A guy spent 26 years in prison...and now it turns out someone else confessed to the murder that he is in jail for. I can't imagine spending 26 years in jail for a crime I didn't commit. At 54, he has spent almost half his life behind bars. At least he is getting out now, but wow.
The guy who confessed is dead now, so it will be tough to know for sure if it was the truth, but man if someone else committed the murder, that is terrible for the guy who spent 26 years of his life in jail.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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I can't imagine what it would have been like to be the guilty guy's lawyer. They should create a loophole in attorney client privilege in cases where someone else is being punished for something and lawyers aren't allowed to talk about it.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Working on the assumption that the jailed man was innocent, what kind of compensation do you get for 26 years of your life wasted? It's probably a little hard to just blend back in with society after being absent for so long.
Posts: 278 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: It's things like this that are exactly why I'm against the death penalty.
I agree. Imagine dying for someone else's crime.
But maybe if you let them choose if they wanted to die or have life in prison. I know someone people who would rather have a quick death than being trapped in a cell for forever.
Posts: 48 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by happysmiley: But maybe if you let them choose if they wanted to die or have life in prison. I know someone people who would rather have a quick death than being trapped in a cell for forever.
That sort of eliminates the idea of punishment, doesn't it?
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Perhaps, but I think a more important question is would it undermine the concept of justice? Justice and punishment aren't as intertwined as some people are prone to believe.
I would view it as more just to allow them a choice between life imprisonment and death. It's not like either option is really very sunny.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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Its really sad to think about all the things in life this guy missed out on while he was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit.
Think about all the things people normally do between the age of 26 and 54 -- marriage, children, career, buying a house, saving for retirement etc.
And when you look at that list, you realize that this guy lost a lot more than the 26 years her spent.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
This reminds me of the Darryl Hunt case. I am familiar with it because I live about 20 minutes north of Winston-Salem.
I think that many white people in power figure that being poor, black, uneducated, and male is a crime in and of itself.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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Maybe I'm just really emotional/cynical over these types of things, but assuming he really is innocent, I just don't get the feeling anyone really grasps how horrible this is. Hearing someone utter the word "unfortunate" in that article makes me upset.
Posts: 349 | Registered: Jul 2006
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Grace me with the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: It's things like this that are exactly why I'm against the death penalty.
I guess it does not necessarily follow that you favor life imprisonment then, but couldn't a mistake of this magnitude necessitate the removal of the entire prison concept as well?
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: It's things like this that are exactly why I'm against the death penalty.
I guess it does not necessarily follow that you favor life imprisonment then, but couldn't a mistake of this magnitude necessitate the removal of the entire prison concept as well?
No, because life is the only thing that we can really take from someone that we can't give back.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:I can't imagine what it would have been like to be the guilty guy's lawyer. They should create a loophole in attorney client privilege in cases where someone else is being punished for something and lawyers aren't allowed to talk about it.
Would you have the lawyers' testimony be allowed only to defend the potentially innocent man, or allow it to be used against the lawyers' client as well? I haven't formed an opinion on this, I'm just curious about your views.
This is one of the stickiest question in legal ethics - not that the answer is unsettled, but because it's not clear that the currently enforced answer is the most ethical one.
On the one hand, without privilege, it's likely these lawyers wouldn't know about the confession. On the other, given that they do have the information, their fulfillment of their ethical obligations prevented a potentially innocent man from getting a new trial.
For those interested, here's the model rule on the subject:
quote:Client-Lawyer Relationship Rule 1.6 Confidentiality Of Information
(a) A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b).
(b) A lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary:
(1) to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm;
(2) to prevent the client from committing a crime or fraud that is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another and in furtherance of which the client has used or is using the lawyer's services;
(3) to prevent, mitigate or rectify substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another that is reasonably certain to result or has resulted from the client's commission of a crime or fraud in furtherance of which the client has used the lawyer's services;
(4) to secure legal advice about the lawyer's compliance with these Rules;
(5) to establish a claim or defense on behalf of the lawyer in a controversy between the lawyer and the client, to establish a defense to a criminal charge or civil claim against the lawyer based upon conduct in which the client was involved, or to respond to allegations in any proceeding concerning the lawyer's representation of the client; or
(6) to comply with other law or a court order.
Interestingly, (b)(1) may have allowed them to come forward if the potentially innocent person had been sentenced to death. (Not meant as an argument for the death penalty.) Note that the exception to allow prevention of death or substantial bodily harm is significantly broader than the exception to protect property. Only the reasonable certainty of such harm is required; for property, the lawyer must somehow have contributed to the danger to the property, and the cause must be crime or fraud.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I guess it does not necessarily follow that you favor life imprisonment then, but couldn't a mistake of this magnitude necessitate the removal of the entire prison concept as well?
No, because life is the only thing that we can really take from someone that we can't give back.
You can't return time either.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: It's things like this that are exactly why I'm against the death penalty.
I guess it does not necessarily follow that you favor life imprisonment then, but couldn't a mistake of this magnitude necessitate the removal of the entire prison concept as well?
No, because life is the only thing that we can really take from someone that we can't give back.
Juxtapose beat me to it. I don't think that guy can get his 26 years back. Nor can we undo whatever stress or trauma he experienced while a prisoner.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Juxtapose beat me to it. I don't think that guy can get his 26 years back. Nor can we undo whatever stress or trauma he experienced while a prisoner.
No we can't undo what's been done. Even if he had solely been accused and tried but not convicted, we would have done harm to him that could not be entirely undone. However, because he is still alive we can do somethings that will help to ameliorate the harm. We can seek to make restitution. We can suspend his sentence. We can give him aid and support to reclaim what is left of his life. If he had been executed, that would not be possible.
Remember that the finality of death is one of the reasons we consider murder a crime deserving of such serious punishment in the first place.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:In 1994, DNA testing cleared Hunt of any sexual assault, and because sexual assault was at the heart of the murder case, the murder charges were then in question. In December 2003, Willard E. Brown confessed to the 1984 rape and stabbing death of Deborah Sykes after DNA testing linked him to the crime. His confession led to the release of Darryl Hunt, who had served about 18 years of a life sentence for a crime he always denied committing.
On February 6, 2004, Superior Court Judge Anderson Cromer vacated Hunt's murder conviction in the case. Cromer dismissed the case against Hunt "with prejudice," meaning he can never be tried in the murder again.
I'm really curious why this man wasn't granted a retrial for 10 years after DNA evidence proved he was innocent of the rape charge.
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posted
"I'm really curious why this man wasn't granted a retrial for 10 years after DNA evidence proved he was innocent of the rape charge."
"American Justice system" is quite often an oxymoron. I actually think it's because, during the investigation, the Winston-Salem police department had engaged in such egregious misconduct that they felt they had to put pressure on the right people to keep this situation under wraps. They fudged it up, big-time, and the wikipedia doesn't seem to go into that. Did you notice that the city awarded Darryl Hunt about 1.6 million? After reading the full text of all that the police did wrong in this case, including the knowing suppression of evidence, I feel that Darryl Hunt deserves to own every cop in the department as slaves. 1.6 million is a pittance, in light of what happened. He's still getting screwed, with such a low dollar amount.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: It's things like this that are exactly why I'm against the death penalty.
I guess it does not necessarily follow that you favor life imprisonment then, but couldn't a mistake of this magnitude necessitate the removal of the entire prison concept as well?
No, because life is the only thing that we can really take from someone that we can't give back.
Juxtapose beat me to it. I don't think that guy can get his 26 years back. Nor can we undo whatever stress or trauma he experienced while a prisoner.
Rabbit beat me to it.
With prison, we can at least make up for a mistake somewhat. With death, you can't even get that.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Would you have the lawyers' testimony be allowed only to defend the potentially innocent man, or allow it to be used against the lawyers' client as well? I haven't formed an opinion on this, I'm just curious about your views.
My short answer would be that it would be allowed only to defend an innocent man, and would not be admissible evidence against the lawyers' client.
The question that remains, I guess, is whether it should be available in any other form. As you say, the guy who confessed to his lawyer probably would not have if it weren't for privilege. But just because the confession couldn't be used in court doesn't mean the police wouldn't act on it by searching for evidence in a legal manner, but informed by the confession. It would create a situation where evidence would need to be kept completely secret even though a court decision was explicitly based on it. Family of the victim sure wouldn't like that.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Juxtapose beat me to it. I don't think that guy can get his 26 years back. Nor can we undo whatever stress or trauma he experienced while a prisoner.
No we can't undo what's been done. Even if he had solely been accused and tried but not convicted, we would have done harm to him that could not be entirely undone. However, because he is still alive we can do somethings that will help to ameliorate the harm. We can seek to make restitution. We can suspend his sentence. We can give him aid and support to reclaim what is left of his life. If he had been executed, that would not be possible.
Remember that the finality of death is one of the reasons we consider murder a crime deserving of such serious punishment in the first place.
Well I for one don't believe in the finality of death. For the sake of being up front, I think that all death sentences handed down prior to the advent of DNA testing plus 10 years should be commuted to life imprisonment until retesting, if possible can be conducted.
Conversely however, I feel forensic science has gotten so good that we can safely find somebody guilty of a capital crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Conversely however, I feel forensic science has gotten so good that we can safely find somebody guilty of a capital crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
I suspect you are suffering from the prosecutor's fallacy. Consider: I take a sperm sample from a rape victim. It matches the accused's DNA. The chance of such a match occurring at random are one in a million. What is the chance that the accused is innocent?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Conversely however, I feel forensic science has gotten so good that we can safely find somebody guilty of a capital crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
I suspect you are suffering from the prosecutor's fallacy. Consider: I take a sperm sample from a rape victim. It matches the accused's DNA. The chance of such a match occurring at random are one in a million. What is the chance that the accused is innocent?
DNA testing it typically better than that. But again I said forensic science, not DNA testing. I wouldn't feel comfortable convicting somebody who had an alibi, no probable cause, and just a matching DNA sample.
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Interestingly, (b)(1) may have allowed them to come forward if the potentially innocent person had been sentenced to death. (Not meant as an argument for the death penalty.) Note that the exception to allow prevention of death or substantial bodily harm is significantly broader than the exception to protect property. Only the reasonable certainty of such harm is required; for property, the lawyer must somehow have contributed to the danger to the property, and the cause must be crime or fraud. [/QUOTE]
Would (b)(1), the possibility of substantial bodily harm be reasonably applied to this situation, despite the fact that the death penalty was not applied? I mean to say, doesn't sending someone to prison for a life sentence constitute a danger of substantial bodily harm? Failing that, it seems that this would be enormously damaging to the properties, for instance businesses or personal holdings of the convicted person, their families, etc. If the death penalty might force a lawyer to act, what makes life in prison so much more acceptable given that all else might be equal.
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quote:My short answer would be that it would be allowed only to defend an innocent man, and would not be admissible evidence against the lawyers' client.
My briefly-considered opinion is that if we make an exception for that, it should only be used to defend an innocent man. But I still have significant problems with it - one of which you touch on below.
quote:The question that remains, I guess, is whether it should be available in any other form. As you say, the guy who confessed to his lawyer probably would not have if it weren't for privilege. But just because the confession couldn't be used in court doesn't mean the police wouldn't act on it by searching for evidence in a legal manner, but informed by the confession. It would create a situation where evidence would need to be kept completely secret even though a court decision was explicitly based on it. Family of the victim sure wouldn't like that.
There's already a mechanism in place for such situations. When someone is forced to testify and they assert the 5th amendment, they can be given immunity.
Immunity comes in two forms: transactional immunity, which means that the person can't be prosecuted for any crime associated with the testimony (not counting perjury during that testimony), and use immunity, which means that the testimony can't be used against the person forced to testify.
The situation here would be similar to use immunity, which protects against introduction of the actual testimony as well as evidence discovered because of the testimony. In most cases, use immunity results in no charges being filed. But, in some cases, they will set up a wall between the investigators and the testimony to keep additional evidence they discover from being "poisoned."
The analysis is similar to "fruit of the poisoned tree" analysis for search and seizure and Miranda cases.
quote:Would (b)(1), the possibility of substantial bodily harm be reasonably applied to this situation, despite the fact that the death penalty was not applied? I mean to say, doesn't sending someone to prison for a life sentence constitute a danger of substantial bodily harm?
Not in and of itself, at least under current interpretations. There would be interesting arguments to make concerning the likelihood of assault in prison.
quote:Failing that, it seems that this would be enormously damaging to the properties, for instance businesses or personal holdings of the convicted person, their families, etc.
But the property protection has exceptions that keep them from applying here.
quote:If the death penalty might force a lawyer to act, what makes life in prison so much more acceptable given that all else might be equal.
The exception was written to account not to avoid punishment of innocents, but to avoid situations of public danger. The fact that it might be used with the death penalty (untested as far as I know) is not the intended effect. So it's likely that the distinction between life in prison and the death penalty hasn't been fully considered by those making the model rules.
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quote: (3) to prevent, mitigate or rectify substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another that is reasonably certain to result or has resulted from the client's commission of a crime or fraud in furtherance of which the client has used the lawyer's services;
Wouldn't this exception apply? Revealing the confession would rectify the substantial injury to the financial interests of the man in prison. Because he spent the substantive income earning years in prison he did suffer injury to his financial interests. Or does financial interest refer to concrete finances - property, stocks etc? In other words does income potential fall under financial interests?
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Lost income might qualify as financial loss, but the problem is that the guilty person didn't use the lawyer's services in furtherance of the crime. Therefore, the exception does not apply.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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So I suppose Dag, that we might look forward to a case in which the protection is tested along these lines. But my question is, how does a case such as this one appear before a court? If the lawyer breaks confidentiality, whether he does so in violation of the protection or not, wouldn't the evidence he presents then be fair game for exonerating the innocent party?
So would the test be done in a case where the lawyer's former client is being charged with the crime? In that case, in what stage of the process would the protection be tested, and would the result of the test effect the outcome for the innocent party?
It just seems to me that as an officer of the court, a lawyer ought to have some recourse for exonerating an innocent man- I believe that the saying goes: better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted. If it meant sacrificing the possibility of punishment for the guilty man, I would still want the innocent man to be exonerated. And then yet again, that possibility invites abuse as well.
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(Dag, I came close to emailing you links to these since I thought you might appreciate the issues and Miner's attempts to grapple with them.)
Clarification: the first link is to a published column that Miner writes for the Chicago Reader. The second is to an entry in his blog.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Rereading Mike Miner's accounts, I'm reminded that the Alton Logan case came out of a particularly ugly - and recent - chapter in Chicago history.
It's been pretty well established that a group of police officers used torture to elicit confessions. Prosecutorial misconduct was pretty widespread.
Things are better now or at least we like to think so.
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I think the importance of the privilege is not intuitive to most laypeople - it's simply not a natural moral calculation. And the absolute commitment to it in most lawyers is probably not questioned often enough.
I think it's pretty clear that they followed the ethical rules as they existed at the time. And we have those rules, and ask lawyers to take an oath to follow them, because we don't want individual judgment to justify overstepping certain ethical lines.
So I'm not in favor of lawyers necessarily going against the ethical rules. Rather, the questioning should be about changing the rules. There needs to a vigorous discussion of the issues involved here.
Without a strong privilege, the right to effective assistance of counsel is essentially meaningless. And there are situations where respecting the privilege undoubtedly leads to harm - including the harm of allowing a guilty person who most likely will harm others to go free.
Some exceptions to privilege - such as those listed above in the excerpt of the model rules - can be made without making the privilege too weak. The question we need to ask is what kinds of harms are significant enough to justify an exception. I hope this triggers an in-depth discussion in the profession and outside it.
I'd hate to see that discussion limited to just this situation, though. Moreover, I hope the flip side is fully explored.
*In the above, I use the term "privilege" as a shorthand for the attorney's duty of confidentiality under the model rules. The duty of confidentiality is broader than the attorney client privilege.
quote:So I suppose Dag, that we might look forward to a case in which the protection is tested along these lines.
I doubt it. I think the discussion has to happen in the context of hypothetical ethical situations and proposed rule changes. It's pretty clear what the rule says now.
quote:It just seems to me that as an officer of the court, a lawyer ought to have some recourse for exonerating an innocent man- I believe that the saying goes: better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted.
The problem is that the consequence of making the privilege unreliable is the possible inability to provide effective legal assistance, which could cause a lot more than one innocent person to be found guilty.
Effective representation of guilty defendants provides a LOT of protection for innocent defendants.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:The problem is that the consequence of making the privilege unreliable is the possible inability to provide effective legal assistance, which could cause a lot more than one innocent person to be found guilty.
Would it be possible to devise a rule that would allow a lawyer to divulge information that would exonerate a third party (not his client) that would effectively prohibit that information from being used against his client?
I can see lots of problems with actual implementation of the last part. Even if the evidence was not permitted in court, it might be exploited by the media. Public broadcasting of damning evidence would hurt a client even if it they were never convicted. There is certainly enough danger in public disclosure to make any sensible person reticent to share with their lawyer. Even if the evidence could be sealed from public access, it might tip off prosecutors to build a case against the person when they hadn't previously considered it.
On a side note, cases like these make it evident why our founding fathers wrote so many protections for the accused into the constitution. I'm not sure exactly why so many of those provisions have become so unpopular in recent years.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Would it be possible to devise a rule that would allow a lawyer to divulge information that would exonerate a third party (not his client) that would effectively prohibit that information from being used against his client?
Yes, along the lines of use immunity (discussed above) and the associated protections. And it would have to be use immunity - if it were transactional immunity, it would create an incentive to frame innocents and then disclose to prevent the innocents' conviction.
quote:I can see lots of problems with actual implementation of the last part. Even if the evidence was not permitted in court, it might be exploited by the media. Public broadcasting of damning evidence would hurt a client even if it they were never convicted. There is certainly enough danger in public disclosure to make any sensible person reticent to share with their lawyer. Even if the evidence could be sealed from public access, it might tip off prosecutors to build a case against the person when they hadn't previously considered it.
This summarizes the problem nicely. Moreover, the extent of how it can be used needs to be examined. For example, if someone stole a million dollars and his lawyer disclosed guilt to protect an innocent, could the victims of the theft recover civilly?
quote:On a side note, cases like these make it evident why our founding fathers wrote so many protections for the accused into the constitution. I'm not sure exactly why so many of those provisions have become so unpopular in recent years.
Many of the provisions that have become unpopular are not actually in the constitution. Miranda and the exclusionary rule are the prime examples.
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