Wrongful Conviction and Poverty is like Peanut Butter and Jelly
By Mark A. Clements
I had the opportunity of meeting Bryan Stevenson at Northwestern University School of Law as he explained his possible hearing before the United States Supreme Court in the Graham case, which rendered sentencing kids to natural life for non-murders unconstitutional.
Wrongful conviction in this country is common and in most cases caused because attorneys are ineffective with their legal representation of a client.
I have had the opportunity of visiting many different public defender offices all across this country. In the State of Georgia some of my activist friends are currently public defenders and they agree that the public defender system is unfair toward poor people charged with serious crimes. Juveniles and the mentally ill that are charged with serious offenses are commonly the victims of poor legal representation.
What does wrongful conviction look like?
- A group of officers in California framing innocent people with crimes.
- A cop in Chicago that creates a racist ring of all white detectives that torture confessions from criminal suspects that are all African American or Latino.
- A Cook County State’s Attorney that believes that a confession made under duress has more weight in a court of law than DNA testing.
- A pathologist in the State of Mississippi that provided false testimony to gain hundreds of criminal convictions.
- Rodney Reed in the State of Texas who is on death row because of ineffective assistance of counsel and fabricated evidence by a police officer to cover up the fact that he committed the crime.
- Sara Kruzan in the State of California, who was coached into a lifestyle of prostitution as a 13 year old kid. At age 16 when she wanted to end the lifestyle she was forced by her attacker to continue. Sara was beaten and scared. She did what any one would have done, including the judges that have heard her case: she killed her pimp to get out of prostitution. Sara was sentenced to natural life.
- Louis Taylor, released from prison after spending 42 years behind prison walls for a crime he did not commit, was however forced to accept a plea deal at age 59 to win his freedom. Taylor was sixteen years old when he was incarcerated.
- Tyrone Hood is a Chicago Police torture victim that remains behind prison wallsdespite evidence that has surfaced showing he did not commit the crime and that a serial killer did so to collect from a insurance policy he had out on his own son. This serial killer, Marshall Morgan Sr., had taken out life insurance policies against several people. In each case the person was found murdered. Currently Morgan is inside an Illinois State prison serving 75 years for killing his girlfriend whom he also had a life insurance policy against.
- Oily Thomas sits inside the Stateville prison in the State of Illinois, charged with a murder. Police and prosecutors openly fabricated evidence and coerced witnesses. A 14 year old boy was provided compensation for lying on Thomas, who serves 75 years.
What does wrongful conviction look like?
- Could it be the conviction of Daniel Taylor in the State of Illinois? A juvenile that was arrested for a double murder. The kid confessed to the murder, however theconfession is proven to be false because Taylor was in police custody inside a police station lock-up when the double murder occurred. Taylor has a bond slip to show that he was in police custody. A Circuit Court judge in Cook County allowed the Cook County State’s attorney office to allege that police officer falsified Taylor’s bond slip because they released him early from police custody the night of the double murder and did not want to get in trouble for breaking policy. Taylor has been incarcerated for over two decades serving a natural life sentence without parole.
- Stanley Wrice was taken to the Chicago Police Area Two violent crime unit in Chicago in connection with a possible rape. Wrice has for more than two decades had evidence to show that he had been tortured by Chicago police subordinates of Jon Burge. Court after Court has rejected Wrice. He spent 28 years behind prison walls before winning a evidentiary hearing on his claim of torture in 2010. Today Wrice remains incarcerated and still has not had the hearing.
I think that on this weekend, it would be worthy to take about thirty minutes of your time to listen to what attorney Stevenson had to say about the criminal justice system in an interview with Bill Moyers (featured below).
Take time to learn what the criminal justice system looks like.
