Latest exoneration shows need for conviction integrity units
The criminal justice system often fails to distinguish the innocent from the guilty because it cares more about the process than the result. If all the rules are followed and a trial judge does nothing for an appeals court to overturn, the wrong person could rot in prison.
With justice threatened, what ought to be called the “criminal process system” is biased by a thicket of rules and precedents against correcting its own mistakes.
Recognizing this, some conscientious prosecutors have set up special offices to consider innocence claims from prisoners who have exhausted their appeals. In the Ninth Judicial Circuit covering Orange and Osceola counties, State Attorney Monique Worrell actually headed that unit before she was elected to the top job. But that trend conflicts with the traditional devotion of state attorneys general to defending convictions on appeal.
Exoneree No. 80
In a Miami-Dade courtroom two weeks ago, Thomas Raynard James became the 80th Floridian to be formally exonerated of a crime for which he had been convicted but did not commit. James, 55, had spent 32 years in prison because police confused his name with another suspect and showed his picture to an eyewitness who identified him as her stepfather’s killer.
There was no other evidence against him. But his jury, like most, didn’t realize how often eyewitnesses misidentify strangers. That factor was the primary fault in 29 of those 80 wrongful Florida convictions. Eventually, James’ accuser realized she had been wrong.
“At best, the evidence that the defendant committed this crime is unclear and unconvincing, and at worst, it is just plain wrong,” said a 37-page motion signed by assistants to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. “The State concludes that Thomas Raynard James is actually innocent and should be exonerated of the charges.”
James, now 55, had spent more than half his life behind bars — his appeals long since exhausted — and might still be there if Tristram Korten, a writer for GQ Magazine, hadn’t taken an interest in his case and pursued it for months, if Rundle had not established a Justice Project to review old convictions that might be reversed by new evidence, and if Natlie Figgers, a young Miami attorney, hadn’t agreed to represent James pro bono.
It is too late to try the likely killer. He was in prison for something else and died.
Elsewhere, despair
James’ elation contrasts with the despair of Crosley Green, a Brevard County man who had also spent 32 years in prison before a federal judge granted him a new trial and eventually released him to house arrest. Attorney General Ashley Moody appealed and persuaded the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to overrule the district judge and return him to prison. That’s where he will go if his attorneys can’t persuade the entire court to reconsider the ruling of a three-judge panel.
Green had been arrested because eyewitnesses said they recognized him from a police sketch. The state also had three witnesses who said Green had confessed to them, but they have since recanted. One of the officers who initially investigated the crime says she believes Green is innocent and calls his imprisonment “a travesty of justice.”
The key issue on appeal was whether the prosecution improperly withheld from the defense evidence that police initially suspected someone else. U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton ruled that it had.
But Green’s fate in an Atlanta appeals court turned on one of those legal technicalities that have been contrived to keep people in prison. The state said he hadn’t exhausted that issue in his state appeals. Dalton said he had but two of the three federal appeals judges said he hadn’t.
Notably, the thrust of a 159-page majority opinion was to make it more difficult for other prisoners to take their cases to federal court.
There was a partial dissent from Adalberto Jordan, a Floridian who is probably the most liberal judge remaining on what is now a decidedly conservative appeals court.
“It is too long and says too much about too many things unnecessarily,” Jordan wrote of the majority opinion. “…Passages in judicial opinions tend to take on a life of their own as time passes. The danger is that they will later be used in cases far removed from the context in which they were written.”
No new trial
However, although Jordan agreed that Green was entitled to be heard in federal court, he said he did not believe the evidence warranted a new trial.
What it does support is an entirely fresh look at the case from the beginning. Had Green been tried in any of six other Florida circuits, including the ones that serve Orange-Osceola, Broward, Palm Beach, Duval, Miami-Dade and Hillsborough counties, he could apply to their state attorneys to reopen his case. But there is no conviction integrity unit where he was tried because the state does not require prosecutors to have them.
Those 80 exonerations almost surely only scratch the surface of miscarriage of justice in Florida. Every circuit needs a conviction integrity unit and there should be one with statewide jurisdiction comparable to North Carolina’s unique Innocence Commission.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Moody is before the Florida Supreme Court with an appeal contesting a circuit court order to allow DNA testing for Henry Sireci, a death row prisoner from Orange County. The prosecutor consented to the defense request, which should settle the matter, but Moody — who is up for re-election this fall — is relentless. She argues that it wouldn’t clear Sireci in any event and, moreover, violates a testing law that “protects the finality of valid criminal convictions.”
There’s no harm in letting Sireci have the test. The harm is if “finality” is really more important than justice.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick and El Sentinel Editor Jennifer Marcial Ocasio. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Send us your thoughts at insight@ orlandosentinel.com.