Open Writing

In a murder case yet to come to trial, Raymond Clark III, a laboratory technician at Yale University was arrested and charged in September 2009, with the strangulation death of a postgraduate pharmacology student. Almost immediately the technician’s fellow workers and friends claimed that the police “Got the wrong guy,” which seems unlikely, based on what the police have disclosed so far. The basis for their outcry was their personal knowledge of the accused, believing him to be incapable of such violence.

This is often the reaction of friends and family in such cases, until the evidence presented in court reveals an unsuspected dark side to the accused. At the same time, there is a growing unease in the US about the number of wrongly charged, sentenced, and even, in some cases, wrongly executed citizens.

The Innocence Project is a public law clinic at the Benjamin Cardozo Law School in New York that uses biotechnology, specifically DNA evidence, to reopen cases of people who have been wrongly convicted of crimes. The following are some statistics from the Innocence Project, which has had some 100 death sentences overturned, based upon post-conviction evidence.

According to their study of the first 70 cases reversed: Over 30 of them involved prosecutorial misconduct. Another 30 involved police misconduct, which led to wrongful convictions. Approximately 15 involved false witness testimony. 34% of the police misconduct cases involved suppression of exculpatory evidence. 11% involved evidence fabrication. 37% of the prosecutorial misconduct cases involved suppression of exculpatory evidence. 25% involved knowing use of false testimony.

I’m not qualified to comment on prosecutorial errors and misconduct, but what I read about police conduct in investigating a crime I find disturbing to say the least. From the moment a crime is reported, the likelihood of bringing the true perpetrator to justice is in jeopardy. A large part of this is due to inept or inappropriate methodology at the crime scene.

Evidence and clues are corrupted or lost by clumsy handling, or just plain ignorance of good forensic practices. In a recent article in the New Yorker Magazine, David Grann reviews the case of Cameron Todd Willingham who was tried in Texas, in August 1992, found guilty of murdering his three children by setting fire to their house, and sentenced to death.

In January of 2004, Dr. Gerald Hurst, an acclaimed scientist and fire investigator, reviewed the arson investigation documents at the request of people who believed Willingham to be innocent. After reading the police reports and conducting an experiment that involved recreating the fire, Hurst resolved that the police investigators’ conclusion of arson was based on “Junk science.”

Hurst’s report was submitted to The Texas Board of Paroles and Pardons who denied the petition for a retrial. Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004. Later it was learned that Hurst’s article had never been examined.

Police treatment of suspects also is a contributory factor in wrongful arrests. Many suspects are subjected to lengthy and aggressive interrogation, often causing them to sign a confession even though they are innocent. Raymond Clark III, was held, but not arrested, for five hours while the police “obtained DNA evidence” from him. They then released him at 3.00am.

One has to question why it took five hours to obtain a DNA sample, and why he could not have been released before the early hours of the morning. Surely this experience was intended to frighten and disorient him.

As I write this column, four young men, falsely accused of raping an 18-year-old student at Hofstra University, are trying to return to their normal lives after an ordeal that two of them described as traumatic. "It was like a big nightmare, and I thought I was going to do time for something I didn't do," 20-year-old Kevin Taveras said. "We were treated like animals [By the police]."

The question then arises as to why the police are motivated to charge suspects who they know to be innocent. There are probably a number of reasons: personal ambition, pressure from their supervisors and peers, community sentiment, and the political climate in their area of jurisdiction.

In the USA, unlike Britain, politics figure much more directly in police matters. Mayors, who appoint the police chiefs, are elected by the residents of the municipality. The police chief’s performance record therefore reflects directly on the mayor’s standing, and if an election is imminent, rapid investigations and arrests are vote getters.

There is also the question of whether police training in forensic science , logistics and interrogation methods is adequate. If the investigating officer has come up through the ranks from being a beat cop, the chances are that he or she has an entrenched mistrust of all citizens. On the beat, emphasis is placed on enforcing the law rather than applying reason, and to a degree this is important, but it doesn’t develop skills in seeking the truth as an investigator.

All this leaves me with feelings of apprehension towards the police, rather than comfort in the knowledge that they are protecting my safety and respecting my rights; or that I would be fairly treated if, by some mischance, I fell afoul of the law. The words of Justice of the US Supreme Court, the late Louis Brandeis sum up my feelings: “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning, but without understanding.”
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