Wrongful Convictions Report

By Andrew L. Urban.

Small time crim John Thompson was nearly executed for a murder he didn’t commit. At his trial in 1985, the New Orleans prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence. Then District Attorney – Harry Connick Snr (now retired) – brags about the aggressive, win at all costs culture in his office.

In this New Yorker podcast, we hear him confirm his office is there to get convictions: “that’s what we do”. He chuckles as he recalls that “a lot of defendants weren’t happy with what we were doing,” shrugging off their concerns: “we weren’t there for them – we’re there for those who elected us”. Thompson (below) knows that all too well.

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Bill Rowlings* questions how ‘professional’ is the Legal Profession Board of Tasmania. It’s a quango that only recently worked out it needs to abide by model litigant principles, a decade after it was created. And it seems to particularly dislike the right of people to question, scrutinise and dissent.

Barbara Etter** is a lawyer who has been contesting complaints against her that are being investigated by the Legal Profession Board.

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By Frederick Block *

JABBAR COLLINS languished in jail for over 16 years for a murder he apparently never committed. He was only freed a few years ago when it was revealed at a post-conviction hearing that the main witness at his trial had told the prosecutor that he was pressured by police to lie about Collins’ involvement in the murder.

The prosecutor, representing the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, never shared that information with Collins’ lawyer—an egregious violation of the law, which requires the government to inform the defense of any exculpatory evidence. At the hearing, the judge who tossed out Collins’ conviction called the conduct of the prosecutor and the DA’s office “shameful” and a “tragedy.”

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By Andrew L. Urban

In the context of the immigration debate Australia’s Prime Minister (and lawyer of renown), recently extolled the virtues of Australian democracy and its adherence to the ‘rule of law principles’, yet “the criminal appeal system in Australia has failed to comply with its obligations to apply the rule of law,” according to two legal academics, Associate Professor Bibi Sangha and Dr Robert Moles, both of Flinders University, who are calling for an inquiry into ‘abuse of process’ in the system.

“The requirement to ensure that persons accused of criminal offences receive a fair trial and that they also have the right to an effective appeal would hardly be contentious,” they say in a joint statement which claims that Australia is failing its human rights obligations “contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which Australia ratified in 1980.”

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Andrew L. Urban

What went wrong? That’s the question that the criminal justice system does not often ask and therefore doesn’t answer when wrongful convictions are revealed.

Prevention is so much better than cure, especially in a legal system which deprives the convicted of resources and the voice to be heard. The resistance to learning from mistakes prior to trial is compounded by a resistance to correct them post conviction.

There is no self correcting mechanism in the criminal justice system, other than an imperfect, slow and combersome appellate process; there is no equivalent to consumer protection that is obligatory elsewhere. Keith A Findlay, co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project argues this very clearly in ‘Learning from our Mistakes’:

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