COMMENTARY: The Injustice of the Justice System

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.) (UNDATED) A comprehensive report compiled by a professor […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.)

(UNDATED) A comprehensive report compiled by a professor from Columbia Law School provides the latest evidence of injustice in the criminal justice system.


The report, “A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases,” reveals “a death penalty system collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes.” Together with recent reports decrying the state of the nation’s juvenile justice and parole systems, the current study reflects a justice system in crisis.

The study was conducted by a team of criminologists and attorneys led by James S. Liebman, a professor at Columbia Law School who has served as a defense attorney in death penalty cases. It was released by The Justice Project, an advocacy group promoting fairness in criminal justice policies.

Among its findings, the study determined that of 5,760 death penalty convictions between 1973 and 1995, 4,578 were appealed. As a result of the appeals process, courts overturned death sentences in 68 percent of the cases due to “serious, reversible error.”

Of these, 37 percent were the result of incompetent defense lawyers, 20 percent reflected faulty instructions given to jurors by presiding judges, and 19 percent were the result of errors or misconduct by police or prosecutors, including “the suppression of evidence of innocence.”

For Liebman, the principal author of the study, the report “raises grave doubts as to whether we do catch all the mistakes.”

A case-in-point is that of Anthony Porter, who was granted a stay of execution in Illinois not because of errors noted by the court but because his low I.Q. raised questions about his mental competence. Porter was later exonerated and another man convicted based in part on evidence obtained by a group of journalism students led by David Protess, a professor from Northwestern University.

Protess and his students were also instrumental in overturning the death penalty convictions of the so-called “Ford Heights Four,” a quartet of black men who spent 18 years on Illinois’ death row for a crime they did not commit.


That at least two capital crimes could be solved by a group of college students with more energy than money says as much about the apathy of the professionals as it does about the ingenuity of the amateurs. Nor are the errors, whether of omission or commission, limited to the prosecutorial process.

For example, a recent article in The Washington Post reported that policymakers and corrections officials around the country are being forced to rethink their approach to incarceration and parole supervision in the wake of statistics indicating that six parolees in 10 will be rearrested within three years of being released from prison.

At the heart of this issue, according to the experts, is the fact that “inmates (are) released into an often unforgiving world of scarce services and thin support.” In other words, cutbacks in prison education and training programs, together with inadequate parole supervision and a lack of social services, generally means ex-offenders will return to the activities that led to their incarceration in the first place.

Ironically, this may include some former inmates who were released on appeal. According to the Columbia study, for example, of those whose death penalty convictions were set aside, 75 percent received lesser sentences upon being retried. In addition, 7 percent _ more than 200 persons _ were found not guilty upon retrial.

Imagine 200 people, most of them poor minorities with few skills, being released to return to their communities after nine years on death row, the average time of the review process. They likely have received no therapy or training while in prison, nor will they receive adequate support upon re-entry to society.

Thus does the criminal justice system contribute to its own crime statistics.

For many of us who work in the system, the reports decrying its ineffectiveness merely lend credence to what we already know. Here’s hoping the eyes of the nation will be opened as well.


DEA END ATCHISON

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