS TO PLEAD GUILTY DESPITE ACTUAL INNOCENCE, IT ALSO FORCES THE INNOCENT TO ADMIT GUILT FOR PAROLE...
Looking Back: The Innocent Prisoner’s Dilemma | Davis Vanguard
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2021/11/looking-back-the-innocent-prisoners-dilemma/
Parole is discretionary release from prison after an inmate has served the minimum time to which he was sentenced and has appeared in front of a parole board...Part of their evaluation depends upon whether or not the individual has been rehabilitated....
One factor which is not statutorily required, but which has become a de facto element in the process is whether or not the prisoner takes responsibility for their crime and expresses remorse. That element creates a Catch-22 situation...The innocent prisoner, on the one hand, must maintain his innocence if he is to legitimately pursue every avenue of appeal and discovery potentially capable of reversing his wrongful conviction. On the other hand, if he maintains his innocence before the parole board, he is almost certainly going to be denied.... The first step in that process is the internalization of guilt...
they should discard the de facto practice of demanding admissions of guilt, remorse, and taking responsibility for the crime, for these hurdles are impossible for an innocent person to meet. For many such prisoners whose cases do not involve DNA, the scarcity of financial resources and the lack of legal assistance from an investigator and an attorney means that they will never be able to prove their innocence and thus parole is the only means by which they can regain their freedom. For our parole system to continue to operate as it presently does, is to condemn far too many innocent inmates to die in prison.
Looking Back: We Must Have a Zero-Tolerance Policy Against Police Lying to Stop Wrongful Convictions | Davis Vanguard
Police officers are no better or worse than other people who work in different occupations. There are good cops and bad cops. Some cops are heroes, some frame the innocent, and some commit crimes, even murder. Like the rest of us, police officers tell the truth and police officers lie.... Police can commit perjury by commission and omission. For example, a cop can omit critical details about how he obtained a confession. Such lies of omission affect the judge’s ruling whether to admit the confession in evidence as voluntary or exclude it as the product of police overreaching. Likewise, such lies impact on a jury’s view of the confession. In many wrongful conviction cases, the innocent defendant was convicted based on his confession alone....
A police officer can plant and/or fabricate evidence, as came to light in the Troop C scandal. In April 1993, New York State Police Lt. Craig D. Harvey admitted he and another trooper lifted fingerprints from items the suspect, John Spencer, touched while in Troop C headquarters and attached them to evidence cards. Harvey later claimed he pulled the fingerprints from the murder scene. Spencer was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to fifty years to life in prison.... Police officers can coerce witnesses to lie in exchange for false testimony... Accurate verdicts depend on the truth. Police lying frustrates the chief purpose of every trial, to reveal the truth....
Consider these statistics: according to The Innocence Project, thirty-seven of the first seventy-four DNA-proven wrongful convictions involved police misconduct. In those cases, the misconduct included: suppression of exculpatory evidence in 34% of cases; undue suggestiveness in 33%; evidence fabrication in 11%; coerced witness in 9%; coerced confessions is 8%; and other misconduct in 5% of cases....
Legislation should be passed to make zero-tolerance for police lying mandatory in states across the country. Resistance to such legislation would bespeak of a less than a serious commitment to preventing wrongful convictions and ensuring law enforcement operates with the highest integrity. Likewise, Congress should pass parallel federal legislation applicable to federal law enforcement agents. All law enforcement at all levels in all jurisdictions must be truthful. Anything less compromises the integrity of the American criminal justice system. Police lying not only frustrates justice, it also violates civil rights under color of law because victims are deprived of their liberty without due process....
PLEAD GUILTY SLAVES. THEN PAY YOUR FREE COURT APPOINTED ATTORNEY...
Reimagining the Public Defender
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/12/02/reimagining-the-public-defender/
In our national debates about criminal justice reform, public defenders have not received as much attention as police and prosecutors. Perhaps this is because their problems seem obvious: they are underpaid and overworked. Defenders tackle insurmountable caseloads by resorting to triage. They hastily review cases assuming that most defendants will waive their right to a trial and plead guilty in order to get a reduced sentence.
It’s true that many defendants want a plea deal. But many others do not consider these agreements a good bargain. For one thing, they typically require probation, which comes with so many conditions that life on the outside can seem nearly as oppressive as a prison sentence. Nevertheless, many defendants accept the prosecution’s plea offer because they cannot sit in jail awaiting trial when family members depend on them, or because they lack confidence that a trial would exonerate them. It’s impossible to know exactly how many feel pressured into pleading, but the number is surely too high, given that around 95 percent of criminal cases in the US end with guilty pleas. State-funded lawyers, who are appointed to represent those who cannot afford private counsel—about 80 percent of criminal defendants—manage the vast share of pleaded cases. For the poor, who are disproportionately people of color, the criminal justice system in the United States is essentially a plea-and-probation system.
The high rate of guilty pleas has consequences that go beyond individual cases. Trials also hold the government accountable; the actions of police and prosecutors come under scrutiny in addition to those of defendants. Pretrial motions, a crucial part of criminal litigation, are opportunities to challenge law enforcement tactics. Even when defendants have committed the charged offense, they may still want to question, for example, whether the police violated their constitutional rights during a stop or search. These motions can be time-consuming for lawyers to argue and judges to decide, but they help maintain the rule of law. When public defenders rarely take cases to trial, the criminal justice system loses an important oversight mechanism.... In 1963 the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that defendants who cannot afford a lawyer have a right under the Sixth Amendment to counsel paid for by the states....
Supreme Court case places Sixth Amendment in peril
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/dec/4/supreme-court-case-places-sixth-amendment-in-peril/
The case revolves around something quintessentially American — the right to an attorney and a fair trial. According to decades-old case law, the Sixth Amendment provides Americans the right to “effective assistance of counsel,” but not all lawyers are created equal. There are plenty of reports of defense attorneys showing up to court drunk, sleeping during the trial or simply ignoring exculpatory evidence. Thanks to the Sixth Amendment, if an attorney’s assistance was so inadequate that it influenced the case’s outcome, then the courts can order a retrial.
To obtain such relief, appellants must traverse the arcane appeals process, but if state appellate courts rebuff them, they can apply for relief in federal court via a writ of habeas corpus. This process is incredibly time-consuming. In fact, the time between sentencing and execution in capital cases can easily exceed 20 years....
If the U.S. Supreme Court sides with Arizona, the state will subsequently execute Mr. Jones and Mr. Ramirez despite the evidence. This will also set a dangerous precedent that new evidence of ineffective counsel — in all criminal cases, not just capital cases — can never be considered in federal court even though such claims almost always rely on new evidence....
A Terrible Catch-22. Should wrongfully convicted people falsely admit guilt to win parole?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/briefing/wrongful-convictions-parole.html
A jailhouse informant made up a story about one of them confessing. The police did not pursue a lead involving an actual confession to the murder. A dishonest detective — Mark Handy, later discovered to have fabricated evidence — testified against Clark and Hardin. And the prosecutor misled the jury about a fingerprint and a hair sample at the crime scene. The jury convicted the two men, then both in their early 20s, and they were sentenced to life in prison. They would spend more than 20 years there before lawyers for the Innocence Project helped win their release, based on DNA evidence and the exposure of the detective’s dishonesty....
Parole hearings create a terrible Catch-22 for wrongfully convicted people. If they admit guilt, they can undermine any attempt to overturn their conviction. If they continue to assert their innocence, they can doom their best chance at freedom — parole — because parole applications effectively require statements of remorse.... The starkest injustice is the large number of people imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.... Currently, some prisoners decide that their best option is to admit guilt falsely....
Highest to Lowest - Prison Population Total
United States of America 2068800 China 1690000 Brazil 811707 India 478600 Russian Federation 469283
IF JURY DOES NOT HEAR EVIDENCE THEN THE SLAVES DID NOT GET DUE PROCESS. ABOUT 95% TO 99% OF ALL CASES USA SLAVES DO NOT GET DUE PROCESS AS THE JURY DOES NOT HEAR EVIDENCE. DUE PROCESS IS EXTREMELY RARE IN THE UNITED SLAVES...
Wrongfully Convicted Massachusetts Man Freed After 27 Years
Judge Robert Ullman cleared the convictions against him in Suffolk County Superior Court. “I’ve been waiting a whole 27 years for this, and now I have the opportunity to be free.”
Lucien’s defense attorney Dennis Toomey argued during a hearing that the murder and robbery convictions against his client should be tossed because of an improper police investigation. “The heart of our appellate argument here is that the jury simply did not hear evidence they could have used to acquit Mr. Lucien, so he didn’t get due process,” Toomey said. “Almost everywhere we look in this case, there are serious problems,” Special Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Jeanne Kempthorne said during the hearing. According to the station, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said a former Boston police officer involved in Lucien’s case, Det. John Brazil, participated in a sprawling corruption scheme from 1990 to 1996 with other officers, in which they conspired to lie, rob and steal from drug dealers by submitting false warrant applications and then seize cash, representing drug trade proceeds, and kept it for themselves....
“Jack, I think we’ve been getting away with this sort of thing for a long time.” NYC Queens District Attorney Richard Brown
[Brown seems to have been aware of his office’s alleged misconduct, which imprisoned people for years for crimes they were later found not to have committed. At one point, Brown wrote to a top aide, Jack Ryan: “Jack, I think we’ve been getting away with this sort of thing for a long time.”]
NYC pays $17M in three Queens wrongful conviction cases amid fears about prosecutor misconduct — ‘Some people get framed’
The ghost of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown has cost city taxpayers $17.25 million in the past five months. The money is being paid to settle three lawsuits alleging prosecutorial misconduct during Brown’s tenure leading the office from 1991 to his death in 2019 — and comes amid growing scrutiny of some New York prosecutors’ pursuit of criminal convictions at all costs. Brown seems to have been aware of his office’s alleged misconduct, which imprisoned people for years for crimes they were later found not to have committed. At one point, Brown wrote to a top aide, Jack Ryan: “Jack, I think we’ve been getting away with this sort of thing for a long time.”
That quote comes from a document uncovered by Joel Rudin, a lawyer who represents the three men who won the $17.25 million in legal settlements....
UNITED SLAVES SLAVE AUCTION IS A FAILURE BECUZ THE ACTUAL CRIMINALS COMMIT CRIMES AGAINST THE INNOCENT THEN ACCUSE THE INNOCENT OF THE CRIME KNOWING THE INNOCENT WILL PLEAD GUILTY TO THE FALSE CHARGES 97% OF ALL CASES, AND THE REMAINING 3% WILL BE CONVICTED 83% OF THESE CASES. THUS, WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS ARE THE NORM AND DECEPTIVELY HIDDEN NO DUE PROCESS, AND BY STUPID USA JURIES AND CORRUPT SLAVE AUCTIONEERS...
Monday Morning Thoughts: The System in the US Really Doesn’t Work | Davis Vanguard
But as Law Professor Carissa Byrne Hessicks argues in her recent book, “Punishment Without Trial,” over the last several decades the number of jury trials has dwindled. Only about 2 to 3 percent of all cases now go to trial. In fact, it is so bad, that I have our court watch program primarily focus on preliminary hearings because otherwise we miss most of the cases going through the court system. As Hessick points out, “One recent study of the trial penalty found that people who went to trial received sentences that were on average three times longer than people who pleaded guilty.” Even people who are factually innocent are pleading guilty to avoid long incarceration. The National Registry of Exonerations has found that 18 percent of known exonerees pleaded guilty.
Thus we have a system that actually pressures innocent people to admit to crimes they did not commit. How does it do that? For one thing, it locks up a large percentage of people pre-trial. As Hessick points out, “When innocent people are in jail, they are desperate to get out.... The problem with waiting for a trial – is first you are incarcerated waiting for that trial which can take a year or two by itself, whereas with a plea agreement you might be able to get out much quicker.
The second problem with waiting for a trial is that there is no guarantee that a jury will get it right. You may get an offer of a year or two or maybe even probation if you cop a plea, but if you are convicted, it might be a 20 year sentence. Even if you are innocent, do you want to wait a year or two for your trial, and then role the dice as to whether a jury agrees that you are innocent and potentially lose big by getting a 20 year sentence?
The big problem here is implicit – the system gets it wrong a fair amount of time.... But at the federal level, of the two percent that went to trial, 83 percent were convicted and 17 percent acquitted. State courts might actually be somewhat lower...
just a small percentage of cases where the jury really had to work to determine the outcome and in those cases, the jury is erring probably between 20 and 40 percent of the time on the side of guilt. And that’s the problem. So the system breaks down because the jury system really doesn’t work well and most defendants are not willing to roll the dice and incur a heavy trial penalty.
A DNA TEST WAS ON THE RECORD AS HAVING NOT MATCHED THE DEFENDANT. IF THAT IS NOT SUFFICIENT TO WARRANT A SECOND LOOK AT A CASE, WHAT IS?...
Looking Back: Case Not Handled ‘Righteously’ | Davis Vanguard
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2021/12/looking-back-case-not-handled-righteously-2/
In the aftermath of my exoneration, there was a mad dash by both the Peekskill Police and by former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, and Judge Colabella, to explain their actions in connection with my arrest and conviction, and the preservation of that conviction up until the point that I was exonerated. When asked by the media to comment, Peekskill Police Chief Tumolo, then a Lieutenant, who was the officer in charge at the scene in which the coerced, false confession was obtained, proffered the explanation that “while it was unfortunate that (he) had been wrongfully convicted and thus spent approximately 16 years in prison, the case had been ‘righteously investigated.’”
Pirro attempted to put the responsibility on her predecessor, Carl Vergari, under whom I was originally prosecuted, even though she had opposed me tooth-and-nail during the appeals process, often successfully arguing that my issues, including that of innocence, based upon the DNA, “should not even be considered,” upon several occasions in the appeals process in both State and Federal Appellate Courts....
I will lay out the facts so that readers may decide for themselves what occurred....
Looking Back: The Role of Prosecutors and Judges in Perpetuating Wrongful Convictions | Davis Vanguard
It is the role of the prosecutor to convict the guilty while staying within the boundaries of the law, and, to protect and exonerate the innocent. Their mandate is not, despite prevalent practice across the country and particularly here in Westchester over the past 20 years, to simply win convictions, by any means. Firstly, prosecutors should look critically at any cases that the police have brought to them.... they should be monitoring the testimony of their own witnesses, to ensure that no perjury is taking place....
Information is frequently purposely withheld, misconduct is engaged in, unethical tactics are resorted to in order to try to win. Perjured testimony is not only not corrected but in many instances is suborned, and legal arguments are made to the judge that are not in good faith....
After the prosecutor, the next line of defense, the next safety net for the wrongfully accused who is supposed to be ensuring that injustices do not take place, is the trial judge who, all too frequently, fails in that capacity. Said failings very often take place during pre-trial hearings, during trials, and even in post-conviction proceedings before sentence.... the police focusing on one person by asking repeated questions about them and thus making them unduly stick out... A leading cause of false confession has been various forms of coercion.... There have been plenty of cases in which judges have ruled that there was no coercion involved, and thus that a confession was admissible, despite both physical and psychological coercion.... At other times judges have allowed flimsy cases to go forward to trial, despite pre-trial hearings which were supposed to prevent it....
Other pre-trial failures have even included, believe it or not, denials of defense motions for DNA testing, and denials of applications for funding necessary to have experts review evidence and render opinions as an important check and balance when prosecutors intend to offer expert testimony on the same subject following inspection of evidence....
Judges often fail during a trial to ensure that justice is done by not sustaining meritorious objections. There have been a number of cases, some of which I have written about, in which prosecutors have engaged in prosecutorial misconduct in open court, in an effort to gain a conviction through illegal and unfair means; and judges fail to take appropriate action....
At other times, judges have not paid close enough attention to witnesses, with the effect that witnesses have perjured themselves in open court with impunity. Judges also have the power to rule on whether evidence produced at trial was legally sufficient, and yet often fail to utilize such power when the facts warrant it....
Still another problem involves the fact that judges frequently tend to view themselves as a quasi-law enforcement officer whose job it is to protect the public, as opposed to being neutral arbiters of law whose function it is to prevent injustices and to ensure that trials are fair and outcomes reliable. I also believe that, in some instances, judges have been swayed by media coverage and the atmosphere of a case, particularly with high profile cases involving a lot of emotion on the part of the public. Additionally, politics can become a very big factor, particularly when judges may be facing upcoming re-election, or when they may be aspiring to higher appointment, and they are concerned with how they may be perceived if they make particular rulings....
Looking Back: New York Passes Vital Anti-Prison Census Legislation | Davis Vanguard
Many New York prisons were built in rural communities upstate. Census Bureau guidelines allowed districts with prisons to count this non-voting, incarcerated population to beef up local population statistics. The inflated numbers were used to secure greater legislative representation and more government funds at the expense of prisoners’ home districts. Convicts in the upstate prisons were never truly represented by local elected officials. To the contrary, this despised population is routinely ignored by the politicians who supposedly represent them. During the sixteen years I was wrongfully incarcerated, prisoners wrote local elected representatives to complain about prison conditions and abuse by the administration. Not one ever responded: no letters, visits, or follow up actions by these “representatives.” Moreover, upstate elected officials often took positions detrimental to prisoners’ interests.... The larger the prison population, the better it was for politicians in rural communities because the phony head count allowed them to disproportionately benefit from government largesse....generated revenue in those communities at the expense of taxpayers statewide....
PLEA DEALS MAKE UP MORE THAN 95% OF ALL CASES IN THE UNITED SLAVES.
THE RESULT IS UNEQUAL SENTENCING FOR SAME CRIMES, INNOCENT PUNISHED FOR CRIME HE DID NOT DO, THE GUILTY GET LESSER PUNISHMENT FOR ACTUAL CRIME, CRIME DATA IS FALSE CREATING MORE CRIME WHERE NO CRIMES OCCUR AND THE RELATED DATA THAT GOES WITH THE FALSE CRIMES, FALSIFIES CRIMINAL HISTORY MAKING THE INNOCENT INTO CRIMINALS AND LESSENS THE NATURE OF CRIMES OF THE ACTUAL GUILTY, ETC... TORTURE IN SOME FORM IS THE #1 REASON WHY DEFENDANTS TAKE THE PLEA WHETHER TO REDUCE SENTENCE, GET OUT OF JAIL PRETRIAL, FINANCIAL, SITUATIONAL, EMOTIONAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, LONG WAIT FOR FAST AND SPEEDY TRIAL, LOSS OF FAMILY, FRIENDS, EMPLOYMENT, ETC....
A step toward better justice: Prying open the ‘black box’ of plea deals
Last year, in Berkshire County in Massachusetts, local prosecutors charged two white men arrested in separate cases with assault and battery. Both were in their 30s, neither had any prior criminal history, and both cut deals in exchange for pleading guilty. But their deals differed significantly, despite the similarity of their cases. One man received a short probation sentence that included rehabilitation services; the other received a long probation sentence and fines. Roughly 95% of criminal cases around the country are resolved via plea bargain, according to the Department of Justice. “Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials,”...
innocent defendants can be pressured into making confessions before even seeing a lawyer. If a defense lawyer does get to meet their client, prosecutors can make compelling plea offers before that lawyer has time to investigate the case, file motions, or even get to know the client. Plea offers can also be made, and accepted, before discovery, when prosecutors share evidence – including potentially exculpatory evidence – with the defense.
“I get some plea offers the first day I meet my client,” says Mr. Sabelli. “[Defendants] just break under the threat of the trial penalty.”...
But pleas often don’t even mention the crime that occurred. “In reality what usually happens is you’re not pleading out to what actually happened,”...
flooding the system with new cases to prosecute, pleas became the only way the system could continue to function. But the framers’ vision of a justice system in full view of the public has been eroded in the process.
Punished for Crimes Not Proven
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/07/23/punished-for-crimes-not-proven?
“Allowing judges to rely on acquitted or uncharged conduct to impose higher sentences than they otherwise would impose seems a dubious infringement of the rights to due process and a jury trial,” Kavanaugh wrote about Bell’s case in 2015.
Kavanaugh noted that he and his colleagues on the appeals court were powerless to overturn the sentence. They are required to follow the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has allowed acquitted conduct to be a factor in sentencing. In the meantime, Kavanaugh reminded trial judges that, when asked to use acquitted conduct to increase sentences, they can just say no....
“It seems to me a tragedy that one is asked to serve on a jury, serves, but then finds their work may not be given the credit it deserves,” wrote Jim Caron, a retired economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture."These defendants are being sentenced not on the charges for which they have been found guilty but on the charges for which the District Attorney's office would have liked them to have been found guilty.”...
Looking Back: Why I Speak Out about Wrongful Convictions | Davis Vanguard
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/01/looking-back-why-i-speak-out-about-wrongful-convictions/
“Looking back” will feature reprints of articles that Jeff previously wrote while a columnist at The Westchester Guardian, which encompass topics that are applicable here in CA as well as across the country and not simply applicable to NY. As readers of the Guardian know, I served sixteen years in prison in New York for a murder and rape I did not commit. I was conclusively exonerated four years ago. The real perpetrator, Steven Cunningham, confessed to the crime after crime scene DNA matched him, not me.
Police and prosecutors knew the DNA was not mine. Yet, they fought tooth and nail to keep me in prison. How was I convicted? Putnam Country Investigator Daniel Stephens, Detective Thomas McIntyre, and current Peekskill Police Chief Eugene Tumulo worked together to get a false confession. I was a naïve, inexperienced and isolated sixteen-year-old kid back then. These cops also fabricated other evidence. Their crimes were compounded by the egregious misconduct of then-Assistant District Attorney George Bolen, assisted by Westchester County Medical Examiner Louis Roh’s fraud.
My assigned attorney from The Legal Aid society, Peter Paul Insero, was not very good.
Former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro vigorously fought all my appeals. and she was aided in her bad faith crusade by various prosecutors, including A.D.A.s Joseph Latino, Valerie Livingston, John J. Sergi, and Steven Bender. All of them knew the negative DNA test proved my innocence. At the time, many innocent prisoners in New York and across the country had been exonerated by negative post-conviction DNA tests.
Cunningham remained free in Peekskill while I was unjustly locked up. As bad as I feel for having been unjustly arrested, prosecuted and convicted for his crime, I feel even worse that police and prosecutorial misconduct caused the death of a second victim at his hands, school teacher Patricia Morrison. Cunningham murdered her while I rotted in prison for his first murder. Those responsible for Ms. Morrison’s death should be held accountable. I was released from prison on September 20, 2006. Since then, I have been a criminal justice advocate, and made it my life’s work to battle wrongful convictions and improve the criminal justice system....
Op-Ed: Other states require the preservation of DNA evidence. In Indiana, it's optional.
None of the nation’s 375 DNA exonerations would have been possible if biological evidence was not available to test. Had it been destroyed, tainted, contaminated, mislabeled, or otherwise corrupted, the innocence of these individuals would never have come to light. Further, out of these 375 wrongful convictions, the true perpetrators of the crimes were subsequently detected in 50% of the cases, according to the Innocence Project. While the innocent persons were incarcerated for crimes they did not commit, 165 real perpetrators remained free and committed an additional 154 violent crimes: 36 murders; 83 rapes; and 35 other crimes that could have been prevented if the actual perpetrator had been identified originally....
“The prospect of your ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than it does your guilt or innocence,” he said. “We talk about justice, we preach justice, but as a nation, we don’t practice it on death row.”... it's a deeply flawed system, one that "gets my blood boiling."
- California Governor Gavin Newsom
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/01/31/business/california-moves-dismantle-nations-largest-death-row
TO PROVE SLAVE PATROL DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE THEY ARRESTED A NIGGER BECUZ THEY THOUGHT HE WAS WHITE....
Nevada police sued after Black man mistaken for white man with felony
Black man was jailed after Nevada police mistook him for white man, lawsuit claims
Shane Lee Brown spent days in a Nevada jail on a felony warrant for a crime he didn't commit. It wasn't until his day in court that officials finally looked at mug shots and realized they had the wrong man, according to a lawsuit and court records reviewed by
Brown, a 25-year-old Black man, is suing the Las Vegas Metropolitan and Henderson police departments saying he was unlawfully detained after police mistook him for Shane Neal Brown, 51, a white man with a felony warrant, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed this month by his attorney E. Brent Bryson. ...
Wrongful Convictions, Memory, and Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness misidentifications are known to have played a role in 70 percent of the 349 wrongful convictions which were overturned based on DNA evidence. There's another wild card: the malleability of memory. Research has shown that, in certain circumstances, a person can falsely remember committing a crime that was actually committed by someone else. Memory can be contaminated by a number of things—suggestion, time, erroneous information, drugs/alcohol....
I've seen several depositions which, in comparison to the original police report, the confidence of the eyewitness, shaky at first, grew over time until, by the time the trial rolled around, he was 100 percent certain. I've read accounts where the initial eyewitness description morphed into something vastly different from the original version. Neither of these makes logical sense....
A wrongful conviction helps no one. It casts a wide net in terms of the damages it does; an innocent man pays for someone else's actions, the victim does not get justice, our confidence in the justice system suffers. It also paves the way for more crimes; a 2019 study found that serial killers committed 114 serial murders after someone else was in prison for a crime they didn't commit.
Looking Back: Forensic Fraud in Child Abuse Cases | Davis Vanguard
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/02/looking-back-forensic-fraud-in-child-abuse-cases/
In April 2010, Dr. Carrasco uncovered serious problems with the work of decorated forensic nurse, Rhonda Henderson....In 1998, Henderson helped found the forensic nursing program at Saint Vincent Health Center. According to the Goerie.com news website, “the new program assured that a trained forensic nurse, using standard protocols, would interview sexual-assault victims and collect evidence in a timely manner....
In 2008, the crime Victim center of Erie County honored Henderson and four other forensic nurses for 10 years of teamwork on sexual-assault cases.” Carrasco was troubled by the fact that Henderson’s findings in an abuse case did not match photos of the victim. This led to a review by the Medical Legal advisory Board which likewise found serious problems with Henderson’s evidence. Carrasco alerted the Erie County district attorney, Jack Daneri, who sent eleven Henderson cases out for independent review by a national expert in Colorado. The expert found Henderson’s conclusions in all eleven cases were either false or overstated. Daneri announced more than twenty defendants had been convicted of sexual assault based on Henderson’s medical examinations....
The impact of Henderson’s misconduct is not limited to men falsely convicted and put in prison. Her work also supported custody decisions in civil child abuse and neglect proceedings prosecuted by the Erie County Office of Children and Youth. Children are removed from parents found to be neglectful or abusive, and placed with relatives or become wards of the state and shipped off to foster care. Out-of-control experts represent a common problem in wrongful child sex abuse convictions. These “experts” pressure and brain wash victims and induce children to falsely incriminate family members and other adult care providers. Experts have tremendous power in such cases and results often turn on the victim’s testimony. In a battle between the expert and the defendant, the expert invariably wins....
Henderson is not alone. In Wichita, many cases never even made it to trial. Defendants saddled with inadequate public defenders saw what happened to others wrongfully convicted based on false expert testimony and pled guilty to avoid the risk of longer sentences handed down after trial. Henderson’s conduct illustrates how one person in a position of special influence can infect an entire justice system and generate many tragic and unjust results. Such misconduct by experts makes it almost impossible to determine the truth....
How many other Rhonda Hendersons are out there? How many innocent prisoners falsely accused of sexually assaulting children now rot in prison? How many parents had their children torn from them on false charges of abuse or neglect based on phony forensic evidence? The damage is incalculable....Daneri nevertheless took the totally inconsistent position there is no evidence that “Henderson deliberately falsified or overstated evidence of trauma in her examination results.” This is a prime example of the prosecution industry covering its own ass....
fabricating evidence, giving perjured testimony, suborning it in alleged victims, thereby defrauding the courts, a petty matter? In fact, it is tantamount to obstructing justice, a crime. There is no evidence Henderson is mentally ill or did not know what she was doing. She acted knowingly, intentionally and maliciously. Her motives are irrelevant. It is the consequences of her misdeeds that are relevant. She gets a pass because she is part of the prosecution club, and that is unacceptable....
Looking Back: The Foul Politics of Prosecution | Davis Vanguard
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/02/looking-back-the-foul-politics-of-prosecution/
Jabbar Collins, now thirty-seven years old, was convicted in 1995...June 8, 2010, Collins was cleared of this crime after serving sixteen years in prison....
Using the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), Collins obtained a mountain of evidence that had been illegally withheld from his lawyers by Brooklyn A.D.A Michael F. Vecchione, now the head of the rackets division. Hundreds of pages of documents were uncovered, including secret notes by legal aid lawyers, prison records, 911 tapes, and statements by key witnesses in his case. Collins obtained permission from prosecution witness, Edwin Oliva, to obtain notes from Oliva’s legal aid defenders. These notes revealed Oliva testified for the prosecution in exchange for leniency in a robbery case. This was crucial because Vecchione previously denied Oliva had made any leniency deal. Indeed, in his closing arguments, Vecchione said the claim was “absurd” and “laughable.”...
Another witness, Adrian Diaz, returned from Puerto Rico with Vecchione. In court, Vecchione swore that Diaz had not been promised or given anything other than lodging and airfare. After locating Diaz from prison, Collins called him, posing as a prosecutor reconstructing records. Diaz admitted in a conversation Collins secretly taped the prosecution had eradicated Diaz’s probation violation. Angel Santos testified against Collins at trial. In a post-conviction habeas corpus hearing, Santos described how he was coerced to give favorable testimony for the government. “I told them I didn’t want to get involved,” he said, “so what they did, they locked me up.” Santos said Vecchione repeatedly threatened to hit him and said, “If you don’t testify, you’re going to be in jail in a long time.” Santos was held in jail for a week before he cracked and agreed to say what Vecchione wanted to convict Collins.
The 911 tapes were discussed during Collins’s trial but never been turned over to the defense. Other documents linking two other men to the crime were uncovered by Collins’s FOIL requests.... The Collins case is an extreme example of prosecutorial misconduct. It highlights why federal legislation is urgently needed to criminalize such misconduct. Currently, no law is in place to restrain rogue prosecutors,...Vecchione hid a mountain of evidence, lied to the jury, coerced witnesses, and failed to correct perjured testimony....
Looking Back: Holding Officials Engaged in Misconduct Criminally Liable | Davis Vanguard
According to news reports, the Douglas County, Nebraska, crime lab director, David Kofoed, was sentenced to 20 months—nearly four years—in prison for evidence tampering.... Kofoed’s fraud begs the question how many other fraudulent “experts” are out there who fabricated evidence, causing innocent people to be arrested and possibly convicted. Over the years, forensic misconduct has been uncovered on many occasions...
The psychological impact of Kofoed’s actions upon Sampson and Livers cannot be minimized. In his letter to the judge, Sampson described the “fear and hopelessness” he felt “being held in solitary confinement, facing first-degree murder charges and the possibility of life in prison,” even though he was innocent. There is simply no terror like the prospect of facing a wrongful conviction.
Why do law enforcement officials enjoy immunity when they intentionally fabricate or withhold evidence, or engage in other misconduct? The criminal justice system rarely acknowledges perjury or exaggerated testimony by cops and forensic scientists. Career sanctions for such misconduct are even rarer. Rarer still are criminal prosecutions and jail time for such misconduct....
Fraud by law enforcement is worse. White-collar criminals deprive people of money. Law enforcement criminals deprive people of something far more valuable: liberty. Law enforcement professionals hold a position of public trust and victimize a vulnerable population...
We should keep in mind Justice Brandeis’s famous dissent in the 1928 bootlegging case, Olmstead v. United States: “If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means—to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal—would bring terrible retribution.”
MASTA HOS PUT IN GAS CHAMBER BY HER SLAVE GET AUTOPSY FOR MANNER AND CAUSE OF DEATH 1 IN 4 TO 1 IN 3 CASES, AND HER SLAVE WILL PLEAD GUILTY 95% TO 99% OF ALL CASES WHICH PROVES SHE IS A DV HOLOCAUST VICTIM...
State medical examiners cut autopsy rates to among lowest in nation
Facing an escalating caseload, the state’s chief medical examiner’s office has sharply reduced how often it conducts autopsies in recent years, opting instead for faster, less-intensive examinations and driving autopsy rates here to one of the nation’s lowest levels among similar offices.... Nearly 1,200 times last fiscal year — or in roughly one of every seven cases the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner investigated — a medical examiner did not examine a body in person before identifying a cause and manner of death, instead relying on medical records and photographs taken by staff... the medical examiner’s office performed autopsies in 26 to 27 percent of cases, trailing its counterparts in other states who, on average, performed them 38 percent of the time. Through the first half of this fiscal year, autopsies accounted for slightly less than one quarter of the office’s caseload....
WRONGFULLY CONVICTED ACTUALLY INNOCENT USA SLAVES MUST FALSELY ADMIT GUILT...
Oklahoma Is Trying to Make It Nearly Impossible to Get Off Death Row
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpxj8/oklahoma-death-row-bill-commutation
To get off death row in Oklahoma, if the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature gets its way, inmates would have to admit to their crimes. The pardon and parole board simply couldn’t grant clemency to anyone who maintains their innocence....
HYPOCRATS AND REPUBLICRATS CAUSED THE CORRUPT INJUSTICE SYSTEM,
AS WELL AS INADEQUATE COUNSEL...
The Who-Cares-If-You’re-Innocent Project
At the close of Nina Morrison’s confirmation hearing, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had a question. “Does ‘tough on crime’ include convicting the innocent?” ...
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said to Morrison that the rise in crime was “the direct result of the policies you’ve spent your entire lifetime advancing.” Missouri’s Senator Josh Hawley told Morrison, “I will oppose you and anyone else the administration sends to us who do not understand the necessity of the rule of law.” Hawley’s definition of the “rule of law” apparently includes sending people to prison for crimes they did not commit, not all that surprising for someone who believes democracy is when you encourage a mob to overturn an election that your preferred candidate lost. Republicans want to blame the rise in crime on liberal permissiveness, ...
“The Court has read the Constitution to require not only a right to counsel at taxpayers’ expense, but a right to effective counsel,” Thomas complained, adding that “the right to counsel is not an assurance of an error-free trial or even a reliable result … Our ever-growing right-to-counsel precedents directly conflict with the government’s legitimate interest in the finality of criminal judgments.” ...
But, as Mayeux writes, “By the end of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court could observe that it was virtually impossible for ‘an unaided layman’ to prevail in court; every criminal defendant required ‘a guide through complex legal technicalities.’ Under modern conditions, ‘the assistance of counsel’ was nearly ‘a requisite to the very existence of a fair trial.’” Of course, that’s only a problem if you care whether most trials are fair.
The Founders wrote the Constitution’s due-process protections specifically with an eye toward preventing “judicial despotism” through “arbitrary methods of prosecuting pretended offenses, and arbitrary punishments upon arbitrary convictions,” as Alexander Hamilton wrote in “Federalist No. 83.” Benjamin Franklin famously paraphrased Sir William Blackstone’s maxim that “it is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer.” Those attacking the Constitution’s due process protections and the attorneys who uphold them are employing the reverse logic, that the purpose of the criminal-justice system is to act as a rubber stamp on imprisonment for those who lack the virtue to be wealthy enough to afford representation. Cruz’s and Hawley’s attacks on Morrison go even further, suggesting that destroying the lives of innocent people is worth cutting a few points in the crime rate....
THEY ARE WAITING A YEAR OR TWO FOR A FAST AND SPEEDY SLAVE AUCTION. MANY WILL WAIT A COUPLE MONTHS FOR A PRETRIAL HEARING WHERE IF THEY PLEAD GUILTY TO THE FALSE CHARGES THEY HAB A CHANCE TO GIT OUT OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMP, OR AT LEAST END THE TORTURE OF THE WAIT AND UNKNOWN....
More than 400,000 people are locked up pretrial every single day in the US
More than 400,000 people are locked up pretrial every single day in the US... ‘In fact, 99% of the growth in jails over the last 15 years has been a result of increases in the pre-trial population,’... Approximately 1.9m people are behind bars run the US population. The PPI points out that the US does not have a single ‘criminal justice system’; instead there are ‘thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems’. ‘Together, these systems hold almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories.’
Black people are still overrepresented behind bars, making up about 40% of the prison and jail population... ‘In a typical year, about 600,000 people enter prison gates, but people go to jail over 10 million times each year,’... Jail churn is particularly high because most people in jails have not been convicted, the report says. ‘Some have just been arrested and will make bail within hours or days, while many others are too poor to make bail and remain behind bars until their trial,’...
LAW ABIDING GOOD GUYS COMMIT CRIMES WITH IMMUNITY...
For 20 Years, This Prosecutor Had a Secret Job Working For the Judges Who'd Decide His Cases
Ralph Petty worked as an assistant district attorney in Midland County, Texas, for 20 years. Like any prosecutor, he fervidly advocated for the government. But he wasn't just any advocate, because he wasn't just a prosecutor. Each night, Petty took off his proverbial DA hat and re-entered the courthouse as a law clerk for the same judges he was trying to convince to side with him by day.
His unethical side hustle heavily tipped the scales toward the government as he discreetly wrote opinions and orders that ruled in favor of the prosecution—also known as himself—and accessed materials confidential to the defense. For two decades, Petty managed a covert balancing act: He was both prosecutor and de facto judge, pocketing an extra $250,000 for his dishonest services. In over 300 cases, the accused were denied their due process rights due to Petty's misconduct....
Yet while Petty may have stolen years off people's lives—and, in Young's case, almost sent someone to die—it may be almost impossible to hold him accountable, thanks to assorted immunity doctrines that provide government agents with a near-impenetrable shield against facing victims in civil court. The safeguard given to prosecutors is extra thick, affording them absolute immunity for duties carried out in their official scope, meaning they can knowingly impanel false testimony or introduce fabricated evidence and still be protected....
'Junk' forensic science lands thousands of innocents in prison
So- called “expert witnesses,” forensic dentists, ballistics experts, FBI laboratory agents, lie detector examiners, blood stain investigators, are putting innocent people behind bars by utilizing and relying upon “junk science” that has no empirical basis and is simply subjective speculation masquerading as science, reports The Guardian.
Popularized in the 1960s and 1970s, junk science turned the scientific method on its head, say experts. Instead of testing out hypotheses empirically, self-described forensic specialists start with a desired solution of establishing guilt and then work back to the science that would support it. Techniques including hair microscopy, voice spectrometry, “toolmark analysis”, comparative bullet lead analysis, and “forensic odontology” (bite mark evidence) have faced increasing skepticism from scientists–but they have led to thousands of convictions across the U.S....
Looking Back: Supreme Court to Reconsider the Scope of Prosecutorial Immunity | Davis Vanguard
Immunity from civil actions fosters widespread prosecutorial misconduct because prosecutors know they can break the law with impunity. Immunity means prosecutors pay no price for failing to turn over exculpatory evidence or obtaining convictions with perjured testimony or shoddy forensic evidence or unreliable expert testimony, and the like.
Every instance of prosecutorial misconduct harms society in several ways. It undermines the public’s confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the criminal justice system, and wrongful convictions mean the wrong man is punished while the real perpetrator gets away with crime and remains at large to victimize others....
Thompson’s suffering nearly two decades in prison after, not one, but two wrongful convictions. Imagine your day-to-day life on death row, not knowing whether, at any minute, you might be removed to the execution chamber and put to death. The extensive psychological and physical harm Thompson suffered is incalculable. Only someone who has undergone his ordeal can appreciate the extent of the trauma and reputational damage he endured, much less his lost earning opportunities and future expenses for mental health care....
Prosecutors should not enjoy any greater immunity for wrongful conduct which harms the innocent than others in law enforcement..
THIS IS LONG OVERDUE. 95% TO 99% OF ALL DEFENDANTS PLEAD GUILTY REGARDLESS OF THEIR ACTUAL INNOCENCE. AND WE HAVE NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO PROVE OUR INNOCENCE. THIS ACT IS A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION...
Legislation in play to help wrongfully convicted individuals
The “Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act” was introduced this session by Senator Zellnor Myrie and Assemblymember Dan Quart. If it passes, even people who were forced “by poverty or coercion” into wrongly pleading guilty to a crime they didn’t commit would have a chance to prove their innocence.
“We do know we have a long and systemic problem in this state of people pleading guilty to crimes that they did not commit,” Quart told Capital Tonight. “We know it does happen and it happens often. Part of it is a long-standing history in our state of a lack of discovery rules, which we changed several years ago. Those extortive factors often lead to guilty pleas, even though the person is innocent, or more accurately, innocent of the charges being brought against him or her.”
Historically, formerly incarcerated individuals have been only been exonerated due to DNA or other science-based evidence. The Quart/Myrie bill changes that calculation.
“This changes that by saying the mere fact that you took a plea agreement does not preclude you from a hearing in front of a judge, post-discovery. So you get the information that may not have been available when you took the plea,” Quart said. “And also (the bill provides), the important right-to-counsel, which New York state does not have in the post-conviction space.”
The bill would provide $10 million to help pay for post-conviction counsel.
Twenty-five steps towards a less error-prone criminal justice system
https://www.thejusticegap.com/twenty-five-steps-towards-a-less-error-prone-criminal-justice-system/
THE STATES ARE CRIMINALS IN VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION, AND LAWS BECUZ TOO MANY LAWS CRIMINALIZING EVERYTHING, INCLUDING THE CONSTITUTION PRODUCES A CRIMINAL LEGAL SYSTEM. IN THE UNITED SLAVES LAND OF THE FREE WHERE EVRYTHING IS A CRIME INCLUDING THE CONSTITUTION SLAVES HAB NO LEGAL COUNSEL, AND THOSE THAT DO GIT INADEQUATE LEGAL REPRESENTATION TO KEEP THE FREE IN THEIR SLAVEY....
Pandemic pushes Oregon’s public defender system to the brink
https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-crime-pandemics-9f479097d57a34907af8629808c46d8c
An acute shortage of public defenders means that at any given time at least several hundred low-income criminal defendants don’t have legal representation, sometimes in serious felony cases that could put them away for years. Judges have dismissed nearly four dozen cases in the Portland area alone — among them a domestic violence case with allegations of strangulation as well as other major felonies — and have threatened to hold the state public defenders office in contempt of court for failing to provide attorneys.
Oregon sends out a weekly list of unrepresented defendants to private attorneys begging for help. Some of the accused have been jailed without a lawyer for months on charges of rape, sodomy, child sexual abuse or attempted murder, records show. Meanwhile, court proceedings for those not in custody are repeatedly pushed back, leaving defendants in limbo and the courts spinning their wheels.
“We’re overwhelmed....
DUE PROCESS IS DENIED TO 95% OF ALL CASES...
A Plea Conviction Does Not Require a Guilty Plea
When innocence is not enough to overturn a conviction.
As noted in my first (In)Justice System entry, jury trials are on the verge of extinction. And, this decline in jury trials has coincided with an increase in plea convictions. In this series of blog posts, I will cover the unknown cost of America’s new justice system—characterized by the Supreme Court as “a system of pleas, not a system of trials.”
A System of Pleas
Guilty pleas now account for approximately 95 percent of criminal convictions in the United States. More troublingly, they also account for a growing proportion of wrongful convictions. More than 20 percent of the wrongful convictions recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations were the result of false-guilty pleas....
There are many reasons why such low wrongful conviction estimates should be met with skepticism. The first reason I will address in detail is the documented difficulty in overturning wrongful plea convictions....
NOT ALL WRONGFULLY CONVICTED ARE ACTUALLY INNOCENT, AND NOT ALL CONVICTED ARE ACTUALLY GUILTY. AND THE 95% OF ALL DEFENDANTS PLEADING GUILTY ARE NOT, AND AS THINGS STAND WE WILL NEVER KNOW HOW MANY ARE ACTUALLY INNOCENT. AND UNTIL THE SYSTEM CHANGES TO AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THE SYSTEM WILL CONTINUE TO ACTUALLY WRONGFULLY CONVICT THE ACTUAL INNOCENTS...
‘We Must Dispel the Myth That We Always Get It Right’
https://thecrimereport.org/2022/05/17/we-must-dispel-the-myth-that-we-always-get-it-right/
Common sense tells us that when an innocent person is convicted, the conviction should always be considered wrongful. Seems like a simple concept. Except it isn’t. Laws regarding actual innocence and wrongful convictions are often complicated and vary from state to state, and federally. In fact, the United States Supreme Court has yet to recognize that convicting an innocent person during an otherwise fair trial, is a due process violation.
So to simplify an otherwise complicated subject — a wrongful conviction is a conviction that is subsequently overturned based on a judicial (or legal finding, such as a pardon) that the conviction was obtained as a result of a fundamentally unfair trial. To avoid confusion, people should differentiate between a wrongful conviction set aside on actual innocence grounds versus one set aside solely as a result of a violation of the accused’s right to due process.
In the former, think new DNA evidence that identifies the real perpetrator who happens to be someone other than the defendant versus in the latter, racial discrimination that occurs during jury selection. The bottom line is not all wrongful convictions involve people who are actually innocent.
Aside from the obvious difference between innocence and guilt, the distinction between a wrongful conviction where there is new evidence of actual innocence as opposed to a wrongful conviction based solely on a due process violation is a hugely significant distinction to make for a variety of reasons ranging from whether a CIU will review a particular case to the right to receive state compensation....
I believe the single most important change we must make is to create laws and rules that allow for adaptability. Specifically, we must do what we can to dispel the myth that we always get it right. We must reject the notion that finality is more important than accuracy and reliability. We must also embrace science as a truth-seeking tool and do what we can to train and educate stakeholders to guard against basic human biases in our decision making....
PROSECUTORS RUNNING CIU's ARE ONLY COVERING UP THEIR ASSES AND THEIR GOOD OL BOY NETWORK, THE CLIQUE OF CORRUPTION AMONG THE CIRCLE OF LIEYERS....
Can Prosecutors Be Trusted to Correct Wrongful Convictions?
https://thecrimereport.org/2022/05/19/prosecutors-misconduct-and-wrongful-conviction-case-reviews/
Prosecutors still hold the decision-making power. They choose which cases to review, and when and how to grant relief. And in cases where prosecutorial misconduct is a factor, those allegations are at risk of being ignored.... Several of them explained that prosecutors may make their cooperation with an exoneration in certain cases contingent upon defense attorneys dropping allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. In other cases, the defense attorney may voluntarily drop such allegations to improve their client’s chance of success. Prosecutors have been found to be less likely to assist with an exoneration if there is an underlying misconduct claim....
Wrongful conviction claims at risk of being ignored—or sanitized of misconduct—generally involve allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. The National Registry of Exonerations estimates that 30 percent of exoneration cases feature prosecutorial misconduct.... Prosecutors commit Brady violations when they intentionally or unintentionally withhold evidence that could prove favorable to the defense....
THE LAW IS A CRIMINAL VIOLATING THE USA CONSTITUTION RIGHT TO FAST AND SPEEDY TRIAL. BUT, SINCE EVERYONE HATES EVERYONE, AND CRIMES OF EVERYTHING, INCLUDING THE 1.4 MILLION LAWS RULES AND REGS HAS CAUSED BACKLOGS AND THE GUBMINT CRIMINALS CANNOT OBEY THE LAW....
Ballooning case backlog at the state’s anti-discrimination agency forces people to wait years for justice
The backlog of old cases under investigation for more than 18 months has climbed more than five-fold since 2019, the agency’s own data show, reaching 1,400 cases today. And many cases take much, much longer.
The MCAD took 17 years before last year dismissing a retaliation complaint by a fired electrical grid worker. A gender discrimination case against the Massachusetts Port Authority lasted 15 years before it was withdrawn in 2021. And records show that a dozen current cases have been pending for more than a decade.
Pavlov finally got a ruling in her favor this spring, but the company told her it plans to appeal, which means the case could drag on for several more years....
Last Salem 'witch' exonerated
NORTH ANDOVER — Elizabeth Johnson Jr. of North Andover is now the last of those convicted in the Salem Witch Trials to be exonerated. Her name was cleared Thursday thanks to legislation sponsored by State Senator Diana DiZoglio, D-Methuen, which had been filed on behalf of civics students at North Andover Middle School, whose research on Johnson led to her pardon....
DiZoglio initially filed her legislation on Feb. 19, 2021, which amended a resolution from 1957 and a law in 2001 that exonerated everyone who had been convicted and hanged but never cleared of their charges. “Because Johnson was not hanged for her alleged crime, she was overlooked,”...
Looking Back: Bringing Wrongful Convictions to the Attention of State Legislators
During my presentation, I mentioned serving 16 years wrongfully despite a negative DNA test, being coerced into falsely confessing, and other evidence being fabricated, such as fraud by the medical examiner, and how my public defender was not very competent.
I explained that I was cleared by DNA implicating the real perpetrator, who also confessed. Driving home the point that a wrongful conviction could happen to anybody, I shared that I was not a high school dropout, I was actually on my way to school when initially intercepted by the police, and my friends were not involved in the crime. I had never been arrested before.
I mentioned having to adjust to technology, trying to rebuild family relationships, going to counseling, and finishing up a Masters Degree in Criminal Justice. The audience then spontaneously applauded. I shared being an advocate—speaking, writing, lobbying, testifying at hearings, and doing multi-media interviews.
I reviewed needed changes; recording interrogations, better identification procedures, a statewide evidence preservation system so that the DNA can be tested in those 10-12% of cases that exist rather than being lost or destroyed, criminalization of intentional prosecutorial misconduct, and a better public defense system than one in which it is not unusual for one lawyer to represent 120 clients simultaneously....
Assembly and Senate leave out wrongful convictions, Clean Slate Acts
Prior to a few years ago, the law stated that if you plead guilty and didn’t have DNA evidence, then you had no access to the courts to appeal and clear your name later on. The bill changes that law and allows convicted individuals to petition the court if DNA evidence emerges in their cases. It specifically relates to “the requirements of discovery” in their court case, or what the prosecution has to show to the defense. Brown said that in these cases where DNA isn’t available, which is the “lion’s share of wrongful conviction claims,” people can introduce evidence that can include recantations, other witnesses who came forward after the fact, and videotape.
It also establishes a right to counsel or an attorney for those with wrongful conviction claims. Many times people are filing by themselves without legal help, said Brown.
“Before 2019, people were not getting information when they were pleading guilty,” said Brown. “They were just making uninformed plea decisions, thinking ‘even if I’m innocent I’m facing 40 years if I go to trial or I could take this deal for 10 years now.’”
Brown said in about 98% of cases in New York State the outcome is a plea agreement and not trial. She believes that it’s grossly underreported how often innocent people are taking plea agreements or giving false confessions. She said at the time it seems like the “rational choice” for people in dire situations just wanting to avoid Rikers Island.
The National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) reported, based on data from exonerations in the U.S. going back to 1989, that “nearly three quarters of those false confessions were in homicide cases.” The NRE surmises that “innocent suspects” who have the right to remain silent often confess because they are “terrified and confused and exhausted; because they are deceived or tricked; because they don’t understand what they are doing; because they feel hopeless and helpless and isolated.”...
“New York is the wrongful convictions capital of the United States—robbing the innocent of their freedom, allowing the guilty to go free and wasting vital resources. I’m glad the Assembly passed our important legislation this year and look forward to continuing to make the case to my colleagues next year,” said Myrie in a statement...
“Despite overwhelming support, and passage of the bill in the State Senate earlier this week, the Assembly failed to bring Clean Slate to the floor for a vote before the legislative session ended today....
Looking Back: The Story of Freddie Peacock
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/06/looking-back-the-story-of-freddie-peacock/
Freddie Peacock was proven innocent by DNA on Feb. 4, 2010, in Rochester, New York. The exoneration makes him the 25th person cleared by DNA in New York State. He was wrongfully convicted in 1976 of rape, based upon a false confession and a misidentification.... She didn’t see her attacker before hitting her head.... Barely two hours after the attack, Peacock was arrested and interrogated for about two and a half hours. He initially denied any involvement in the crime, but police claim that he ultimately confessed. Peacock told the detective handling the interrogation he had severe mental illness and had been hospitalized for it several times. In his alleged confession, Peacock could not tell officers where, when or how the victim was raped. He was tried and convicted.”...
Twenty-eight years after leaving prison, DNA testing has proven that Freddie Peacock was innocent. Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld, praising his persistence, said, “Nobody in the U.S. who was exonerated with DNA testing has spent this many years outside of prison fighting to prove his innocence.”...
JUST AS THERE ARE WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS THERE ARE ALSO WRONGFUL ACQUITTALS ...
New DNA evidence in 1990 rape-murder case points to guilt of suspect who was acquitted
Robert Earl Hayes, a former inmate on Florida’s death row, was found not guilty at his retrial for the 1990 rape and murder of Pamela Albertson, a fellow horse groomer he met while working at the Pompano Harness Track in Pompano Beach.
More than two decades later, advocates for Hayes asked the Broward State Attorney’s Office to run new DNA tests to prove the second jury got it right and Hayes is innocent of the crime. The Innocence Project of New York picked the lab. Tests were run in 2021 on hair samples found in the victim’s hand and DNA samples left behind by the culprit.
It’s long been clear that the hair did not come from Hayes, a Black man, but from a Caucasian. But who?
The results are in. As expected, the hair did not belong to Hayes. Nor did it belong to a mysterious “real killer.” It belonged to the victim. The other DNA evidence, prosecutors say, identified the victim’s rapist and likely killer.
It was Hayes....
A retrial on the Broward charges is out of the question — once someone is found not guilty, he or she cannot be tried again, no matter what new evidence comes in....
SOMEBODY NEEDS TO WRONGFULLY CONVICT JUDGE SOTOMAYOR.
SEE IF HER OPINIONS CHANGE...
Looking Back: United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor – Part 1
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination represents a threat to justice and to all of our rights.... Firstly, (and very personally) Sotomayor condemned me to a life sentence. I had filed a Habeas Corpus Petition in Federal District Court arguing actual innocence, as demonstrated by a negative DNA Test. Because my attorney was given inaccurate information by the court clerk regarding the filing procedure, resulting in my petition arriving 4 days late, that petition was dismissed... Sotomayor twice signed off on upholding the ruling.... There were also several cases where, despite her acknowledging that multiple errors had occurred, including prosecutorial misconduct, she nonetheless consistently found that every error was “harmless.”... It Could Happen To You...
“I have yet to see a case of innocence in Missouri where there is not at least one strong claim of ineffective assistance of counsel—and likely many more.”
Megan Crane, a co-director in the Missouri office of the MacArthur Justice Center and the founder of the Missouri Wrongful Conviction Project
THE LAW ABIDING GOOD GUYS RUNNING ITS CRIMINAL STATES HAVE CRIMINALIZED RIGHTS, AND MADE SO MANY LAWS THAT EVERYTHING IS A CRIME. THESE LAW ABIDING GOOD GUYS ARE IN VIOLATION OF CONSTITUTION AGAIN, AND FEDERAL LAWS DENIAL OF RIGHTS UNDER COLOR OF LAW TO SAY THE LEAST. SO WHAT, ONLY LAW ABIDING GOOD GUYS GET RIGHTS...
Public Defenders Were Scarce Before COVID. It’s Much Worse Now.
PORTLAND, Ore. — On any given day in Oregon jails, 40 or so people remain in custody without a public defender to represent them in court. Some have waited weeks for a lawyer, others have waited months. Several hundred more people charged with crimes but not in jail also await their constitutional right to counsel.
The crisis is severe, and not limited to Oregon. Even before the pandemic, many court systems nationwide were unable to meet demand for public defenders... $339 million public defense budget...
JAILHOUSE SNITCH IS A LEGAL LIAR FOR THE PROSECUTION...
THE SHADOWY WORLD OF JAILHOUSE INFORMANTS: EXPLAINED
https://theappeal.org/the-shadowy-world-of-jailhouse-informants-an-explainer/
A for-profit snitching ring was operating inside the prison system, where wannabe informants could pay thousands of dollars for information about defendants....
Unlike many other countries, the U.S. criminal system permits the government to trade leniency for information, giving law enforcement wide discretion. Police can refrain from arresting a person who offers information about somebody else. Prosecutors can drop charges or recommend lower sentences in exchange for a defendant’s cooperation....
Criminal informants are incentivized by a wide range of benefits to produce information for the government. The most common benefit is leniency for the informant’s own crimes, but informants also work for all sorts of things including money, drugs, improved conditions of confinement, or legal immigration status for themselves or family members....
Jailhouse snitches, sometimes referred to as “in-custody informants,” are a particularly risky and unreliable category of criminal informant... Large-scale studies confirm that wrongful convictions are a common result of informant use. The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Law School issued a report finding that over 45 percent of all wrongful capital convictions are due to lying by criminal informants, making “snitching the leading cause of wrongful convictions in U.S. capital cases.” According to The Innocence Project, 15 percent of DNA-based exonerations alone involve a lying informant....
Sometimes prosecutors affirmatively engage in misconduct in connection with their use of informants, most commonly by failing to disclose evidence....all evidence that might indicate the defendant’s innocence. This includes any information that an informant might be lying, so-called impeachment evidence, especially any evidence that the informant was promised a benefit. All too often, however, prosecutors do not disclose this information....
THE REASON THE GUBMINT AND ITS ENFORCERS OF TYRANNY DO NOT ALLOW RIGHTS IS BECUZ THE PEOPLE HAVE NO MEANS TO ENFORCE A REMEDY FOR THEMSELVES. THE 2ND AMENDMENT USED TO BE THE REMDY THE PEOPLE HAD TO DEFEND THEIR RIGHTS. BUT THIER RIGHTS HAVE BEEN BANNED AND A BILL OF PRIVILEGES ARE UNEQUALLY DISPENSED. THUS, THE NINE LIEYER OLIGARCHY SAYS THE CONSTITUTION SAYS: BILL OF PRIVILEGES IS DENIAL OF RIGHTS UNDER COLOR OF LAW WITH NO REMEDY BECUZ GRANTING RIGHTS WOULD INCONVENIENCE THE SLAVE AUCTIONS, COST TOO MUCH, CAUSE DISAGREEMENTS, AND WOULD SIMPLY RESULT IN TOO MUCH WORK FOR THE SLAVE AUCTIONS...
Impunity Had a Great Year at the Supreme Court
https://newrepublic.com/article/166981/supreme-court-impunity-constitutional-rights
But another group of cases that drew fewer headlines also dealt with Amer icans’ rights. In these cases, the Supreme Court addressed whether Americans could do anything when their rights were violated. Could they sue the officials involved? Could they seek remedies from the courts? The justices gave a fairly consistent answer to these questions: “No.”... If the infringer in question was a state or local official, a would-be litigant could theoretically use Section 1983. This Reconstruction-era provision broadly allows lawsuits in federal court against state and local officials who violate a person’s federal constitutional rights in their official capacity....
Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito explained that “while the benefits of permitting the assertion of Miranda claims under Section 1983 would be slight, the costs would be substantial” for the courts. He pointed to the need for “judicial economy,”...would create “unnecessary friction” between state courts and federal courts...would simply result in more work for the courts.... The point of Section 1983 is to provide such redress—because a remedy ‘is a vital component of any scheme for vindicating cherished constitutional guarantees.’ The majority here, as elsewhere, injures the right by denying the remedy.”...
The court’s favoritism for impunity reaches its apex when it comes to qualified immunity cases. Qualified immunity is a judicially created doctrine that allows courts to dismiss Section 1983 cases if the plaintiff can’t prove the right violated by the public official was “clearly established” at the time. This framework frequently insulates officials from legal consequences for their actions. The doctrine has received persistent criticism from lower court judges and legal scholars across the ideological spectrum, as well as some of the justices themselves.
Compounding the problem is that the court rarely takes qualified immunity cases head-on. It often instead resolves them through summary reversals of the lower courts, without oral arguments or signed opinions by the majority. In some circumstances, it also simply lets inexplicable decisions by the lower courts stand without further review, over the dissents of some of the justices....
The Psychological Impact of Wrongful Imprisonment
survey of 59 people who had been wrongly incarcerated for an average of 16 years.... We were alarmed to find that nearly 80% of these innocent people reported having experienced at least one traumatic event (e.g., physical and/or sexual assault) while in prison, and half of them reported significant mental health symptoms consistent with PTSD and/or major depressive disorder—rates even higher than those seen among military veterans. Importantly, we also found that their trauma exposure and mental health were unrelated to how long they were in prison or how recently they were released, suggesting that even brief stints of wrongful incarceration can have severe and lasting effects, and that time alone does not heal these wounds....
David Rudolf Details Law Enforcement Biases That Lead to Wrongful Convictions in New Book
“Confirmation bias is a human condition we all suffer from. It’s a psychological tendency to seek only evidence that confirms your beliefs while ignoring or discounting evidence that contradicts your beliefs,” writes Rudolf.
“Law enforcement decides who they ‘like’ for a crime, generally one of the ‘usual suspects,’ such as the spouse in a murder case. They focus on a single subject and overlook or dismiss exculpatory explanations or evidence.”...
“In many cases, the police and prosecutorial misconduct is not discovered until years after the defendant has been convicted, sentenced to prison, or even executed. In most such cases, it is never discovered at all.”...
Digital dragnets: Examining the government’s access to your personal data
law enforcement collection of data through private intermediaries can conceal evidence of innocence by circumventing criminal defense discovery rights.... eliminate the trade secret evidentiary privilege for private entities that sell data and investigative or forensic software to law enforcement. Clarify that the Stored Communications Act and other federal privacy statutes do not block criminal defense subpoenas to technology companies. Strengthen defendants’ general third-party subpoena powers. And require law enforcement to obtain evidence of innocence on behalf of the accused if defense counsel is unable to obtain it directly.... an underappreciated aspect of privatized evidence collection is that it also allows law enforcement to obtain less evidence of innocence. And when law enforcement does not possess exculpatory evidence, it is much harder for the defense to access it. ... private companies sometimes claim this type of information is a trade secret, and refuse to disclose it even to their own law enforcement customers or in response to a subpoena....
If law enforcement is ignorant of exculpatory evidence, defendants’ constitutional Brady due process rights, which would otherwise require the prosecution to disclose evidence of innocence, will not apply. Defendants’ statutory discovery rights to obtain exculpatory evidence from the prosecution will not apply. And if defendants exercise their Sixth Amendment rights to call law enforcement officers to the witness stand, cross-examination will be futile. Meanwhile, current evidence rules permit prosecution witnesses to introduce data into evidence even if they are ignorant about flaws in the data or the method of collecting it....
Nor is it easy for defendants to get information about such flaws directly from a private company. In a catch-22, defendants cannot subpoena companies directly for exculpatory evidence unless they already know the evidence exists and can identify it with specificity—a task that is virtually impossible for evidence one has not yet seen. And trying to get criminal defense subpoenas enforced across state lines can be prohibitively costly and time consuming. Further, private vendors of surveillance technologies sometimes say their products are for law enforcement only, and refuse to give or sell copies to criminal defense experts for scrutiny and testing. Indeed, some companies even refuse research licenses to independent scientists to scrutinize and test their products, all the while claiming in court that those products are subject to peer review....
In sum, it is much harder for criminal defense counsel to access exculpatory evidence about flaws in data collected through private intermediaries than in data collected directly by law enforcement searches and seizures....
Looking Back: The Role of Prosecutors and Judges in Perpetuating Wrongful Convictions
Functioning correctly, both prosecutors and judges are supposed to serve as lines of defense, in different ways, to prevent harm to wrongly-charged defendants.
It is the role of the prosecutor to convict the guilty while staying within the boundaries of the law, and, to protect and exonerate the innocent. Their mandate is not, despite prevalent practice across the country and particularly here in Westchester over the past 20 years, to simply win convictions, by any means. Firstly, prosecutors should look critically at any cases that the police have brought to them....
Beyond that, a prosecutor is supposed to ensure that information that is considered Brady or Rosario material is turned over to the defense on time, as opposed to being withheld or turned over at the last second; and, they should be monitoring the testimony of their own witnesses, to ensure that no perjury is taking place. If it is discovered that someone has committed perjury, it is a prosecutor’s legal obligation to immediately correct the situation. This rarely happens. Prosecutors have the obligation not to engage in misconduct of any kind, not to upset a trial’s fairness. Yet, all too often that is not the case. Information is frequently purposely withheld, misconduct is engaged in, unethical tactics are resorted to in order to try to win. Perjured testimony is not only not corrected but in many instances is suborned, and legal arguments are made to the judge that are not in good faith.
After the prosecutor, the next line of defense, the next safety net for the wrongfully accused, who is supposed to be ensuring that injustices do not take place, is the trial judge who, all too frequently, fails in that capacity.... There have been plenty of cases in which judges have ruled that there was no coercion involved, and thus that a confession was admissible, despite both physical and psychological coercion. Some examples of physical coercion that occurred but which judges nonetheless allowed the confessions to come into evidence include: threats of violence, wearing suspects down after long hours of interrogation; food deprivation and sleep deprivation. Some examples of psychological coercion include lying to suspects, claiming to have evidence that doesn’t exist, false promises, the use of the polygraph, and the notorious game of good cop/bad cop. Unfortunately, many judges have held that such tactics were not coercive... At other times judges have allowed flimsy cases to go forward to trial, despite pre-trial hearings which were supposed to prevent it....
Judges often fail during a trial to ensure that justice is done by not sustaining meritorious objections. There have been a number of cases, some of which I have written about, in which prosecutors have engaged in prosecutorial misconduct in open court, in an effort to gain a conviction through illegal and unfair means; and judges fail to take appropriate action. Some examples include allowing prosecutors to act as unsworn witnesses, or to make inflammatory statements during closing arguments while not declaring a mistrial; or allowing prosecutors to get away with withholding important information from the defense until the very last second, thus preventing defense attorneys from using the exculpatory information in the most effective manner.
At other times, judges have not paid close enough attention to witnesses, with the effect that witnesses have perjured themselves in open court with impunity....
The fact that many judges are former prosecutors impacts their conduct inside and outside of the courtroom in many ways. I believe that many, with that background, tend to view most defendants as guilty. I also think that on a subconscious level some judges clearly favor the prosecution, so much so that their rulings are not truly being made from a position of neutrality. Still another problem involves the fact that judges frequently tend to view themselves as a quasi-law enforcement officer whose job it is to protect the public, as opposed to being neutral arbiters of law whose function it is to prevent injustices and to ensure that trials are fair and outcomes reliable.
I also believe that, in some instances, judges have been swayed by media coverage and the atmosphere of a case, particularly with high profile cases involving a lot of emotion on the part of the public. Additionally, politics can become a very big factor, particularly when judges may be facing upcoming re-election, or when they may be aspiring to higher appointment, and they are concerned with how they may be perceived if they make particular rulings. Finally, I believe there are instances where judges have been intimidated by prosecutors....
Editorial: Biden should know. Adding 100,000 more cops is the wrong approach
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-08-01/biden-police-expansion-mistake
President Biden’s trip last month to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where he planned to unveil a $37-billion public safety program centered on federal funding for 100,000 new police officers in local law enforcement departments around the nation...
Looking Back: Should Those Who File False Allegations Be Charged with Perjury?
“When People File False Police Reports.” In that case, four men were falsely charged with raping a Hofstra college coed. After a cell phone video emerged showing “the victim” having consensual sex with several men in a dorm bathroom, she changed her story, admitting that the sex was consensual. Another case that was discussed was the William McCaffrey case. McCaffrey was charged with rape and served three years in prison prior to being cleared. DNA evidence showed that he was innocent, and the victim, Biurny Peguero Gonzalez, has admitted that she falsely implicated McCaffrey...
I believe that the person who purposely filed false charges should be arrested and charged with perjury. Penal law offenses exist in order to protect society, by criminalizing and imposing a penalty when people harm others. Just as we need to be protected from bodily harm and the loss of our property, so, too, do we need to be protected from false charges. I think that it is important that something be in place to make those, who would falsely implicate others, hesitate to do so. That can only be accomplished by the punishment of perjurers.
While I favor prosecuting civilians who purposely file false charges, I also favor prosecuting those in law enforcement who betray public trust by committing perjury in criminal cases. One example includes police officers who commit perjury by leaving things out of their testimony, or by changing details. This practice has gained enough currency that there is a name that has been given to it: “Testilying.”
Another example involves experts who fabricate lab reports or findings, and thus have not only possibly facilitated a wrongful conviction, but also infected perhaps hundreds or thousands of cases, thus rendering those verdicts questionable.
Still another example are instances where a person receives a reward in exchange for testifying, whether it involves the dropping of charges, or receiving a reduced sentence. This is known as incentivized testimony.
Unfortunately, in all of the above instances, the guilty party has faced perjury charges in very few instances....
AMERICA WAS FOUNDED BY WHITE SUPREMACIST RACISTS.
DEFINITION OF LAWS ARE ENFORCED AND PROSECUTED BY WHAT THE SLAVE PATROL AND SLAVE AUCTION LEGISLATORS SAY THEY MEAN....
Policing and prosecuting local white supremacy? There’s one major legal hurdle that makes it difficult.
“Hate is as American as apple pie,”... And, as far as the Constitution is concerned, “Hate speech has the same legal standard as love speech.” Police in the United States are not supposed to police ideology, and the repugnance of offensive speech, such as Nazi symbols or overtly racist rhetoric, is not relevant to whether it’s protected under the Constitution... “I don’t talk to journalists. Have a good day,”...
Looking Back: Much-Needed Federal Legislation To Reduce Inmate Abuse
As a prisoner, I was always aware that the guards were in control, and that if they chose to abuse in any way, they would get away with it. Other guards would neither interfere nor report abuse to their superiors, lest they be perceived as not in solidarity with their co-workers, a perception which could result in some future dangerous situation.
Supervisors would also look the other way and not intervene, even when things were brought to their attention. The prison administration was of the same mentality, and the prison grievance system was a seldom used remedy because it was known the administration would never rule on behalf of a prisoner against the guards or civilian staff. Furthermore, filing a grievance could, and sometimes did, result in retaliation. A favorite catchall phrase that the Grievance Committee would turn to was “insufficient evidence,” no matter what kind of physical evidence there was, or how many prisoners saw a particular event. It was a maddening double standard because the word of a prison informant would be accepted if they gave negative information about another prisoner.... In terms of the court system, when prisoners did file lawsuits, they frequently lost in court, often without receiving a trial or a full and fair hearing with regard to their allegations....
1.4 MILLION LAWS RULES AND REGS HAS MADE EVERY NIGGER OR SLAVE GUILTY. AND SINCE THEY ARE ALL GUILTY THEY DONT NEED LIEYERS BECUZ THE FALSELY ACCUSED CAN PLEAD GUILTY WITHOUT LIEYERS. AND SINCE THE CONSTITUTION IS PROHIBITED THE GUBMINT CRIMINALS DONT HAB TO WORRY ABOUT COUNSEL NOR SPEEDY TRIALS...
Oregon justice fires panel due to lack of public defenders
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s chief justice fired all the members of the Public Defense Services Commission on Monday, frustrated that hundreds of defendants charged with crimes and who cannot afford an attorney have been unable to obtain public defenders to represent them. The unprecedented action comes as Oregon’s unique public defender system has come under such strain that it is at the breaking point. Criminal defendants in Oregon who have gone without legal representation due to a shortage of public defenders filed a lawsuit in May that alleges the state is violating their constitutional right to legal counsel and a speedy trial....
#1 REASON 95% TO 99% OF ALL SLAVES PLEAD GUILTY IS TO END THE TORTURES, AND RIGHTS VIOLATIONS...
A man waited three years for a trial. His case may change how Maine looks at speedy trial rights
The state’s constitution promises, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall have a right … to have a speedy, public and impartial trial.” But the guarantee of speed is a right that legal experts say is almost non-existent in Maine.... No defendant has won a speedy trial claim in the Maine Law Court since 1960, according to the ACLU of Maine. Defendants are losing, in part, because of an “elaborate legal test” that Maine courts adopted from the U.S. Supreme Court, which often requires people to show they were harmed by the months- or years-long delay before trial. “The bottom line is that … it’s nearly impossible for defendants to prove a violation of their speedy trial right,” ...
Defendants have the right to a speedy trial in the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In 1974, Congress passed the Speedy Trial Act that ensures federal prosecutors bring a case to trial within 60 days of a defendant pleading not guilty, not counting periods of excusable delays. The deadline was later extended to 70 days.
Forty states and the District of Columbia also passed laws defining a speedy trial in state court, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Maine has not. In practice, time limits are not absolute,...
#1 REASON 95% TO 99% OF ALL SLAVES PLEAD GUILTY IS TO END THE TORTURES, AND RIGHTS VIOLATIONS...
10 Years a Detainee: Why Some Spend Years on Rikers, Despite Right to Speedy Trial
https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/8/17/23310771/why-some-spend-years-rikers
Rikers Island was designed to hold people accused of crimes less than a year. Why have some detainees been there for six, eight and even 10 years?... The average number was 125 days as of July this year, up from 105 in 2021, 90 in 2020, and 82 in 2019. Those figures include people who were in and out of custody within one day. “Many individuals have remained in DOC custody for substantially longer... Thirteen detainees have died in Rikers and other city lockups this year, after 16 deaths in 2021, the highest total in decades....
UNITED SLAVES FAST AND SPEEDY TRIAL MEANS YOU EITHER WAIT IN JAIL OR PAY BAIL TO WAIT A YEAR OR TWO OR EVEN 10 YEARS FOR A TRIAL. BUT, IN SOME STATES THE SLAVE CAN BE HELD IN JAIL UPTO 180 DAYS WITHOUT EVER BEING CHARGED, THEN RELEASED UNDER PROBATION-LIKE TERMS AND THEN CHARGED YEARS LATER UPTO THE STATUE OF LIMITATIONS PERIOD.
I WONDER IF THE SLAVE COULD JUST PLEAD GUILTY BEFORE BEING CHARGED?...
El Paso public defender may seek dismissal of 1,000 more criminal cases
After four days of hearings last week, a judge dismissed about 370 criminal cases in El Paso because of prosecutorial delays. The El Paso Public Defender’s Office, which sought the dismissals, says this is just the beginning: It has more than 1,000 additional cases eligible to be dismissed and plans to file new motions soon.... Texas Code of Criminal Procedure that requires prosecutors to seek indictments within 180 days of arrest....
The purpose of article 32.01, according to the dismissal motion, is to prevent people from being jailed or placed under bond conditions for lengthy time periods before they’re charged with a crime.... District Attorney Yvonne Rosales has stressed that the dismissals won’t keep her from issuing charges on these cases in the future. “Justice will be served,” she said in an interview with KFOX-14 TV station. “Their case is not lost.”
In a written press statement, she noted that the statute of limitations for many of the dismissed cases runs between two to 10 years....
Most of the accused people in last week’s cases had already been released from jail, Childress said. But many had faced “oppressive bond conditions” well past the six-month time limit set by article 32.01, she noted. “What we see is people will spend a year, 18 months, complying with these conditions that are a de facto probation sentence, when not only have they not been found guilty — they haven’t even been charged yet,”...
Looking Back: Wrongful Convictions Just Keep Coming Out
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/08/looking-back-wrongful-convictions-just-keep-coming-out/
Given that there are scant resources to provide legal representation and investigation that is needed to clear the wrongfully convicted in non-DNA cases, and that DNA evidence is only available in 10 to 12% of all serious felony cases, the actual frequency is unknowable. But it is clear, given the frequency with which people have been being cleared, both through DNA and other means, that it is much more frequent than what the average person believes....
incentivized witnessing, which is when a witness receives a reward in exchange for providing testimony, leading to a wrongful conviction. That has been the cause of wrongful convictions in 15% of the DNA-proven wrongful convictions, and in many of the non-DNA exonerations....
At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt
https://apnews.com/article/crime-prisons-lawsuits-connecticut-074a8f643766e155df58d2c8fbc7214c
When her mother died two years ago, the state of Connecticut put a lien on the Stamford home she and her siblings inherited. It said she owed $83,762 to cover the cost of her 2 1/2 year imprisonment for drug crimes.... Critics say it’s an unfair second penalty that hinders rehabilitation by putting former inmates in debt for life. ... Pay-to-stay laws were put into place in many areas during the tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and ’90s,...
Connecticut used to collect prison debt by attaching an automatic lien to every inmate, claiming half of any financial windfall they might receive for up to 20 years after they are released from prison...
IF PARENT DOES NOT DISCIPLINE CHILD THE PARENT PAYS FOR CHILDS INCARCERATION. IF PARENT DISCIPLINES CHILD THE PARENT PAYS FOR HIS OWN INCARCERATION AFTER BEING CHARGED WITH DOMESTIC VIOLENCE...
Your Kid Goes to Jail, You Get the Bill
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/03/02/your-kid-goes-to-jail-you-get-the-bill
For 40 years, many parents have had to pay for their children's incarceration, but that may be changing.... Even if a child is later proved innocent, the parents still must pay a nightly rate for the detention. Bills run up to $1,000 a month, and many of the parents of Philadelphia’s roughly 730 detained children are so poor they can afford monthly installments of only $5....
WHEN SLAVE PATROL COMMIT CRIMES IT IS THE SLAVES WHO PAY...
Editorial: Who pays the bill for sheriff misconduct? You do
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-08-31/sheriff-misconduct-costs-billions
Ideally, monetary judgments attributable to any kind of law enforcement misconduct would be paid by the department responsible for them, creating a built-in incentive for sheriff and police leaders to adopt internal policies to prevent similar behavior in the future. If law enforcement agencies were private businesses, they would buy insurance to cover legal liabilities, and those insurers would respond to large judgments by requiring a comprehensive overhaul of operations. Corporate chief executives would fire department heads who don’t control costs incurred by the misconduct of their personnel. Department heads would respond with behavior protocols and an assortment of employee incentives and sanctions.
It sometimes appears to work that way in local government, because cities, counties, school districts and others generally have liability insurance and conduct guidelines. But in law enforcement, there are several broken links in the accountability chain.... A court-created doctrine known as qualified immunity generally protects police officers and other government-employed officials from personal liability. Revoking or at least limiting that immunity became a key objective in a federal bill to improve police conduct. It generated fierce law enforcement opposition and became the primary reason the measure failed to gain bipartisan support. Today, it is exceedingly rare for law enforcement officers to have to pay for their misconduct from their own pockets....
Innocence Project: Problem of wrongful convictions is systemwide
https://www.wbaltv.com/article/adnan-syed-conviction-vacated-innocent-project/41300199
"For many years, we focused primarily on DNA cases, but the majority of people who are convicted are convicted of crimes where there is no DNA that can prove innocence or guilt," Potkin said.Syed is accused of killing his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. His first trial ended in a mistrial. A jury convicted him in a second trial. Syed had been in jail since his arrest in February 1999.There have been more than 3,200 cases of wrongful conviction in the United States since 1989. While not exonerated, Syed's conviction was vacated Monday because of Brady violations."Forty-four percent of people whose convictions have been overturned and exonerated had exactly this in their case: Favorable evidence that the prosecutors didn't disclose at the time of trial. And, in many of those cases, like in Mr. Syed's case, there was evidence that pointed to another person as the actual perpetrator," Potkin said.Potkin said the problem with wrongful convictions is systemwide."These are not just isolated instances, they are not mistakes. This is systematic and it is endemic to the system. We just can't get it right. We process too many people. The system is just too big,"
LAW=SLAVERY. LAW=LIES. LAW OFFICIALS=CRIMINALS...
Book Review: “Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison”
https://digboston.com/book-review-barred-why-the-innocent-cant-get-out-of-prison/
“This is a system that comes out of slavery and perpetuates slavery … We are swimming in the mythology that [it] is designed to get to the truth.”... examines the numerous procedural rules in our criminal legal system that obstruct prisoners seeking to prove their innocence. He shows how these rules are almost as iron-clad as the cages in which those prisoners are housed.... Medwed takes readers through graphic stories and analyses as he dissects nightmares for those who are innocent....
the court clarified that “a claim of actual innocence, even a strong one, [is] not an adequate legal basis for withdrawing a guilty plea.” Medwed is clear in suggesting that the criminal legal system has little interest in innocence, and “values finality and efficiency over accuracy.” He also shows how easy it is to convict the innocent due to: prosecutors not turning over evidence they collect that can be favorable for the defense; the pressure to take a plea deal instead of going to trial; and “rigid procedures that squash access to postconviction DNA testing.”...
Dirty cops...police misconduct, as well as the problems that innocent people encounter when courts rely on informants and “dubious eye witnesses,”...detectives tampered... lawyer was ineffective...
Looking Back: United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor Part 2
The U.S. Supreme Court, in Atkins v. Virginia, held that executing retarded persons was banned under the Constitution....
Sotomayor’s opinion, which was joined by six other “justices,” was, “The state court’s conclusion that Wood’s counsel made a strategic decision not to pursue or present evidence of his mental deficiencies was not an unreasonable determination of the facts.”... Justices Stevens’ and Kennedy’s dissent stated, “On the contrary, the only reasonable factual conclusion I can draw from this record is that counsel’s decision to do so was the result of inattention and neglect.” The dissent also noted that “Wood’s former special education teacher testified during post conviction review that Wood was classified as ‘educable mentally retarded’...
It seems like anything she can possibly do not to rule in favor of a defendant, she will do. That, however, is not the role of a judge, who is supposed to be neutral and whose rulings are supposed to be directed by the facts, laws, and justice. We are now stuck with her shameful tradition on the highest court in the land. That six other “justices” agreed with her is flabbergasting.... they just sent a borderline retarded man to his death...without allowing him to receive DNA testing, despite the existing previously untested semen....
Looking Back: The Case of Freddie Peacock
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/10/looking-back-the-case-of-freddie-peacock/
Freddie Peacock was proven innocent by DNA on Feb. 4, 2010, in Rochester, New York. The exoneration makes him the 25th person cleared by DNA in New York State. He was wrongfully convicted in 1976 of rape, based upon a false confession and a misidentification.... Even though he had left prison, Peacock never stopped trying to clear his name. Not while he was on parole for the next 10 years, nor when he was removed from it in 1992.... Twenty-eight years after leaving prison, DNA testing has proven that Freddie Peacock was innocent....
NOT ONLY ARE INNOCENT SLAVES WRONGFULLY CONVCITED AND PUNISHED IN THE UNITED SLAVES BUT, SOME ACQUITTED SLAVES ARE ALSO PUNISHED...
A Jury Acquitted Them of Various Charges. They Served Prison Time for Them Anyway.
Can you do prison time for a criminal charge of which you were never convicted?
I'd venture that most would assume the answer is "no." They would be wrong.
Known as acquitted conduct sentencing, the practice allows judges to bloat a prison term when sentencing a defendant by punishing them for a separate charge or charges on which a jury deemed them not guilty....
The 1990s Law That Keeps People in Prison on Technicalities
How the Supreme Court expanded the most important law you’ve never heard of.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court told Arizona prisoner Barry Jones that even though four federal judges agreed he may well be innocent of the 1994 murder that sent him to death row, the high court couldn’t overturn his conviction or stop Arizona from executing him. (Jones had argued he was hindered by poor lawyering at multiple stages of his case.)
In a 6-3 decision on Monday, in a case titled Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, the conservative justices said they couldn’t do anything about it, because of one wonky law passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by then-President Bill Clinton. Misleadingly called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the law was created during the tough-on-crime ‘90s, to keep violent prisoners from getting released on what politicians called technicalities. But now, experts say the law actually keeps innocent people in prison on technicalities — and most of the cases it affects have nothing to do with terrorism or capital punishment....
these days there are few defenders of the 1996 law — other than state attorneys general who prosecute appeals in federal courts. “Lots of people are stuck,”...
Here are five things you should know about the law known as AEDPA (“ed-puh”):...
Looking Back: United States Supreme Court Puts Time Limit on Right to Counsel
It was with great wisdom that the Founding Fathers included the 5th Amendment, prohibiting individuals from being compelled to give testimony against themselves, and the 6th Amendment, guaranteeing the Right to Counsel, in the Federal Constitution. The focus was upholding the rights of citizens from overzealous governments and obtrusive law enforcement; issues they were only all too well aware of. Given the many DNA and non-DNA exonerations, it is clear that coercion leads to false confessions which frequently become wrongful convictions....
Once an attorney has been requested, police wishing to speak to the suspect must do so in the presence of that attorney. There are numerous well-conceived judicial rationales for this: A) Police questioning is recognized to be somewhat coercive in and of itself even without police misconduct or attempts at coercion... C) For civil rights to have meaning, a person waiving them must do so “knowingly, willingly, and intelligently.” A lawyer could fully explain the rights and answer any legal questions, thus enabling a meeting of the minds. A waiver obtained from someone who does not understand what they are waiving defeats both the purpose and the spirit of the rule and amounts to coercion. One cannot agree with something they can’t understand....
The United States Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, recently announced a rule which states that even after a suspect has indicated his unwillingness to speak to them without an attorney, the police no longer need seek a waiver of that right in the presence of the lawyer, and instead may simply return to the suspect 14 days later, without his or her attorney present, to seek such a waiver.... If the police merely leave, and return 14 days later, and continue to do so until an individual agrees to speak with them, I believe there is a potential for abuse, and legally sanctioned coercion.... Repeated visits, in and of themselves, can be coercive and harassing.... police might have “an incentive to badger suspects through repetitive catch-and-release tactics.”...
THE STATE KNOWS HE IS INNOCENT AND DNA PROVES HE IS INNOCENT BUT, THE STATE WILL MURDER HIM ANYWAY....
Ohio Plans to Execute a Man It Knows Is Innocent—Why?
https://verdict.justia.com/2022/10/25/ohio-plans-to-execute-a-man-it-knows-is-innocent-why
Apanovitch is on death row even though DNA evidence conclusively proves that he did not commit the crime for which he has been sentenced to die. He is there because of a shocking combination of prosecutorial misconduct and the desire of some supporters of capital punishment to achieve finality in death cases even if it comes at the expense of justice. This almost unimaginable situation defies any semblance of justice and simple fairness. Executing the innocent is an American nightmare. It is a nightmare that Apanovitch is living...
Over the last fifty years, 190 people have been exonerated and released from death row. Twenty-one of those exonerations resulted from DNA testing. Experts estimate that 4.1% of the 2,436 inmates awaiting execution as of January 1, 2022, are, like Apanovitch, actually innocent. Add to this list another 20 people executed since 1976 who were, in all probability, also innocent, and the picture of America’s death penalty system looks pretty grim....
BRADY VIOLATIONS COMMITED BY PROSECUTORS ARE THE MOST COMMON OFFICIAL MISCONDUCTS ACCOUNT FOR 44% OF EXONERATIONS OF THE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED. THESE CRIMES BY THE PROSECUTORS ARE COSTING (WASTING) MILLIONS OF DULLAS....
Every Year, Around $800M Spent on Wrongful Convictions
Concealed exculpatory evidence is the most common type of official misconduct driving wrongful convictions, accounting for 44 percent of exoneration cases through 2019, according to a report from the National Registry of Exonerations....
Not only do the wrongful convictions mean that innocent people are in prison and criminals are getting off free, but hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted.
The cost of incarceration in a federal facility was estimated to be $39,158 in 2020, according to the federal register. An estimated 2 million people are in federal, state and local detention centers in 2022 — when the cost to house them is even higher....
LESS THAN 10% OF SERIOUS CRIMES CONTAIN DNA. MOST INNOCENCE PROJECTS ONLY HELP THE SERIOUS CASES WITH DNA. INVESTIGATING NON-DNA CASES COULD USE THE CAUSES PROVEN FROM THE DNA CASES WHICH AMOUNT TO LIES FROM THE ACCUSER DBA THE VICTIM, SLAVE PATROL AND PROSECUTOR LIES, INADEQUATE LIEYERS, WITNESS LIES, AND ALSO LIES THE INNOCENT WERE TORTURED TO GIVE IN PLEAS OR CONFESSIONS....
Looking Back: There Is a Strong Need for Non-DNA Innocence Projects
Over the course of slightly more than two decades, DNA testing has proven that wrongful convictions occur much more frequently than was previously believed. The testing has provided wrongful conviction samples to be studied, with the goal of identifying wrongful conviction causes, and recognizable patterns.... the same deficiencies that have led to wrongful convictions in DNA cases also exist in cases that do not have DNA to be tested. Therefore, clearing the wrongfully convicted in such cases, although possible, is much more difficult....
Although organizations often assume the label “Innocence Project” as part of their name, leading casual observers to believe that they take on all cases of wrongful conviction, the sad reality is that almost all of them work with DNA cases exclusively. Given that DNA is only available in 10-12% of all serious felony cases, there is no doubt that factually innocent persons have been turned away by DNA-only Innocence Projects...
Existing Non-DNA Innocence Projects: Medill Innocence Project, which is housed at Northwestern University, at their Journalism School.... Centurion Ministries, the country’s oldest innocence project, headquartered in New Jersey, takes on DNA and non-DNA cases alike.... The Exoneration Initiative is a new organization which is based in New York City....
other methods of exonerating wrongfully convicted in non-DNA cases:
Investigating alternative suspects; Reinterviewing witnesses; Following up on unexplored leads; Misidentification recantations; Obtaining third-party confessions; The discovery of exculpatory evidence previously withheld;
Discovering new evidence of innocence; The revelation of junk sciences; and
The exposure of “experts” that have engaged in fraud.
Finally, yet another method involves learning something that discredits a key piece of evidence used in helping to convict, and/or the discovery that key parts of testimony were perjured.
Looking Back: Supreme Court Reconsidered the Scope of Prosecutorial Immunity
The trial judge ruled prosecutors could cross-examine Thompson about the burglary conviction if he took the witness stand in his own defense, so he did not testify and was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.... Orleans Parish prosecutors illegally withheld a laboratory report that proved the murderer had a different blood type. The report surfaced a few weeks before Thompson’s scheduled execution. His death sentence was stayed, the underlying robbery conviction overturned, and he was granted a new trial at which he testified in his own defense. The jury acquitted him of murder within an hour....
Thompson then successfully sued the Orleans Parish D.A.’s office, then headed by Harry Connick. Under the law, individual prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity from personal liability for wrongs committed while discharging the prosecutorial function, but government agencies are liable for general policies which violate civil rights. Because Thompson had no legal recourse against the individual prosecutors who framed him, he sued the Orleans Parish D.A.’s office as a whole, and argued it maintained a systematic policy of illegally withholding exculpatory evidence from defense attorneys, and that burying the lab report in his case was but part of a larger pattern.
At trial, Thompson proved not one, but two prosecutors failed to turn over the exculpatory lab report, and four other prosecutors knew the report had been illegally buried but failed to come forward, despite their ethical duty to do so....
GET RICH QUICK SCHEME. GUBMINT PIMPS AFTER COMITTING CRIMES USE SLAVE DULLAS TO PAY THE INNOCENT FOR DAMAGES CAUSED BY GUBMINT CRIMINALS. NOW INVESTORS ARE MAKING A FORTUNE OFF THE GUBMINT CRIMES....
They Were Unjustly Imprisoned. Now, They’re Profit Centers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/nyregion/high-interest-loans-exonerated-prisoners.html
Across the nation, exonerations — and cash settlements — have risen steadily thanks to DNA-based reinvestigations, conviction-integrity units created by prosecutors and the vigor of innocence organizations. Now, the billions in payouts have attracted companies offering high interest cash advances while exonerated people await their claims. Many firms are backed by private equity investors eager to bet on nearly certain short-term profit.... A total of $2.65 billion nationwide has been paid to people on the registry who have brought civil rights suits... The average payout is $3.7 million for the 716 exonerees who collected compensation, or $318,000 per year in prison....
“I was only involved in this case because other people had perjured themselves before, I wouldn’t even have been arrested,” Sailor said in court Monday. “I also feel like people should be held accountable for their actions when you’re dealing with wrongful convictions. Maybe it’ll stop happening, judge. It happens way too often. And there’s nobody on the other side being held accountable and maybe that’s why it keeps happening like that.”
--Ru-El Sailor exonerated after 20 years imprisoned
The U.S. Prison System Doesn't Value True Justice
https://time.com/6236494/criminal-exoneration-prison-system-feeds-on-innocent/
Looking Back: Lessons from the Caravella Exoneration – Part 1
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/12/looking-back-lessons-from-the-caravella-exoneration-part-1-2/
On March 25, 2010, DNA tests proved Anthony Caravella did not commit a murder or sexual battery for which he spent twenty-six years in a Florida prison. Prosecutors secured his conviction based on a coerced, false confession extracted from him when he was but fifteen years old....
Caravella said the victim, a woman of fifty-eight, was “a girl”; that she was taller than he, which was not true; the murder weapon was a butcher knife, when in fact, it was a steak knife; three other juveniles participated in the stabbing, but later, that he acted alone; he never choked the victim who, in fact, had been strangled; and there was no chair at the crime scene in an elementary school, when, in fact, a chair was at the scene. Cuddihy noted police fed her client other details about the crime by the time he made his fifth “confession.”
Prosecutors sought the death penalty. Fortunately, the jury voted 11-1 for life imprisonment. Caravella was released in September following a negative DNA test but required to wear an ankle bracelet and keep an 11:00 P.M. curfew, pending further confirmatory tests. These were done, and on March 25, all charges against him were dropped. The judge declared Caravella was actually innocent and apologized on behalf of the State of Florida and its criminal justice system....
the stark inconsistencies between his false confession and physical evidence in the case was a red flag which should have alerted the trial judge to exclude the confession from evidence at trial.... Prosecutors must remember their duty is to seek justice, not merely win convictions. Surely, the Florida prosecutors who secured Caravella’s conviction had to know his confession was bogus. Yet, in their zeal to convict, they put an innocent boy away for twenty-six years and ruined his life. He can never get those years back again....
LAW IS POLITICAL PLUNDER. A GUBMINT BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE MEANS THE FINAL SAY IS DETERMINED BY ONE DESPOT WHO CHOOSES AN OLIGARCHY...
By appointing more than half the state’s judges, Baker has reshaped the judiciary from the top down
“Ho-ly . . .” Governor Charlie Baker said when he saw the group, and then paused as if to censor his next word. “Moly!” As Baker prepares to leave office, perhaps nowhere will his reach be felt longer than in the judiciary. In nearly eight years, the Republican has appointed nearly 60 percent of the state’s 418 justices, installing judges who will oversee murder trials, reshape constitutional law, and unknot thorny civil litigation for years, if not decades, to come. He has named the entire seven-member Supreme Judicial Court, a first for a modern Massachusetts governor, and with three justices of color, built the most diverse high court in its 330-year history.... Roughly 47 percent of his appointments were women and 18 percent were people of color. Those figures lag the state’s population as a whole... the current iteration of the court will remain together until February 2029. That Baker was able to reshape more than half of the bench...