Why don't prosecutors give a shit what the truth is? (death penalty/ DNA rant)

The BBQ Pit
21

You were aware, were you not, that Coleman was subjected to DNA testing before he was executed?

Not with the same techniques they use today, but the tests were conducted after his conviction on circumstantial evidence, and for the same reasons - that this was a hideous miscarriage of justice, and that he was really innocent.

So they did the DNA testing. It showed that he was guilty.

Now they want to do it again.

All my information was from an article in the Reader’s Digest. Shall I dig up a cite?

I imagine the refusal of the state to allow the press to re-test is to protect the public from the media faking the results, or testing and retesting until they get a false negative, or using some crappy lab to do the tests to hope for ambiguous results.

Not that it matters. If the new DNA tests aren’t allowed, this will be presented as if it were obvious that he was innocent.

If they are, and show him to be guilty, this will not be publicized at anywhere near the level of the clamor that he was railroaded.

Regards,
Shodan

22

Yes, about about them (it was scores of inmates in a claim you made in another thread, but dozens still sounds good)? As Izzy said, whip 'em out. Let’s hear about these cases.

When Izzy asked you to provide a cite, you mentioned Mischievous’s post, which stated:

“IIRC, there was a case in NYC where DNA evidence conclusively proved a man innocent. He had already served 12 of his 14 year sentence. The prosecution argued, hard, that he should remain in jail pending retrial. Because he was a flight risk.”

I don’t see even one death penalty case cited there.
How about it, Diogenes???

23

Part of the problem is that DAs are politicians-they have to run for office, and “prove” that they are doing an acceptable job. Should they be more concerned with the truth? yes…I invite you to consider the notorious “Fells Acre Day School” case in Massachusetts (ca. 1985). This was one of those concocted child abuse cases-the defendets were an elderly grandmother, her daughter, and her son (they jointly operated a day care center forpreschool children , in Medford, Ma). They were accused of:
-having sex withthe children
-torturing children
-taking the childre to a “magic room”, where they were raped by a “bad clown”
-allegations were also made that the defendents torture and killed cats
Well, the county DA brought these incredible charges against these poor people, despiteNO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF ANY KIND!
The children were coached by child psychologists, and were brainwashed into telling those bizarre stories, and the parents of the child “victims” received large payouts from the center’s insurance company.
Now, almost 17 years later, there still is no credible evidence of any kind, to support those preposterous charges-the grandmother (Violette Amirault died in prison), her daughter was released, the son is doing life in prison.
And the author of this atrocity(the DA) thinks he did nothing wrong!

24

:frowning:

25

Don’t know if this’ll be useful or not, but anyway:

Chronological listing of postconviction DNA exonerations in the USA

And from Ray Krone’s profile:

26

According to this BBC page, as of August 2001 there had been 11 death row inmates in the U.S. who were exonerated because of DNA evidence. A page from the ACLU website lists 9.

By the way, this story from last year said that authorities in Broward County, Florida, were going to try to review all of the cases where they had prisoners on death row to see if they could reverse or confirm any of their convictions with DNA evidence. So there are at least some prosecutors and law enforcement agencies out there that are interested in whether the people they put to death are actually guilty or not.

27

Your evident surprise is itself surprising. This would imply that you had hithero believed that supporters of the death penalty did so based on the notion that no innocent person could possibly be executed. That would be quite naive.

Possibly you have a reading comprehension problem. I’ll try to help you. I said:

These three sentences are in the same paragraph for a reason. The first two are leading up to the third. I was objecting to statements in the OP such as:

To which my response was that while the point of a trial is to find out the truth, in this case the trial is long gone and the verdict irrevocably carried out. The fact that prosecutors in such cases object to further testing does NOT imply that they would similarly object to finding out the truth at a trial.

Your response, which raised a new issue about the virtues of giving ammo to death penalty opponents, ignored the last sentence, thus taking the first two out of context. Please attempt to refrain from this.

I would echo Jackmannii here. I would also observe that this is recollection of someone, whose assertion that the DNA evidence “conclusively proved a man innocent” may not be conclusive - it does not appear to be shared by the DA who intends to retry the guy. Surely you can do better.

28

There are at least 111 cases of people exonerated in this country because of DNA evidence.

Most of them, as you might imagine, were not death penalty cases. Some were.

Off the top of my head…

Kirk Bloodsworth, 1985, sentenced to death in Maryland. In 1992, semen evidence from the nine year old girl’s body was tested with DNA, which exonerated him.

Rolando Cruz, 1983. Sentenced to death in Illinois for the abduction, rape, and murder of a ten year old girl. The evidence against Cruz was the fact that his blood type matched the genetic evidence, and a sheriff’s deputy testified that Cruz had told him about dreams he had of the death, and the “dream” details matched the crime scene perfectly. After DNA tests in 1995 proved Cruz was not the source of the semen, the prosecution still wanted him retried - until the sheriff’s deputy admitted he lied about the dream admissions, and the prosecution dropped its opposition.

Alejandro Hernandez, a co-defendant of Cruz, also sentenced to death, even though he “coukd not be ruled out” by blood type. DNA testing also showed he was innocent, and he was released along with Cruz.

Vernon Jimerson and Dennis Williams, 1985. Death. Illinois. Two of the “The Ford Heights Four.” DNA evidence exonerated them, and found the real killers, after 11 years. They were released.

Robert Miller, Oklahoma. 1986. Death for rape and murder. Similar to the Roger Keith Coleman case, the evidence in the Miller case was first tested for DNA in 1988, and the tests failed to exclude Miller as a donor. More advanced tests performed on the evidence in 1996 excluded Miller and identified the real killer. Miller was released.

Ron Williamson, Oklahoma. 1982. Death. Exonerated in 1999.
Released.

Ron Jones, 1989, death. DNA cleared him in 1999. He was released.

There are more.

Too many more.

  • Rick
29

From this website

this website

The information comes from a book written by John Tucker, May God Have Mercy.

What is more shocking about this case is that Coleman probably did have inadequate counsel. From what I recall from reading May God Have Mercy, his counsel had only been out of law school for about 3 or 4 years and had never handled a murder trial before.

Not all Virginia counties have Public Defender’s offices, and in the counties that don’t have them the pay for a murder trial is rather minimal.

30

I didn’t think it was possible for me to be even more shocked, disgusted, and horrified. I was wrong.

31

Um, Ray Krone was serving life when his sentence was overturned. But what’s a little exaggeration in a good cause?

Yes, there’ve been people on death row found innocent, or more generally gotten their sentences commuted or released due to various intricate legal maneuverings.

So say we eliminate the death penalty, and take all those death row inmates and given them various lesser sentences. What’ll happen then?

Based on an article by Joan Cheever in the N.Y. Times (6/29/02), some of them will kill again. Cheever looked at the inmates freed from death row by the 1972 Supreme Court decision:

“After the Furman decision, all 611 affected inmates were resentenced to life terms that, in some states, really meant between 10 and 30 years. (By 1976, the death-penalty states had succeeded in passing new laws that were found constitutional by the Supreme Court. The voiding of death sentences as a result of the Furman decision could not, however, be reversed.) Inmates were able to reduce their terms because of good-behavior credit laws that cut sentences…
Three of these former death-row inmates killed again once they were out of prison. A Texas serial killer was convicted of murdering two women and was a suspect in the murders of six others. He was executed in 1998. Two years after being paroled, another former death-row inmate murdered a fellow drug dealer; he’s currently serving a life sentence. A third murderer, a prison escapee, killed another man in a jealous rage after the two had smoked crack cocaine at an all-night party.”

Cheever discounts this evidence (apparently having only 4% of the former death row inmates committing aggravated felonies is OK - unless you’re one of the victims of those crimes).

For instance, take a fine upstanding citizen like Kenneth McDuff. You can read all about him, about his miraculously being freed from death row to take on the life of a serial killer. Warning - strong stomach required.

Once the death penalty is overturned, how many more Kenneth McDuffs will be released and on the prowl?

And how many more cases of repeat murders by killers never sentenced to death will we see?
By the way (and you’d never know it by much of the press coverage), DNA evidence is also used to prove guilt. How many of our resident death penalty opponents would applaud its use in conviction and execution?

32

Bricker et al,

No one is denying that DNA evidence can sometimes be used to prove innocence. I’m not sure what the point of all these posts is.

What would be interesting is if someone has a figure for the percentage of DNA tests that prove innocence, out of the total done. That would give some indication of how good or bad the criminal justice system is. Though I would also note that most likely people use these tests in cases that there is reason to doubt the guy’s guilt.

33

I implied nothing of the kind. My rant was about the state destroying untested DNA evidence after an execution in order to cover their own asses. I added as an aside that the state should be mandated to test all evidence BEFORE trial, but this does not let them off the hook for forever denying the public a chance to know for sure what the truth is.

He was tested with much less sophisticated technology which placed him within two percent of the poulation, far too large a margin of error to execute anybody.

No it didn’t.

The same information is in the link that I provided.

What are you fucking kidding me? What color is the sky in your world? :rolleyes:

I don’t have a problem with using it to prove guilt I’m all for it. I just want to know the TRUTH. If the state is so sure of its case then what does it have to lose by testing the evidence. If it proves Coleman guilty then all the newspapers will shut up and go away. The Commonwealth is obviously not convinced that a test would go their way.

34

Well it didn’t seem like an “aside” - seemed like one rant.

As for why it is not mandated, I would ask if any other type of test is specifically mandated? I imagine that both the defence and the prosecution will be highly motivated to do DNA testing if they think it will help their case, so I’m not sure why you would need to specifically mandate it. I think the situation we are in now is a sort of time warp, because DNA testing is a pretty recent invention, and there are still lots of people in jail or on death row who were convicted before it was available. As time goes on, it will be less of an issue.

Well, yeah, if that was the entire evidence against him. Was it?

35

Basically, yes. here is the case history

36

It’s unfortunate that this thread is in the Pit, since it does present a lot of interesting questions.

For what it’s worth, I agree that parties with no relation to a case should not be able to butt in and do their own tests on evidence in the case. At the same time, it seems to me that the Commonwealth of Virginia should use modern DNA techniques to conduct a review of cases where people have been executed. For better or worse, the truth oughtta come out.

Even so, it seems to me that IzzyR’s earlier point is well taken. A failure of DNA matching doesn’t necessarily mean that the defendant was innocent. In fact, I would speculate that in the (vast?) majority of cases where the defendant is “exonerated” according to death penalty opponents (by DNA testing), the defendant was actually the (or a) perpatrator of the crime.

Finally, as a death penalty supporter, I do concede that execution of true innocents is inevitable. In my opinion, the pluses of the death penalty outweigh this minus. But of course that’s a question of values. So if you feel that the inevitable execution of innocents outweighs any benefits of the death penalty, I can’t really argue with you.

37

Let’s see now… Benefits of the death penalty:

  1. Deterrence. No, it’s never been shown to have that effect, perhaps because most criminals figure they’re never going to get caught, so the severity of the punishment is irrelevant.

  2. Removes a dangerous person from our midst. Yes, but life in prison without the possibility of parole has the same effect. And if you make a mistake, you can “take it back,” to some extent.

  3. OG Smash Opal!

  4. Efficiency. No, it costs more to go through all the legal procedures to execute someone than it costs to keep him in the pokey for the rest of his life.

  5. That leaves us with… the Lust for Vengeance. Not a very good reason for most of us, I’m afraid.

Oh, and once in a while, we’re going to grab some innocent nebish off the street, strap him to a gurney, and kill him. No problem there! Take me next! :eek:

Back to the point of the OP: I’ve noticed the same obstinacy on the part of prosecutors. No cites, I’m afraid, but I have the recollection of a number of 60 Minutes type pieces involving people who were, quite obviously, wrongly convicted. In every case, the prosecutor is interviewed, and steadfastly maintains that “we convicted the right person,” even when the evidence (DNA or otherwise) clearly demonstrates that they did not convict the right person.

It may have something to do with the personality of the kind of person who chooses to become a prosecutor. To do that job effectively, you’ve got to be damn sure of yourself. It’s not a good profession for someone who’s inclined to second-guess himself. If you’re the kind of person who often has thoughts along the lines of “but on the other hand…,” you’d never bring a case against anyone. So, you end up with prosecutors who make up their minds about a given situation, then stick to it very stubbornly.

38

I agree that the vast majority of criminal cases reach the correct conclusion – there are very few erroneous convictions. But I’m not as sanguine as you seem to be about the unimportance of occasionally executing an innocent person. When you don’t execute, and a mistake is discovered, you can’t give the guy back the years he spent in prison, but at least you can give him back the rest of his life.

Nowhere did I argue in favor of releasing capital murders. I am perfectly happy to see the state impose “natural life” or “life without the possibility of parole” sentences. I agree that there are brutal criminals, for whom society is well-served by keeping out of our midst.

But that doesn’t mean we have to kill them. It merely means we don’t have to release them.

  • Rick
39

It’s amazing what people will tell themselves in order to justify their beliefs.

40

How would you feel about that plus/minus ratio if you were the innocent person strapped to the gurney?How about if it was your brother? Your Spouse? Your Son?