Transcript
Shades of Innocence: America's Wrongful Conviction Trade By Jack Hays On October 26th, 2015, former Iowa Governor, Terry Branstad, lamented, "We know that in a system run by humans, mistakes can be made."1 This was the statement Branstad made concerning a new Iowa Division of the Midwest Innocence Project—the "Wrongful Conviction Unit". The article in the Des Moines Register reporting the new addition to the project stated that "independent studies conservatively estimate between 2 percent and 5 percent of inmates in the United States with some estimates reaching 7 percent". After doing the math, I have discovered that conservatively there are at least eighteen men or women in every institution in the state of Iowa that are innocent in prison! However, there are those that are completely innocent and those whom have been given a wrongful conviction in one way or another; overcharged, railroaded in bogus trial, mentally ill, developmentally disabled, ineffective assistance of counsel, etc.—shades of innocence. In 2010, I filed lawsuit against the State Public Defenders' Office, the Polk County District Court (Des Moines, Iowa), the Polk County Attorney's Office, and Gannet and Hearst News Corporations. I also received about 40 signatures in the jail which swore under penalty of perjury—a Class "D" felony in Iowa, up to 5 years in prison—that: (1)The public defenders' office was overworked and overwhelmed, but they would deliberately mete out the easiest cases to private attorneys on contract and keep the murders, rapes, robberies, etc. (the big money cases) though they had no staff to properly litigate them.2 1 See Des Moines Register, October 27th, 2015, page 4A. 2 Neither Equal Nor Just: The Rationing and Denial of Legal Services to the Poor When Life and Liberty Are At Stake, Annual Survey of American Law, No. 4, New York University, by Stephen B. Bright (1997). Page 1 of 3 (2)The Court would take months to rule on simple motions that are supposed to be handled in 30 days, but would also most likely go along with whatever the state had written and recommended. (3)The Polk County Attorney's office was swimmin' in staff and cash and would: i. Retaliate for refusing to take their plea deals. ii. Harass your witnesses and your family. iii. Lie to the court to achieve wrongful convictions. iv. Generally do whatever is necessary to "win" a case (and still do!).3 (4)The jail is charging exorbitant prices for food, phone calls, etc.4 Unbeknownst to me, a former San Francisco Civil Rights attorney, Ohio State Law Professor Michelle Alexander, published a book providing empirical evidence through her work and experience that everything that I was accusing the defendants in my lawsuit of was being done5 all across the country! And this is the shades of innocence—a wrongful conviction is still a wrongful conviction no matter if you believe someone is guilty, no matter if you despise them because you think they are a Bum, Prostitute, Rapist, Murderer, Drug Addict, etc. Wrong is wrong, no matter how you look at the person or situation. People are lying to get people put in jail and prison...6 People are lying on themselves to keep from spending the rest of their life in prison...7 Judges are imposing sentences to ensure that people will die in prison...8 3 The New Prosecutors, University of Pittsburgh Law Review 53:393 (1992) 4 Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration, Tara Herivel and Paul Wright (The New Press 2007). 5 The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, M. Alexander (The New Press 2010). 6 Snitching: Criminal Informants and Erosion of American Injustice, A. Natapoff(N.Y. Univ. Press 2010); Just the Facts Ma'am: Lying and Omission of Exculpatory Evidence in Police Reports, New England Law Review 28:1, Stanley Z. Fisher (1993); Jailhouse Snitches: Trading Lies for Freedom, by Ted Rohrlich and Robert W. Stewart (Los Angeles Times, April 16th, 1989). 7 The Decision to Confess Falsely: Rational Choice and Irrational Action, Richard J. Ofshe and Richard A. Leo, 4 Denver University 74, pg. 979 (1997). 8 Prison Profiteers, pg. 105, supra. Page 2 of 3 Witnesses testify to things and identify people they did not see...9 People are willing to treat prisoners less than human...10 Big business is lobbying politicians to keep people in prison and over-criminalize the United States for profit...11 At the rate of incarceration in this country there is a large amount of people whom make their livelihood from those whom are incarcerated; police, prosecutors, judges, clerks, lawyers, lawmakers, bondsman, investigators, expert witnesses, jury consultants, producers of T.V. shows about this system (and all their employees), newspapers, jailers, prison employees, prison/jail canteen employees, etc., etc. There are those who believe that this system will never change because of all the money in it.12 I have been-in-and-out of the system for more than twenty years now. I have serious mental illness—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar Disorder—as well as substance abuse issues. I am also what would be called a "jailhouse lawyer"13—I have a paralegal education and I am employed as the "law clerk". It is my personal experience that there are at least 9% to 10% of the men in prison that are wrongfully convicted. However, the percentage of people whom do not need to be in prison to protect society is more along the lines of about 50%-75%, maybe more if prisons weren't making people worse."14—Jack Hays December/2019 9 Remembering What Never Happened, Memory, Consciousness, and the Brain: The Tallin Conference, pages 106-118, Elizabeth F. Loftus (Philadelphia Psychology Press 2000); The Science of False Memory, C.J. Brainerd and V.R. Reyna (NY: Oxford University Press 2005). 10 "Social Roles" overwhelm people to act "unexpectedly cruel". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67, 371-378 (1963) (Stanford Prison Experiment); The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, P.G. Zimardo (N.Y.: Random House 2007). 11 Prison Profiteers, supra; Bodies in Beds: Why Business Should Stay out of Prisons, by Sue Binder (Algora 2017). 12 Captive Market: Why We Won't Get Prison Reform, by Michael Ames, Harper's Magazine (February 2015). 13 For a very real description of what a "jailhouse lawyer" does in this country see Jailhouse Lawyer: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. The United States, by Mumia Abu Jamal, foreword by Angela Davis (City Lights 2009). The National Lawyers Guild (www.n1g.org) has a "Jailhouse Lawyers" division for which Mumia Abu Jamal is the Vice-President and of which I am a member... 14 Psychological Consequences of Wrongful Conviction and Imprisonment, 46 Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 165 (2004). I could find no American treatise on the consequences of wrongful conviction. Being an American whom is wrongfully convicted, I find this very disheartening. Page 3 of 3