From Fernando Bermudez:
Exoneree Fernando Bermudez is now touring around Germany, giving lectures about his experience and the innocence movement in the United States. The cities he will be visiting are: Bochum, Greifswald, Berlin, Passau, Tübingen, Wiesbaden, and Freiburg. Read the news here (in German).
Fernando Bermudez served over 18 years in New York prisons, following his wrongful conviction for murder, until proven innocent in 2009. Continue reading
The documentary by Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns about the wrongful convictions of ”The Central Park Five” received high praise today from what some might consider an unlikely source — conservative columnist George F. Will.
As a critic of the overreach of government, though, Will has expressed concern in the past about the abuse of power by police, prosecutors and the courts. And he says what happened to the five innocent young men in the media-fueled hysteria created in the aftermath of a horrific rape and assault of a young woman in 1989 is a cautionary tale of government excess that should give conservatives pause.
”A society’s justice system can improve as a result of lurches into officially administered injustice,” Will writes. ”The dialectic of injustice, then revulsion, then reform often requires the presentation of sympathetic victims to a large audience, which ‘The Central Park Five’ does.”
Will goes on to say that ”this recounting of a multifaceted but, fortunately, not fatal failure of the criminal justice system buttresses the conservative case against the death penalty: Its finality leaves no room for rectifying mistakes, but it is a government program, so . . .”
You can read Will’s eloquent column here.
Here is an update on a new case of interest handled by the Knoops Innocence Project in the Netherlands:
Knoops’ lawyers request re-opening in the case of the “Hilversum showbiz murder”
A Knoops’ lawyers defense team acting on behalf of Martien Meijer-Hunnik requested the Supreme Court to open the case of the “Hilversum showbiz murder.”
Mr. Hunnik was convicted by the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam for manslaughter on Bart van de Laar, a producer from Hilversum, the Netherlands, on November 10, 1981.
The conviction was mainly based on the “confession” of Mr. Hunnik on November 17, 1983. At that time, there was no other direct evidence linking Mr. Hunnik to the crime. Mr. Hunnik withdrew his confession on April 14, 1983, but the judicial authorities did not give credibility to his withdrawal. A clear motive for the manslaughter was lacking. From 2002 onwards, after he had been detained from 1983 to 1990, Mr. Hunnik tried to obtain his case file, however, to no avail. In 2011 he requested Knoops’ lawyers to investigate his case regarding a revision procedure.
A specialized team of Knoops’ lawyers conducted their own research into the case (2011-2013). Early 2013 the team took notice of “new” material. It turned out that this material was already known to the public prosecution service since 2002 and had resulted in a 2004-police analysis that exculpated Mr. Hunnik.
All these new facts justify the conclusion that Mr. Hunnik was wrongfully convicted in 1984 for the murder on producer Bart van de Laar. The new material shows that Mr. Hunnik is factually innocent to the manslaughter he was convicted for. Also, a not previously known police analysis concludes that it is unlikely that Mr. Hunnik shot Mr. Van de Laar on Tuesday November 10, 1981.
The request to review this case is based on six new facts that are outlined in new pieces of evidence proving that Mr. Hunnik cannot have committed the crime in question. The new material includes a convincing alibi, a new time reconstruction of the events, evidence indicating that his confession was false and a new witness statement.
The defense has urged the Attorney-General of the Dutch Supreme Court to decide speedily on the review request, since the prosecution – as has been shown – was already in the possession of the exculpatory material since 2002.
Mr. Hunnik prays that his conviction will be overturned and that he will be rehabilitated, since he is severely damaged, both mentally and physically, through his conviction by the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam. It had and continues to have a great impact on his personal and family life.
The defense and Mr. Hunnik are – despite the fact that (new) exculpatory material was already known to the judicial authorities since 2002 – very grateful for the efforts made by Mr. Van Straelen, the chief Attorney General of the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam, to reconstruct the course of events and to establish the truth in this case.
Defense counsel: Mr. Geert-Jan Knoops, Ms. Lizette Vosman, Ms. Carry Knoops-Hamburger
Alafair S. Burke
Alafair S. Burke has posted the above titled-article, a book review of Prosecution Complex, on SSRN. Download here. The abstract says:
Post-conviction DNA testing has led to the exoneration of nearly three hundred defendants. As the number of exonerations grows, we are in an era where the once unthinkable is now undeniable. We convict the innocent. We imprison the innocent. We place the innocent on death row. Daniel Medwed brings this reality to life in his captivating book, Prosecution Complex, which carefully documents the myriad ways that prosecutors can contribute to wrongful convictions at every stage of a criminal case. From the charging decision to plea bargaining to trial to post-conviction, Medwed argues, prosecutors face an “ongoing schizophrenia” as they seek to balance dual roles in the criminal justice system, trying to serve both as zealous advocates for the government and as neutral ministers of justice.
This book essay offers three lessons that can be gleaned from Medwed’s central thesis that prosecutors must struggle to balance their dual roles as advocates and ministers of justice. Two of these lessons are for prosecutors: 1) that the protection of justice means not only the protection of the innocent, but also the fostering of a fair process, and 2) that prosecutors can mitigate the possibility that they will contribute to a wrongful conviction by seeking out contrary voices that foster neutral decision-making. The third lesson, aimed at the wrongful convictions movement, is to avoid a language of fault, which has a tendency to focus reform efforts on intentional misconduct and to signal to virtuous prosecutors that they need not worry that they may contribute to a wrongful conviction. Prosecution Complex is a significant book that should be read by any scholar, lawyer, or layperson who cares about criminal justice. But its most essential audience is prosecutors themselves, who hold the key to the most feasible and important reforms in the prevention of erroneous convictions.
Unbelievable…… Kagoshima District Court and Nagoya High Court both turned down the retrial plea of two cases (Ohsaki Case and Fukui Case) today. Read about the Ohsaki Case here, and Fukui Case here.
Here is an article about the Ohsaki case by mainichi.jp:
KAGOSHIMA, Japan (Kyodo) — The Kagoshima District Court rejected on Wednesday an appeal for a retrial filed by a woman who was convicted and served a 10-year prison term for killing her brother-in-law in 1979 in Kagoshima Prefecture for insurance money.
The decision came after the district court had initially decided to reopen the case involving Ayako Haraguchi, now 85, in 2002, which was overruled by the Fukuoka High Court in 2004. The high court’s decision was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court.
The murder occurred in October 1979, when Kunio Nakamura, 42, was found dead in a cattle stable beside his home in the town of Osaki, Kagoshima. Continue reading
From Yomiuri Shimbun (see the link). Shoji Maekawa, the defendant in Fukui Case (center). Shoji Sakurai (left), and Takao Sugiyama(right), two defendants in so-called Fukawa Case, were both exonerated in 2011.
Two decisions concerning wrongful convictions will be handed down today in Japan. One is Ohsaki case which I posted about yesterday, and the other is Fukui case.
Fukui case involves a 1986 murder of a 15-year-old girl. The defendant (Shoji Maekawa) in the case was acquitted by the Fukui District Court in 1990, but the Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court vacated the decision and gave Maekawa 8 years in prison in 1995 (the Japanese criminal justice system allows the prosecutors to appeal a verdict of acquittal).
Maekawa petitioned to open a retrial in 2004, and the Kanazawa Branch granted his petition in November 2011. The prosecutors filed an objection to the High Court, and the decision by the High Court will be handed down today (on March 6th, 2013).
Read about the Fukui Case here (English, by Asahi Shimbun) and here (Japanese).
Below is an article by Yomiuri Shimbun in 2011: Continue reading
Ms. Ayako Haraguchi. From 47news.
The Kagoshima District Court will decide whether to opne a retrial for a 34-year-old case (so called Ohsaki/ Osaki Case) tomorrow. This is a case where confessions were crucial pieces of evidence in determining the defendant’s guilt. Ayako Haraguchi, now 85 years of age, is seeking a retrial for the 2nd time. Will she get her day in court?
On October 15th 1979, the victim’s body was found in a barn in Ohsaki, Kagoshima Prefecture. The victim had been missing for 3 days. The police immediately suspected that the victim’s two older brothers, A and B, murdered him. After A and B confessed to the crime, they were arrested on the 18th. B’s son was also arrested on the 25th. On the 30th, A’s former wife, Ayako Haraguchi was also arrested, based on A and B’s confessions.
Haraguchi never confessed to the crime. However, the other three all confessed. They named Haraguchi as the principal, and admitted that they killed the victim by strangling him with a towel.
In March 1980, the Kagoshima District Court decided that Haraguchi was guilty of the murder. The sentence was 10 years in prison. Haraguchi lost the appeals, and served the time.
Haraguchi got out of prison in 1990, and petitioned to retry the case in 1995. Continue reading
Posted in Asia, False confessions, Inquisitional and adversarial systems of justice
Tagged Japan, Ohsaki case, Osaki case
Since commuter trains in urban areas are unbelievably crowded in Japan, there have been problems of groping (“chikan“) on these trains, especially during the morning rush hours.
Not surprisingly, there have been many cases where people were wrongfully arrested or even convicted as the groper. Once arrested, it is extremely difficult to prove one’s innocence since there typically is no evidence other than the victim’s testimony. Read more about the problem of groping and wrongful convictions here (an article from the Japan Times Online).
Below is a recent article from the Mainichi Newspapers about a case currently being fought to win a retrial in a train groping case.
From the Mainichi Online:
The Tokyo District Court on Jan. 31 made the rare move of summoning an elderly man for questioning during his request for a retrial in a molestation case over which he has already served prison time.
Usually retrial requests are screened on paper, and it is unusual to directly question a former defendant. Lawyers for the 70-year-old man, whose name is being withheld, said they and prosecutors are due to submit their final opinions on the case to the district court at the end of February. Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Inquisitional and adversarial systems of justice
Tagged Chikan, Japan, Train Groping
TWO NAHUA INDIGENOUS MEN INCARCERATED IN MEXICO FOR NEARLY THREE YEARS FOR NOT SPEAKING SPANISH
José Ramón Aniceto Gómez (64-years-old) and Pascual Agustín Cruz (48-years-old) were recently exonerated by the Supreme Court of Mexico after almost three years in prison. The nahua men from Atla, a community north of Puebla, Mexico, were arrested in January of 2010. In 2008, the men were chosen by their community to lead a movement to ensure free water. If they were successful, their efforts would harm the economic and political interests of the Mexican PRI political party. The men were sentenced to six years and 10 months for a crime against which they could not even defend themselves because they did not speak Spanish.
Before the case was resolved, Amnesty International declared the men “prisoners of conscience” after more than 30,000 letters were delivered to the Mexican government asking for the men’s freedom. The Supreme Court of Mexico ruled in the men’s favor 4 to 1 after noting multiple inconsistencies in the case. Prosecutors claimed the men robbed a truck; a crime shown to never have occurred. The court also ruled the men’s due process rights were violated because they were not allowed access to an interpreter during their incarceration and trial process.
The men were defended by lawyers from the Center of Human Rights Augustín Pro Juárez. A representative from Amnesty International, Daniel Zapico, said “there may be many other cases of innocent people in jail.”
For more information visit the following source of this information: http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=326474 Photo credit to Centro Prodh
Tyrone Noling
Good luck to Ohio Innocence Project attorney Carrie Wood, who is arguing a death row case in the Ohio Supreme Court Tuesday morning, on behalf of Tyrone Noling. The State of Ohio has thus far denied Tyrone the right to DNA testing to prove his innocence, despite the fact that another person, with an M.O. for committing similar murders, subsequently confessed to committing this crime. It was also discovered (but not revealed to the defense before trial) that this person who later confessed had been a police suspect before trial. The State did serology testing (a primitive test before DNA testing existed) and this alternate suspect COULD NOT BE EXCLUDED as the source of biological material collected from the crime scene. But this was not turned over to defense and was only discovered years later through a public records request.
Also, all 3 cooperating witnesses against Tyrone have subsequently said Tyrone is innocent and they were pressured to testify falsely against him. All of this, and the State of Ohio will still not simply grant Tyrone a simple DNA test to see if the alternative suspect can be conclusively linked to the crime scene.
The Atlantic.com called Carrie’s argument Tuesday one of the 10 most significant legal events of 2013 in the U.S.
I mooted Carrie today and she was amazing. Tyrone couldn’t have a better attorney representing him in this important case. Prayers, thoughts and fingers crossed for Tyrone and Carrie.
The Ohio Public Defenders’ Office is representing Tyrone on all non-DNA issues, as they have for years.
You can watch the oral argument at about 10am EST here.
Why do innocent people confess to the crimes they did not commit? Here’s an article on the cause of false confessions in Japan by Mariko Oi (BBC). Watch the story online here.
Related articles about the Japanese Criminal Justice System: False Confessions as Major Cause of Wrongful Convictions in Japan, Audio and Visual Recording of Interrogations, Fukawa Case, and Compensation for the Wrongfully Convicted.
2 January 2013 Last updated at 00:29 GMT
By Mariko Oi BBC World Service, Tokyo
Japan has a conviction rate of more than 99%. But in recent months there has been a public outcry over a number of wrongful arrests where innocent people confessed to crimes.
It started with a threat posted on the city of Yokohama’s website in late June: “I’ll attack a primary school and kill all the children before the summer.”
In the months that followed, there were a number of similar threats posted on the internet – some threatening famous people, including the Emperor’s grandchildren.
After a police investigation, four people were arrested. Two, including a 19-year-old student, confessed whilst in custody.
But on 9 October, the real perpetrator sent an email to a lawyer – Yoji Ochiai – and local media, explaining how he or she made those threats by taking control of innocent internet users’ computers with a virus.
His or her purpose, as stated in the email to Ochiai, was “to expose the police and prosecutors’ abomination”.
And in a way, it did. It raised the question – why did the innocent people confess to a crime that they didn’t commit? What kind of pressure were they put under? Continue reading
As I posted here, Mainali Case revealed many problems of the Japanese criminal justice system. One of them is the law that permits prosecutors to appeal the acquittal verdict.
Japanese law does ban double jeopardy. Article 39 of the Constitution states: No person shall be held criminally liable for an act which was lawful at the time it was committed, or of which he had been acquitted, nor shall he be placed in double jeopardy.
However, the Supreme Court decided on September 27, 1950 that trials in district court, hight court and the Supreme Court for the same offence constitute a single jeopardy. Thus, there exists no double jeorpardy where the prosecutor appeal the acquittal at the district court. There has been many cases where this case law was challenged, but the Court has constantly upheld the decision. It was not even considered as an issue in the recent reform efforts.
Isn’t it about time we change this rule? Here is an excellent article by The Japan Times on this topic.
From The Japan Times Online :
Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012
Two recent high-profile exonerations have reignited calls by defense lawyers to require the full disclosure of evidence, and to let verdicts handed down by lay judges stand.
The lawyers for Nepalese Govinda Prasad Mainali, who on Nov. 7 was finally exonerated in absentia of a 1997 robbery-murder, went a step further and slammed the Japanese practice of allowing prosecutors to appeal acquittals — something other countries ban as double jeopardy. Continue reading
Studying other legal systems enables us to look back and clearly assess what is wrong with our own system. When I first started working for the Innocence Project Northwest last year, I was shocked to learn that the State of Washington has no law that ensures compensation to the wrongfully convicted (read the details here). In fact, many of the states in the US still have no compensation law (read the details here).
What about other countries? Here is the situation in Japan.
The Constitution of Japan (which was drafted after the WWII under the US occupation) states in Article 40: ” Any person, in case he is acquitted after he has been arrested or detained, may sue the State for redress as provided by law“. It ensures one the right to sue the State to get compensation in case he was wrongfully arrested or detained. In response to this Article, the Criminal Compensation Act (1950) specifies the details of the compensation.
Article 4 of the Act provides that the amount of compensation given will be decided by the court. The court shall set the rate of compensation by considering how the person was detained, the length of detention, the person’s loss of property, physical and mental pain he/ she had to suffer, and negligence by the police and prosecutors. The minimum daily rate is 1,000 yen (12.5 USD) per day he/ she was detained, and the maximum is 12,500 yen (about 155 USD). See the table below for the amount given to exonerees in past cases.
The wrongfully arrested/ detained can also file a lawsuit against the State under the State Redress Act (Act No. 125 of 1947). However, to win the lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove that “a public officer who exercises the public authority of the State or of a
public entity has, in the course of his/her duties, unlawfully inflicted damage
on another person intentionally or negligently” (Art. 1 of the Redress Act. Emphasis added. Translation by Japanese Law Translation).
It is extremly hard to prove the intention or negligence of the public officer since the State has all the evidence about the case, and the lawsuit takes a lot of time and resources. Only about 6% of the lawsuits under the Redress Act end in favor of the plaintiff. This system needs much reform.
So how much compensation will Govinda Mainali (recent exoneree) get for his 15 years of detention? Here’s an article by Daily Yomiuri Online.
From Daily Yomiuri Online.
Excerpt: Chihiro Iwasaki and Kotaro Kodama / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers
From truth-out.org:
Henry Alford was accused of murder and faced the death penalty. The prosecution said there was enough evidence that could possibly have been sufficient to cause a jury to convict him. Alford was offered and took a plea bargain, despite his pronouncement of innocence.
As Alford’s public defender, Tracie Olson, stated: “The evidence was strong but Henry said he was innocent. Henry, however, pled guilty to a charge of 2nd degree murder in order to avoid the death penalty .”
Olson also told reporters that even though she had no idea as to the guilt or innocence of Alford when she took his plea, “I’ve been a criminal defense attorney in Yolo County since 1998, and I truly believe that innocent people have taken pleas because they felt they were in a situation like Henry’s.”
Long Beach High School football star Brian Banks offers yet another example of how a person wrongfully imprisoned (in this case for rape) based upon his own “‘voluntary’ act” of writing a guilty confession, took a plea agreement in defiance of the facts and against his own best interests.
In May of this year, thanks to the California Innocence Project, Mr. Banks was exonerated by a court after serving five years for the rape he did not commit but pleaded guilty to.
American’s founding fathers understood that one of the greatest forms of tyranny the government could engage in was bringing criminal charges against its subjects, or citizens. A large number of amendments were added to the US Constitution in an attempt to assure the rights of those charged with criminal offenses. These include the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Rights of an accused criminal include the right to the presumption of innocence, the right to due process, the right to be informed of charges against them and the right of a defendant to confront their accusers in a court of law. The constitution also provides defendants the right to an impartial, fair and speedy jury trial with the assistance of counsel, and defendants have the right to cross-examine witnesses used against them. It is the government that has the burden of proving the guilt of those charged with a grave crime and beyond reasonable doubt, but even a cursory look at the judicial landscape illustrates this is more theory than fact.
Pleading for Bargains as Opposed to Arguing for Justice
A criminal plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case where the defendant pleads guilty to a crime, usually to a lesser crime than the original charge, and as a result, waives his or her right to a jury trial. Unbelievably, in the modern criminal system, more than 90 percent of all criminal charges are resolved through plea bargains. It is a system based not on the presumption of innocence, but on the contrary – on the presumption of guilt. Arm-twisting defendants, many of them poor and people of color, into plea bargains means that the government does not have to shoulder its burden of proving the guilt of those they charge with crimes and can simply shirk the constitution for expediency.
Plea bargaining has become historically ubiquitous as the principal, if not primary, method of criminal case disposition in the United States and a historical canker sore on the judicial system. Even as early as 1920, it was thought that 88 percent of convictions in New York were via guilty pleas, up from 22 percent just over 80 years earlier.
As the New York Times reported in an editorial piece on July 16, 2012: “Earlier this year an opinion for the Supreme Court by Justice Anthony Kennedy noted a stunning and often overlooked reality of the American legal process: a vast majority of criminal cases – 97 percent of federal cases, 94 percent of state cases – are resolved by guilty pleas. Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system, of trials.”
This opinion was based on a Supreme Court ruling back in March of 2012, a ruling involving two people who were proven to have ended up with stiffer sentences than they might have received had their lawyers not failed them while plea bargaining. The two defendants took their case all the way to the highest court, each of them asking the Supreme Court to invalidate their sentences under the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of effective assistance of counsel.
The court, by a close vote of 5-4 in both cases, accepted the defendants’ arguments and ruled in their favor, upholding Missouri v. Frye, the legal ruling that provides a constitutional guarantee of a fair trial and judicious plea bargaining. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote on behalf of himself and four of his colleagues, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The plea bargain system is really based upon coercion, a legal form of extortion by the state. Prosecutors coerce defendants into pleading guilty by piling on charge after charge, and judges coerce those charged by making it known that the punishment will be much milder if you plead guilty than if you lose after exercising your supposed constitutional rights and go to trial. Retribution can be as swift. Like the Inquisition, this system of duress too frequently results in innocent individuals entering guilty pleas they never would have if the constitution was really put into play.
The current system of plea bargaining has corrupted criminal defense law as it stampedes the constitution, leaving in its wake intimidation and fear. In practice, a defense lawyer’s main job is negotiating guilty pleas and subsequent sentences, not defending the criminally accused, as many would believe. Instead, because over 90 percent of criminal cases are resolved through plea bargains, the economics of defense lawyers depends on pushing paper and maintaining good relationships with prosecutors; therefore, it is not uncommon for defense attorneys to allow a client to “take a fall” rather than accuse a prosecutor of misconduct and risk legal retaliation in future cases. Crony legalism is an essential part of crony capitalism, and nowhere is this better seen than in the halls of justice.
Do Plea Bargains Allow Criminals to Get Off Easy?
Popular culture, disseminated by Hollywood movies and television series, depict plea bargains as a way of allowing those accused of a crime to escape justice and “get off easy.” In reality, usually the opposite is true.
Plea bargains allow prosecutors to bring charges against far more people than the legal system could process through a system of judicial trials. Thus, they create the material conditions for their own replication. Because less than 10 percent of criminal cases, federal and state, go to trial, plea bargains in effect allow the state to prosecute ten times more cases than they could handled at trial.
Plea bargains are also essential for stocking for-profit prisons with a steady supply of “customers” for their corporate shareholders. Plea bargaining both enlists and perpetuates the principles of mass production, deception and mendacity, which in turn are applied quite readily in the whole of our system of criminal “justice.”
Plea bargaining has also become an essential element of both mushrooming Continue reading
Govinda Prasad Mainali, the Nepalese man convicted of killing a woman in 1997, was finally acquitted today by the Tokyo High Court. It is reported that the prosecutors will not appeal the decision. Mainali has already gone back to his home country.
Read my previous post on this case here.
From The Mainichi:
The Tokyo High Court acquitted a Nepalese man, who had been released in June and returned home after serving a prison term for a murder he never committed, in a retrial on Nov. 7.
The court upheld the Tokyo District Court’s initial ruling in April 2000 that found Govinda Prasad Mainali, 46, not guilty. Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Exonerations, Inquisitional and adversarial systems of justice
Tagged Govinda Mainali, Japan
My previous post on Iizuka Case here. This is a case from 1992 where two girls were killed in Iizuka City, Fukuoka Prefecture. Michitoshi Kuma was convicted as the perpetrator of the murders, and he was executed in 2008. He maintained his innocence until his death.
Efforts to exonerate Kuma posthumously has been going on after his death. His widow filed a motion for a retrial to the Fukuoka District Court in 1993, and his lawyers has been trying to get new DNA testing results from the evidence in this case.
Last week, his lawyers revealed a new DNA testing result. From The Mainichi News:
Posted in Asia, Capital punishment, Inquisitional and adversarial systems of justice
Tagged Iizuka Case, Japan
My previous post on Govinda Mainali’s Case here. This is a 1997 case where a Nepalese man was convicted of killing a woman in Tokyo.
The retrial was held on October 29th at the Tokyo High Court. The prosecutors argued for Mainali’s innocence, saying that Mainali was accused of a crime he did not commit. The court will hand down the ruling next week, on November 7th. The prosecution will not appeal the not-guilty ruling, and the decision will be finalized soon.
Mainali’s case will be the 8th case in Japan after WWII where the defendant was declared innocent after the retrial in a death penalty/ life imprisonment case.
Takayuki Aoki (Tokyo High Prosecutor’s Office) made a comment after the retrial. He said that the investigation and the first trial itself were not problematic. He did state that he is sorry that Mr. Mainali was wrongfully accused and detained for a long time as the perpetrator. However, there was no apology given from the prosecution at the retrial hearing. They still take the position that the their accusation was inevitable, and the circumstances have changed since the new DNA testing results became available.
Typical problems surrounding the Japanese criminal justice system were present during the course of the trial and the retrial of the Mainali case: lengthy detention during investigation, interrogations coerced by the police and prosecutors, prosecutors appealing the decision to grant retrial, and non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence by the prosecution. It is reported that the police and prosecutors will not hold a thorough investigation of what went wrong in this particular case. If we sincerely regret what happened and are determined to never let it happen again, shouldn’t we thoroughly examine the cause of wrongful conviction in each and every case?
From the New York Times:
There is a memorable line at the end of “Call Northside 777,” a splendid 1948 film based on a true story. It’s about a Chicago reporter who becomes convinced that an innocent man was sent to state prison for the murder of a police officer years earlier. He works relentlessly to right this terrible wrong. When the man is finally freed, the reporter, played by James Stewart, says to him, “It’s a big thing when a sovereign state admits an error.”
Yes, it is. And it is a big thing that the sovereign state of New York inched closer on Wednesday to admitting a whopping error of its own. It may take a while before it gets all the way there, though.
On Wednesday, a woman and a man who had been in prison for a murder that federal investigators are convinced they did not commit walked out of the Bronx criminal courts building, and breathed freedom for the first time in nearly two decades.
Cathy Watkins, 44, and Eric Glisson, 37, were among several people found guilty in the 1995 killing of a livery cabdriver, a Senegalese immigrant named Baithe Diop. They were jailed in 1995, and convicted in 1997. She went to the Bedford Continue reading
The Scots have been making a lot of headlines in the UK this week after signing an agreement with the British Prime Minister that they can hold a referendum seeking full independence from the UK. However, they have always had their own legal system, entirely separate from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This legal system has just been the subject of a major review, which has recently reported.
The Carloway Review has recommended the abolition of the Scots corroboration rule, that requires that each piece of evidence adduced during a trial is supported by two sources. This requirement has always been the subject of envy by those south of the border who work in the field of miscarriages of justice, albeit that there are still people wrongly convicted in Scotland. However, Lord Carloway’s recommendation that the rule be abolished, as it has ‘no place in a modern legal system’, is meeting with fierce resistance. Each of the professional bodies for judges, advocates, and lawyers, have come out against the move, arguing that it would seriously increase the risk of miscarriages of justice and decrease confidence in the legal system. Read more here…
The corroboration rule is one that acts as a significant safeguard against miscarriages of justice and it is a shame that the rule does not apply in English and Welsh courts. With each piece of evidence requiring corroboration, many false allegations of sexual assault etc. cannot be prosecuted as they cannot be supported independently. However, this is one reason the corroboration rule is at risk of being eradicated, because it makes it harder to achieve convictions, particular in cases of domestic violence or sexual offences where it can be merely one person’s word against another. We shall watch the Scottish debate with interest.
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Wrongful Convictions Blog 