No, this is not an existential rant about how I have no direction and am freaking out. I'm okay with not having direction. But because I haven't written about anything law related, I figured I'm over due.
Occasionally, I get questions like the one I got at a BBQ yesterday, "so after you graduate are you going to be a prosecutor or a defense attorney?" Which implies that I'll be working as a litigator in the criminal law field. I'm not going to be a litigator and I'm definitely not going to be working involved in crim-law. So what am I going to do? Not litigation. And DEFINITELY NOT criminal law.
I tried to explain to my questioner why I didn't want to be involved in the criminal law system. I explained that I thought it was corrupt (not like people taking bribes, but a more sinister thing happens) and that any position you take forces you into a position that I find morally compromised. I was reading some blogs and some news articles today, which perfectly articulate my sentiments about criminal law.
Here is an article, from the NYtimes, written by John Thompson who was wrongly convicted of a murder he didn't commit and was on death row for 14 years. He was only exculpated because blood evidence that revealed his innocence HAD BEEN HIDDEN by prosecutors.
John Thompson wrote:
I remember the judge telling the courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body. If the first attempt didn’t kill me, he said, they’d put more volts in.
…
Over the years, I was given six execution dates, but all of them were delayed until finally my appeals were exhausted. The seventh — and last — date was set for May 20, 1999. My lawyers had been with me for 11 years by then; they flew in from Philadelphia to give me the news. They didn’t want me to hear it from the prison officials. They said it would take a miracle to avoid this execution. I told them it was fine — I was innocent, but it was time to give up.
But then I remembered something about May 20. I had just finished reading a letter from my younger son about how he wanted to go on his senior class trip. I’d been thinking about how I could find a way to pay for it by selling my typewriter and radio. “Oh, no, hold on,” I said, “that’s the day before John Jr. is graduating from high school.”
Like anyone that had been on the receiving end of a terrible misapplication of law and atrocious moral acts that placed him behind bars for 18 years and came close to killing him, he sued. The jury conviction awarded him $14 million, $1 million for each year he spent behind bars. So he got a bunch of money for having to endure living on death row (and all the psychological torture that comes with it), But how was John Thompson found guilty if he was innocent?
The prosecutors involved in my two cases, from the office of the Orleans Parish district attorney, Harry Connick Sr., helped to cover up 10 separate pieces of evidence. And most of them are still able to practice law today.
Why weren’t they punished for what they did? When the hidden evidence first surfaced, Mr. Connick announced that his office would hold a grand jury investigation. But once it became clear how many people had been involved, he called it off.
So a bunch of prosecutors hid evidence that would have made their case less water-tight. In fact, they hid the evidence that ended up exculpating him several weeks before his final death sentence. Hiding evidence is considered a violation of the Constitution. John Thompson's Constitutional rights were therefore violated.
Now here's the really sick part. Not only was he wrongly imprisoned and nearly put to death because some prosecutors wanted to nail someone for the murder, the prosecutors appealed the jury award. After the jury awarded the money to John Thompsons, the 5th Circuit (the appellate court before the Supreme Court), affirmed the award. The prosecutors appealed it to the Supreme Court of the US, and what did they find? Prosecutorial immunity. No money, no apology, nothing. The Supreme Court held that it is more important to ensure that prosecutors can prosecute individuals without fear of reprisal even if they hide evidence to make a case against an innocent person, than to have someone compensated for wrongs against them.
So even though John Thompson spent 14 years on death row, was almost put to death, and had his Constitutional rights violated because some prosecutors wanted to find him guilty, no one should be punished for these blatant violations of professional, ethical, and legal conduct. And why exactly? To ensure that prosecutors do their jobs correctly. But isn't the point of punishing the prosecutors to ensure that they do their jobs correctly? Like, maybe, if they're immune for any act they do as prosecutors then they don't have to do their jobs ethically or legally? John Thompson:
I don’t care about the money. I just want to know why the prosecutors who hid evidence, sent me to prison for something I didn’t do and nearly had me killed are not in jail themselves. There were no ethics charges against them, no criminal charges, no one was fired and now, according to the Supreme Court, no one can be sued.
Worst of all, I wasn’t the only person they played dirty with. Of the six men one of my prosecutors got sentenced to death, five eventually had their convictions reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct
I could rant more about this, but I think the point has been made. Do you still think the criminal justice system works?