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Wednesday, July 24, 2007


 

The Deadline of Innocence

 

By Carrie K. Hutchens

There should be no statute of limitations, or deadlines without exceptions, when it comes to proof of innocence. No one should be forced to stay in prison or be executed, simply because the innocence issue wasn't resolved in time. How ridiculous to suggest otherwise, especially when we have a judicial system so broken that the rich guilty (and sometimes even poor guilty) can often walk, while many innocent people have been sent behind bars because they didn't have the means to prove their innocence, or were afraid to take a chance on a trial after being told they would face a harsher sentence, if they fought the charges and didn't win. The latter should never be a part of a system supposedly seeking "justice", but sadly it is.

I was reading, "Fight to keep Georgia man from death chamber not over", by Harry R. Weber - Associated Press Writer, on Ledger-Enquier.com (July 22, 2007), which says, "Davis, 38, was convicted of killing Savannah police Officer Mark MacPhail, who was shot twice after he rushed to help a homeless man who had been assaulted. The 1989 shooting happened in a Burger King parking lot next to a bus station where MacPhail, 27, worked off-duty as a security guard. Davis' lawyers say seven witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony that they saw Davis shoot the officer, saw him assault the homeless man or heard Davis confess to the slaying.

Three people who did not testify at trial have said in affidavits that another man, Sylvester Coles, confessed to killing the officer after Davis was convicted. After the shooting, Coles identified Davis as the killer."

Did Troy Davis commit the crime? I don't know, but the article goes on to say, "Prosecutors argue that most of the witness affidavits, signed between 1996 and 2003, were included in Davis' previous appeals - which were denied - and should not be considered new evidence." This is where I get concerned. The appeals were denied? What does this mean? Was it like in the Terri Schiavo case where the case itself wasn't even considered because of jurisdiction issues, or because it was felt it wasn't filed in a timely fashion or that it wasn't filed properly, or because it was felt there was no error or some other technicality that hadn't a single thing to do with the evidence that might have proven him actually innocent or shown there was doubt?

Many have been wrongly found guilty, gone to prison and lost appeal after appeal. Many that are now grateful to Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld who founded the Innocence Project. A project through which they were proven innocent, as a result of DNA testing that was not available (or used) during the investigation and trial involving them. Obviously, there was a problem with the system to have found the innocent guilty in the first place. Obviously there is something wrong with the system that kept rejecting appeals after the wrong was committed. Where was the fail safe? Where is the fail safe? Why isn't the system working as it is meant to?

Mike Nifong, a prosecutor from North Carolina, showed us up close and personal why some innocent people end up behind bars. He showed us that there are prosecutors that decide the accused is guilty and ignore anything that proves otherwise. The accused in the Duke lacrosse case happen to be young men from well-to-do families. What might have happened if they had been from the poor side of town? Would they have been able to hold out long enough for the truth to come out, which proved they had actually been proven innocent (by the evidence) soon after the case got under-way?

Why is it that when there is a challenge to a judge presiding over a case, that he (or she) gets to decide whether or not he (or she) is bias or has a conflict and whether or not he (she) will recluse self? Where is the reasoning in this? Where is the safeguard? Personally, I see none. Personally, I see this as one of the areas that has allowed judges to rise to self-proclaimed god-dom, dooming the system's effectiveness, and destroying what the judicial system is suppose to stand for always -- truth and justice!

What happens when a judge, even in innocent error, doesn't let in testimony, or a piece of evidence, that would have proven the accused guilty or innocent? Justice is not served and someone innocent pays the price for this wrong.

I don't know if Troy Davis is guilty or not. I don't know if he should be on death row or a free man. What I do know is that our judicial system has failed too often and needs to be revisited and repaired. It needs to allow for proof of innocence to be admitted and applied whenever the evidence is discovered and can be proven. There should be no deadlines to be missed when it comes to innocence. There should never be a time when it becomes "comfortable" to say, "I know he is innocent, but he was found guilty by a jury, so he must be executed regardless."

Innocence is innocence no matter what faulty humans might have once thought or do think. A court of law isn't ever going to change that fact. What it must change is it's attitude and it's mission and come to have a willingness to admit error when an error has been committed.

Mistakes are going to happen no matter how hard those within the system work to avoid them. However, with a system that is truly seeking "justice", there should be no shame in admitting an honest error, nor in working towards correcting it. Instead, there should be pride in seeing the system, and the law, work towards the purpose it was established for. A system that protects the innocent, while holding not only the guilty accountable, but itself. After all, a system lacking in accountability comes to be called tyranny. It always does. And one thing about tyranny -- it really doesn't care much about innocence especially when it is getting in the way!

 

Carrie Hutchens is a former law enforcement officer and a freelance writer who is active in fighting against the death culture movement and the injustices within the judicial and law enforcement systems.

 

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