By Prisoner 34
Countless people have been wrongfully convicted of crime in America’s increasingly unreliable, unfair criminal justice system. Moreover, a very telling fact should be noted by those interested in the complete picture. It has not been through meaningful judicial review but, rather, through the tireless advocacy of innocence projects, staffed by genuinely “honorable” people, that many have been exonerated including hundreds from the nation’s death rows.
A couple more compelling facts can further punctuate the point being addressed. Due to wrongful convictions, clearly unreliable judgments and state court judges refusing to provide remedy the following drastic actions have been taken by the Executive Branch: 1) Governor George Ryan issued a mass commuting of all death sentences in Illinois; 2) California Governor Gavin Newsom decreed a moratorium on carrying out executions for the same reason, saying he could not sign his name to death warrants in view of such widespread unreliability of the underlying judgments and their racist application.
It is the public that is forced to pay obscene amounts of money to operate the broken injustice system. And, supposedly, it is in the name of “The People” that such widespread injustice is being inflicted. Also important to note is the fact that the publicized exonerations do not even represent the tip of the iceberg of wrongfully convicted human beings in today’s America. Shouldn’t citizens in a society seeing itself as being civilized wonder how the situation got to be so bad?
Coincidentally, a highly visible parallel exists that casts bright light upon exactly how. Child molestation grew to epidemic proportions within the Catholic church because it was systematically covered up by the Church’s hierarchy which abdicated its duty to put a stop to it. The American judiciary is guilty of far worse. However, unlike the major institutions that have taken steps to cease wrongs by their personnel (Boy Scouts of America, Catholic Church, U.S. military), while also compensating 
victims, state and federal judges are doing virtually nothing to provide relief or deterrent measures commensurate with the festering wrongs attributable to them. How can such be “Honorable?”
Not only are America’s judges and justices guilty of that same abdication of moral duty that being decisively stopping the wrongdoing in the corrupt courts, the judges are, en masse, betraying the public’s trust, reneging on their phony oaths and shirking their constitutional duties while fraudulently accepting taxpayers’ money. So exactly as the Catholic church covering up led to many more victims, so too has the American judiciary’s dereliction of duty led to the increase in wrongful convictions and executions of innocent people (wrongful executions acknowledged by U.S. Supreme Court in Glossip v. Gross (2015) 193 L. Ed. 761 U.S.).
The media is also to blame for the ongoing worsening wrong. As the “Fourth Estate” it has failed to do its duty to keep the public accurately informed for a healthy democracy. Mainstream media has been and remains stubbornly resistant to mounting a loud and unrelenting campaign to expose the main cause of wrongful convictions; CHEATING by oath-sworn government personnel. Police, prosecutors, and judges are lying, routinely violating citizens’ rights, and committing actual criminal offenses to obtain those wrongful convictions.
Is there an identifiable point at which wrongful convictions began to increase dramatically? Yes, and it coincides with the increase in the system’s burying such cases via dubious judges created procedural rules and unpublished decisions. Through the Strom Thurmond inspired “habeas corpus” of the Antiterrorism Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), those corrupt personnel were handed the license to cheat and implicitly assured they would not ever be held accountable. And it most definitely is no coincidence that this calculated, systematic wrong disproportionately impacts people of color. No, the stench of institutionalized racism reeks and shades of Dred Scott have been diabolically resurrected through this horrible statue (AEDPA).
Another aspect of the problem is that, while there continues to be lip-service paid to criminal justice reform, by politicians, they are doing nothing of substance for those who’ve been wrongfully convicted and are, essentially, buried alive in prison. And yes, those would be many of the same politicians who’ve been so quick to endorse allegations of a “high-tech lynching” or “witch hunt” when the conduct of one of their political associates is called into question. Sound familiar? “Accountability” is considered to be blasphemy in their Church of the Holy Flim-Flamologists.
With this writing, emphasis is also being placed on a very telling contrast which shows damning proof about our corrupt government’s skewed priorities and the deteriorating quality of justice in our nation. Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, Lance Armstrong and others have been suspected of or found to be CHEATING by using performance-enhancing drugs to gain unfair illegal advantages in sports. Rightfully so, the CHEATING has drawn the focused scrutiny of the media, law enforcement, and the U.S. Congress. It is not so complicated an issue either. Every good kid in grade school brought up by morally decent parents knows that CHEATING is wrong. Why, then, haven’t there been Congressional hearings, sustained media attention, and effective legislation to put a stop to cheating in the courts? Don’t reasonable civilized human beings see that the horrendous consequences as a result of the courts are infinitely worse than athletes cheating in sports?
Furthermore, what about the other contrast that becomes glaringly self-evident the instant one juxtaposes that “good kid,” against today’s “Honorable” judges? How can their sense of right and wrong be inferior to that of the average good kid in grade school? What sort of parents brought them up so that instead of defending our Constitution they now void its guarantees to justify, trivialize and cover up this systematic wrong? What parents raised this type of judge?
The questions in this essay also apply to the politicians incessantly seeking the public’s trust and votes in our under attack election processes. Aren’t they obligated to at least pretend that they have enough integrity to address the issues? Yet we continue in deafening silence from the politicians.
The original intent of our Constitution’s Framer is enshrined in the preamble and includes the goals to “form a more perfect union, establish justice.” Yet, two and a half centuries later, neither Congress nor the Supreme Court took the first step towards a decisive and final stop to the CHEATING of government personnel in criminal prosecutions.
The police, prosecutors and judges who CHEAT or tolerated cheating swore oaths to support and defend the Constitution. “Whose is the greater sin?” That of the CHEATING athletes or the oath-sworn, public trust betraying personnel?
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
-Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
Innocent people are convicted everyday in this country. A civilized nation cannot say that it is, in fact, civilized or humane when it permits a system to exist that can result in the wrongful execution of innocent people.
-Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Justice Gerald Kogan
“…it is critical that the moral farce of the criminal law not be diluted by a standard of proof that leaves people in doubt whether innocent men are being condemned…[the standard]… is bottomed on a fundamental value determination of our society that it is far worse to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.”
–In re Winship (1970) 397 U.S. 358
