John Grisham wrote a great book about one travesty of this type. The research proved to be a revelation to him:
The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions. Something that I, even as a former lawyer, had never spent much time thinking about. This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same-- bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors.
A couple of pieces from the past:
Show some remorse or at least say something .
We law and order types want to see public acts of abject contrition when convicted criminals are about to be sentenced. Not that it does them much good. But if we don't get a loud emotionsl "i'm so sorry" we are ready to lock them away forever.
Or use the needle.
Don't you know that absence of a public acknowledgement of guilt is evidence of irredeemable psychopathology? Or something. I'm sure i heard it on the Nancy Grace show.
Yet, we never seem to apply that standard to the prosecutors who send the innocent to jail. Like Nancy herself, they usually refuse to take any responsibilty for the gross injustice they helped create. And the public accepts that.
KVUE spoke with Ken Anderson, the prosecutor in this case 25 years ago. He said he has no statement to make about Morton being found innocent and would leave any comments to be made about this case to the D.A.'s office.
This is one of the reasons i can't get behind Rick Perry.
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