Dear Readers,
We are happy to welcome you to this month’s issue of Voices for Justice newsletter, where we keep you informed and engaged in thought provoking conversations surrounding jaw dropping topics, which tend to dig deep beneath the surface of social and criminal injustice, in order to expose the lies and uproot the truth; and illuminate the main problems within our judicial system.
In the days following the publication of last month’s issue of VFJ, the internet was set ablaze as so many people found their social media feeds buzzing with the October 6 release of an exclusive and long awaited Wrongful Conviction podcast interview with its host-and-founder, Jason Flom, and Voices For Justice’s own Gary Benloss. In the 54-minute long interview, listeners received an earful of disturbingly, shocking and never yet heard before details of willful corruption that has left many of listeners still distraught and confused after how the parties’ responsible for my wrongful conviction have been allowed to get away with sending an innocent man to prison, and in light of the irrefutable facts revealed in the interview of malfeasance carried out at the hands of the investigating detectives and assistant district attorney, why am I still in prison almost 21 years later?
Clearly, these issues are byproducts of our adversarial system.
In this month’s issue, we would like to open up the discussion by asking you, the readers and our supporters, what may victims of injustice permissibly do in order to rectify the injustices being done to them, including the many injustices being done by persons acting through their government? Virtually everyday, there are new accusations of police or prosecutorial misconduct in the news. In addition, there are many more of these cases that just don’t receive high profile media attention. More importantly, prosecutors seem to face absolutely little to no consequences for their misconduct. With immunity, prosecutors across the country have violated their oaths and the law, committing the worst kinds of deception in the most serious of cases (ie, bad faith charges, prejudice in the jury, improper plea bargaining, tampering with evidence, withholding evidence, propagating false witness testimony, presenting false evidence, and giving misleading narratives). In these cases, although prosecutors across the line engage in professional misconduct, the proceeding issues are not the only reasons that innocent people may be wrongfully convicted. In some circumstances, wrongful convictions can perhaps be directly attributed to the adversarial nature of our legal system, which sometimes encourage elected government officials to push the limits of the law to secure convictions. According to a September 6, 2013 article found in The New York Times, “In court records and public records and interviews Mr. Hynes and his staff glossed over, questionable actions by prosecutors that included making unauthorized tape recordings, overlooking inconsistencies in the evidence and offering a generous deal to an informer even after he changed his stories.” The New York Times went on to add that, “those in the office at the time recall significant pressure from Mr. Hynes to win a conviction.” I would presume that means even if it meant sending an innocent person to prison for a crime they did not commit. In a separate report, Carol Chambers, a Colorado District Attorney, who offered cash bonuses to prosecutors who hit conviction quotas, paid informants (including giving witnesses a district attorney’s office car and giving others gift cards) to testify against a defendant in a death penalty case when there was no evidence or wrongdoing by the defendant. In a landmark Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court established for the first time that the prosecutor’s deliberate use of perjured testimony to attain a conviction violates the defendant’s due process rights and denies him a fair trial. The court wrote: “the deliberate deception of court and jury by the presentation of testimony known to be perjured…is…inconsistent with rudimentary demands with justice.”
Over time, prosecutors have been made bullet proof. Since a 1976 SCOTUS case, Impler V. Pachtman, prosecutors enjoy “absolute immunity for the knowing of reckless presentation of false testimony.” This goes well beyond the Qualified Immunity (shield from personal liability in lawsuits) prosecutors were given in the federal legal code. Judge Frederic Block, a federal district judge for the eastern district of New York, summarized the issue in saying, “because of this present status of the law, the prosecutors responsible for the wrongful convictions have neither been held criminally or civilly responsible for their shameful conduct.” Block went on to also add, “we wisely do not give our law enforcement officers, or even the president, Carte Blanche to do as they please; bad prosecutors should similarly be accountable.” Constitutionally, a fair trial is an immutable American principle enshrined in the Bill of Rights. There is no room for unchecked prosecutorial power in a system dedicated to the paramount importance of human rights. And as we conclude with our nation’s midterms and gubernatorial elections, finding a remedy for these significant miscarriages of justice should be a top priority for the whole political spectrum: left, right and center. Educating and bringing awareness to legislators, policymakers, political figures, judges, lawyers, law enforcement, and general public is the first step in addressing the problem. Making everyone aware of the problem of wrongful convictions, and the ways in which wrongful convictions can occur, is an essential component in addressing the problem. Even the most ardent supporters of our criminal justice system must acknowledge that wrongful convictions occur and that innocent people suffer the consequences.
LOVE, PEACE, TRUTH, JUSTICE, FREEDOM!
“Justice delayed, is justice denied,”
Gary Benloss
(#03A6415)
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