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- A $101 million payment to four convicts who were framed for murder and released is the exception. In the vast majority of cases, innocent inmates get nothing--not even an apology. Saul Gonzalez looks at one organization that is helping the wrongly convicted get their lives started again. (TRT: 9:08)
- Bonnie’s Blog of Crime’s “This Day in History: Teresa Halbach Murder 2005” Article
- Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog’s “False Convictions and Difficulty of Proof in Criminal Cases” Article
- Euphoric Reality’s “A Pattern of Malicious Prosecution by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton” Blog
- Foreign Prisoner Support Service
- Innocence Project
- The Rafu Shimpo Online’s “Obituary: Iva Toguri, 90, Falsely Convicted as ‘Tokyo Rose’” Article
- Religion & Ethics Newsweekly’s Exonerated Prisoners Website
- Science & Law Blog’s “Near-Miss DNA Searching” Article
- Wikipedia’s Miscarriage of Justice Article
- Tags: Crime, Government, Law, Police, Prison, Science & Technology, Violence
Released Without an Apology
Last updated: April 7, 2009
Reporter's NOTES
Saul Gonzalez
Thanks to the increased use of DNA testing to prove people’s innocence, most of us have heard of wrongfully convicted people who are being released from incarceration and exonerated of the crimes in which they’re accused of committing.
But what happens to the wrongfully convicted once they step out of prison and try to pick up the pieces of their lives after spending years, even decades, behind bars? Before looking into this story for public television’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, I assumed that these victims of flaws in our criminal-justice system received huge payments as partial redress for their ordeals.
I also thought that they were showered with every kind of social service imaginable to help them jump-start their lives after incarceration. But it turned out that I was both naive and ill-informed.
Although some of the wrongfully convicted do receive substantial compensatory payments, most don’t get any financial settlements for their imprisonment. The wrongfully convicted also receive little, if any, help in trying to find housing, job training and psychological counseling after they’re released.
To add insult to injury, many of the exonerated don’t even receive an official apology for what they’ve been through. In this story, I profile the work of one Bay Area group, the Life After Exoneration Program, that tries to offer a helping hand to America’s wrongfully convicted once the prison gates close behind them for good.
Along with hosting meetings of the exonerated, LAEP lobbies state governments to create uniform compensation standards for the wrongfully convicted. But after meeting and profiling some of the exonerated, a question lingers in my own mind: Can any amount of money and help really make up for all the years spent by these innocent men behind prison walls?
Insider Viewpoints
Written by his own hand, former U.S. Border Patrol Agent Gary Brugman tells how, in the performance of his duty, he was falsely charged and convicted of violating the civil rights of an alien caught entering the U.S. illegally at the Mexican border…No one would listen to Gary Brugman several years ago, and he spent two years in the general population at federal prisons—wearing newspapers and magazines taped to his body as hopeful protection against inmate attacks.
In view of what has recently been disclosed about [U.S. Attorney] Johnny Sutton’s malicious tactics, his story will be viewed with great interest now. Gary lost everything, and his life was ruined—but he survived his sentence and is now a free man again. Gary Brugman remains a patriotic American and tells his story now only in an effort to help Ignacio Ramos, Jose Compean and Gilmer Hernandez prove their innocence against the power, influence and treachery of the U.S. Attorney and George Bush water boy, Johnny Sutton.
--Excerpt taken from Euphoric Reality’s “A Pattern of Malicious Prosecution by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton” Blog by Heidi
…[Murdered victim Teresa Halbach] was reported missing three days after she did not return from a photography shoot…at Avery Auto Salvage, which she had been to several times to photograph cars for an auto-trader publication…Steven Avery was no stranger to crime.
He had been in and out of prison most of his adult life. However, he had recently been released from prison after being falsely convicted of rape—having been helped by the famed Innocence Project.
He told police that she came and photographed the car and left. Evidence, however, shows otherwise.
He was soon arrested for having the guns (felon in possession of a gun is a no-no). He swore to anyone and everyone that he was innocent and that he was being framed, since he was suing for his wrong conviction.
The FBI found that the bone fragments found in the fire pit did, indeed, belong to Teresa Halbach, and Avery has been charged—along with his nephew Brendan Dassey—who confessed to the abduction, sexual assault and murder of Teresa, along with Steven Avery…
--Excerpt taken from Bonnie’s Blog of Crime’s “This Day in History: Teresa Halbach Murder 2005” Article by MyLifeOfCrime
DNA testing has now freed 205 innocent people who were wrongfully convicted in the United States. But even in their first days of freedom, the euphoria that many exonerated people feel is tempered by a personal understanding of the larger problem and an unwavering resolve to help fix a broken system.
They don’t want anyone else to be robbed of life and liberty as they were. After release, exonerees often struggle to build new lives in a changed world, usually without a safety net.
They rarely receive an apology from the state, let alone any housing, financial support or job training. The Innocence Project is working to create programs and laws to help the exonerated get back on their feet.
Right now, 22 states and the District of Columbia have some form of compensation laws, but even many of these are inadequate. The Innocence Project also has an exoneree fund to help with immediate needs after release. To learn more about life after exoneration and what you can do to help fix the system, visit our website at www.innocenceproject.org.
Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld
Co-Directors
The Innocence Project
COMMUNITY VIEWPOINTS
Most prosecutors are responsible and follow the law. But too many do not, and the wrongful conviction of innocent defendants–sometimes by prosecutors who bend the law (often by hiding evidence) to gain those convictions–is a plague on the American criminal justice system.
There is significant documentation of such improper convictions in a series by Maurice Possley in the Chicago Tribune, in a study by Columbia Law School, in the book In Spite of Innocence and in the marvelous work of Barry Scheck and his colleagues in the Innocence Project. Too many prosecutors abuse their power, and they almost always get away with it.
They almost always fiercely resist any objective review of their performance. And, even if a conviction is overturned and the judge specifically says that there was “prosecutorial abuse,” they are rarely censured and never punished (prosecutor Nifong being the huge and encouraging exception).
My fury over this kind of abuse from trusted public servants led to my second novel, A Good Conviction, which tells the story of a young man who was wrongfully convicted in a high-profile Central Park murder that was brought about by a prosecutor who knew that the defendant was actually innocent and hid the exculpatory evidence that would have led to a not-guilty verdict. Several prosecutors and criminal appeals attorneys helped me with the legal aspects of a Brady appeal in New York State, and all of them agreed that what I portrayed in my story was both realistic and all too possible.
Steve Cohen, the former federal prosecutor who was so instrumental in the infamous Palladium case (he’s now Chief of Staff to Attorney General Cuomo), read my book and told me at dinner that it was the most powerful case against bad prosecutors that he had ever read, more compelling even than John Grisham’s The Innocent Man.
Dan Slepian, network producer of many crime and legal news shows, says, “Having spent countless hours working with detectives, courts, attorneys and wrongly convicted inmates, I was most impressed with how well-researched and accurate your narrative was. You really nailed it. In addition, it was a great read.”
Judge (ret.) Leslie Crocker Snyder, former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney, first sex crimes prosecutor in the U.S., says, “A Good Conviction is a well-written, well-paced and fascinating tale of prosecutorial abuse in the Manhattan DA’s office. It makes one wonder how many other times something like this has occurred and just how high the abuse is actually sanctioned.”
Michael Radelet, one of the authors of In Spite of Innocence, a study of over 400 cases of persons who were wrongly convicted of crimes carrying the death penalty, says, “A Good Conviction is an unusually gripping story of an erroneous conviction and the passionate fight to correct that injustice. Weinstein’s account of what a bad prosecutor does to Joshua Blake provides a frightening and realistic parallel to many of the true-life cases we documented in our study.” You can find A Good Conviction at Amazon.com.
Lew Weinstein - Key West, Florida
It won’t be long before they microchip us with numbers. RIGHTS WE’VE LOST ARE RIGHTS AS A SOCIETY.
YOU CANNOT EVEN GET ON THE DAMN FREEWAY AND DRIVE WITHOUT THE CAMERAS ON YOU. THEY ARE MONITORING YOUR SPEED.
I LIVE IN PHOENIX, AZ. WHAT PART OF THE COUNTRY DO YOU LIVE IN?
TOO LATE - Phoenix, Arizona
It’s a stunning outrage that, in this “land of the free and the brave,” we are subjected to such horrors by the state–namely, brutal/perjurious cops and a justice system that knows damn well what is going on and looks the other way. Three ways to fix it:
1. Require all cop/suspect interaction be, at a minimum, audio-recorded.
2. Have all this data wirelessly sent to and maintained by a third party, meaning not the employee of the city/county/state employer.
3. The defendant gets an immediate copy of data upon request.
Any questions?
Jeb - San Francisco, California