By Alan Bean
-Can a system that routinely gets it wrong justifiably execute anyone?-
Predictions are always dangerous, but I am quite confident about this one. The state of Georgia will NOT execute Troy Davis.
Why am I so sure about this? Because public officials are averse to embarrassment. Politicians will back away from a sinful decision for the same reason they generally adopt a tough-on-crime stance–it’s the easiest way to go. (more…)
By Alan Bean
Monday’s ruling by the Supreme Court has removed legal roadblocks standing between Texas death row defendant Hank Skinner and the testing of DNA evidence he says will exonerate him. Prosecutors had argued that since Skinner was covered in the blood of the murder victim, no further testing was necessary. Skinner’s defenders have asked why, if further DNA is unlikely to produce evidence helpful to Skinner, the state is so adamantly opposed to testing.
At NPR, Nina Totenberg provides her usual just-the-facts-ma’am analysis. Dave Mann’s comments at the Texas Observer site reveal the deeper significance of this ruling: (more…)
Eighteen months ago, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Williamson County DA John Bradley to head up the Texas Forensic Science Commission. It was like turning over the Vatican to Richard Dawkins. Bradley, like most Texas prosecutors, thinks forensic scientists have one role: helping the state convict bad guys; Perry’s atheist pope likes forensic testimony crafted to the needs of the prosecution.
Governor Perry put Bradley in charge of the TFSC to keep the Cameron Todd Willingham debacle out of the headlines during his primary fight with Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Perry also tried to stack the commission with people who share Bradley’s worldview, but things haven’t worked out to the governor’s liking. As Rick Casey demonstrates in this informative column in the Houston Chronicle, Bradley is unlikely to receive Senate confirmation. (more…)
By Alan Bean
Exoneration stories out of Dallas County are almost becoming routine, but this one is particularly gratifying.
And maddening.
Cornelius Dupree Jr. spent three decades in prison because the Dallas Police Department thought he and his buddy, Anthony Massingill, looked like rapists. They placed both men in a lineup. An eye witness also thought the two men looked like rapists.
Cornelius was 21 at the time, Anthony was 19.
The media likes DNA exoneration stories. Who doesn’t. Because guilt has been scientifically ruled out, we know who the good guys and bad guys are. Even the prosecutor is forced to admit that he messed up. (more…)
Craig Watkins has been an inspiration to criminal justice reformers since he became Dallas County District Attorney in 2006. There aren’t many black prosecutors in Texas so Watkins’ narrow election victory provided some much-needed balance. But it went deeper than that. Watkins had the backing of South Dallas ministers, people who have felt the impact of mass incarceration in their congregations.
“We’re going to reduce this crime rate,” Watkins promised in his 2006 acceptance speech. “We’re going to address the underlying reasons why people are committing crime.”
After generations of convict-at-any-cost prosecution, prevention and redemption were to be the new watchwords.
For the most part, Mr. Watkins has delivered. He has cooperated with innocence programs and has created his own integrity unit to cull through old convictions for signs of wrongful conviction. The Dallas County DA isn’t solely responsible for the dramatic stream of DNA exonerations flowing from Dallas County, but he has certainly facilitated the process.
No one was surprised when Watkins cleaned house shortly after his election by firing several of the prosecutors he inherited from the Bill Hill administration. The new man was working with a new vision and needed assistant DAs who were willing to get with the program.
But it wasn’t long before Watkins’ admirers were lamenting his thin skin. A prolonged struggle with the County Commissioners punctuated by angry rants from the DA did little to enhance his stature as a statesman. (more…)
I was out-of-town on a speaking engagement when “The Confessions” originally aired on Frontline. I strongly urge you to watch the entire program online. It won’t be a pleasant experience. Listening to this twisted saga kept taking me back to the recent trial of Curtis Flowers–the stories are very different in some respects, but wrongful convictions follow a familiar pattern.
Two of the attorneys representing the defendents in this case, by the way, are Des Hogan and George Kendall, key members of the legal “Dream Team” involved in the fight for justice in Tulia, Texas.
The story of the Norfolk Four revolves around aggressive interrogation, false confession, and prosecutorial tunnel vision. Once the detectives responsible for the investigation latched onto a theory of the crime, they clung to it tenaciously–facts be damned. (more…)
Harris County Judge Kevin Fine is presiding over a dramatic hearing that, in essence, has placed the Texas death penalty on trial. (As the picture to the left suggests, Judge Fine is not your average jurist. Do the tats suggest an affinity with the accused?)
According to the Houston Chronicle, “Defense lawyers for John Edward Green are arguing that Texas has executed two innocent defendants, and the procedures surrounding the death penalty in Texas are unconstitutional because there are not enough safeguards.” (more…)
By Alan Bean
Retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens was never enthusiastic about the death penalty. Like a lot of Americans, he believed that some violent crimes are so horrific that capital punishment is the only appropriate response. This abstract support for ultimate penalty was rooted in the assumption that the American criminal justice system is capable, first, of restricting capital prosecution to the very worst sort of crime, and, second, that with a man’s life at stake, jurors would hold prosecutors to the highest evidentiary standard: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Justice Stevens is still outraged by egregious acts of wanton violence, but he no longer trusts prosecutors to single out the very worst crimes for capital prosecution. Moreover, he realizes that, in far too many cases, the more shocking the details of a crime, the lower the evidentiary standard becomes. The intense desire to see justice done in a particular case easily trumps human reason and the principle of equal justice under law. This is particularly true, Stevens discovered, when the defendant is black and the murder victim is white. (more…)
By Alan Bean
Here’s the Texas Observer article that sparked media interest in the case of Claude Jones.
The comments after this piece, like the comments my post have thus far received, argue that due process protections and normal evidentiary standards should only apply to good people. Consider this quote from Winston Churchill, a champion of criminal justice reform: (more…)
By Alan Bean
Note: Dave Mann has written a well-researched feature story on this case for the Texas Observer.
Not that most Americans would care, but it appears that Texas executed another innocent man in 2000. This story from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram relates the sad fate of Claude Jones, a St. Jacinto man convicted of killing a liquor store clerk in the course of an armed robbery in 1989.
Prosecutors showed the jury a single hair that they claimed belonged to Jones. They couldn’t be sure, mind you, and no DNA test was conducted, but they were pretty sure.
But that wasn’t enough for a conviction, corroborating testimony was required. Enter Timothy Jordan. In exchange for a lenient sentence, he testified that he had served as an accomplice and that Jones was the trigger man.
Three years after Jones was executed, Jordan recanted his testimony. Need you ask why? He was threatened with dire consequences if he refused to cooperate with prosecutors. We’ve seen this movie before, haven’t we?
George W. Bush was fixin’ to leave the governor’s mansion for bigger and better things when he gave Jones’ execution the thumbs up. No one on his staff mentioned that the hair that so impressed jurors had not been tested.
Now it has and we know for a fact that the hair did not belong to Jones. (more…)
Friends of Justice 