Law professor, Stanley Fish thinks the law is more concerned with right answers than with true answers.   

To illustrate, Dr. Fish tells the story of Leonel Torres Herrera. 

“Found guilty of murder, (Herrera) claimed that because new evidence proving his innocence had emerged his case should be reconsidered. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the majority, replied that innocence or guilt was not a question for his court to consider absent a demonstration that the original trial was infected by error. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in a concurring opinion, agreed. Petitioner, she said, does not appear before us an “innocent man,” but as a “legally guilty person” who is not “entitled to get another judicial hearing” given his failure to demonstrate that the trial he received was unfair. The trial was fair, and the question of his guilt has been determined in a constitutionally correct procedure. That procedure provides the right (if not the true) answer to the question, “was he guilty?” (Herrera was later executed.)

In the picture above, Ms. O’Conner mourns the passing of her old pal, Bill Rehnquist.  I doubt she shed a tear, or even noticed, when Mr. Herrera breathed his last.

Fish is right.  The legal system is so fixated on correct procedure that the truth pften runs a poor second.  The prosecution in the Curtis Flowers case has been reversed three times, but it wasn’t because DA Doug Evans’ case against Flowers is a jumble of circumstantial evidence and wild conjecture held together with perjured testimony.  If Mr. Evans hadn’t been guilty of blatant prosecutorial misconduct, Curtis Flowers would no longer be in the land of the living. 

 Leonel Torres Herrera died without getting a chance to present credible evidence of actual innocence in open court. 

Fortunately, Troy Davis will get to tell his story. 

The criminal justice system can value the true answer over the merely right answer if it so chooses.  But if judges decide the rules were followed during the original trial, the fact that the truth was given short shrift can be ignored as irrelevant.  From a legal standpoint, once a defendant has been found guilty at the conclusion of an error-free trial, he is guilty and should be treated as such.

Troy Davis has faired better than Mr. Herrera because the public has lost confidence in legal system’s ability to establish the truth.