Former D.A. and Judge Ken Anderson
In yesterday’s post, we reported the release of Ryan Ferguson from a Missouri prison after he spent all of his formative twenties behind bars for a murder he did not commit. After reading this “good” news, our friend and correspondent Christine Leonhardt brought us the details of someone in Texas who is on his way to jail. He will only be there ten days, but the sentence is highly significant nonetheless.
For the first time, a prosecutor is going to jail for the wrongful conviction of an innocent person.
Ken Anderson, a state judge and former Williamson County District Attorney, pled guilty to criminal contempt for intentionally failing to disclose exculpatory evidence in the trial of Michael Morton for the murder of his wife. Anderson had statements from the only eyewitness that Morton was not at the scene. As a result, Morton was convicted and spent 25 years in prison.
In an editorial, the Dallas Morning News called the sentence “ridiculously light,” and we agree. But the fact that it was imposed at all should serve as a timely wakeup call.
In addition to the ten days in jail, Anderson, who stepped down from the bench in September, will also have to surrender his law license and perform 500 hours of community service.
As Mark Godsey, a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and Director of the Ohio Innocence Project explained for Huffington Post, “What makes [the] plea newsworthy is not that Anderson engaged in misconduct that sent an innocent man to prison. Indeed, while most prosecutors and police officers are ethical and take their constitutional obligations seriously, government misconduct – including disclosure breaches known as Brady violations – occurs so frequently that it has become one of the chief causes of wrongful misconduct.”
You may recall that the prosecutor in the Duke University lacrosse case was sanctioned and humiliated, but if prosecutors start thinking about the prospect of doing time for screwing with evidence, they might think twice. As we mentioned yesterday, the district or United States attorney’s primary job is to see that justice is done, which involves not only prosecuting those he believes evidence shows to be guilty, but also protecting those whom evidence indicates are innocent.
Professor Godsey suggests a very direct means of holding prosecutors more accountable. He believes that trial judges on all state and federal levels should issue “standing ethical rule orders.” These orders, proposed by retired U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner and Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck, would require prosecutors to disclose before the trial begins, any evidence that, “tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense.”
“The reason such standing ethical rule orders are important,” Godsey states, “is that they allow prosecutors, like Ken Anderson, to be held in criminal contempt if they are later found to have engaged in misconduct.”
We have sometimes clashed with Barry Scheck over what we perceive to be cases in which he is too eager to get new trials when the evidence of guilt is overwhelming. But this proposal deserves to be implemented everywhere. Bad prosecution, including use of coerced and false confessions, questionable jailhouse snitches and junk science, has been responsible for too many innocent men and women going to prison.
While the overwhelming number of convictions are accurate and just, any meaningful step like this we can take to protect the system against rogue prosecutors is a protection for all of us.
I think the biggest challenge Justice faces is the fact that defense attorneys and prosecutors are trained in the same schools.
Defense attorneys must use every option at their disposal to get their clients acquitted. To do less is to injure the way our justice system works. If a guilty person is charged incorrectly without due process and successfully prosecuted we set a precedent whereby YOU maybe charged without due process.
Prosecutors on the other hand are NOT there to overcome the defense but to assure that Justice is done. If there is insufficient evidence to convict no prosecution should be undertaken. If during the course of evidence gathering it comes to light that the accused is innocent of the crime the prosecution should be terminated.
When an innocent person is wrongfully convicted of a crime no one “wins.” The wrongfully convicted and their families live in turmoil. The guilty persons continue in their crimes validated that they got away with something.
A Step in the Right Direction, the First time a prosecutor is going to Jail for the wrongful conviction of an innocent person.
This may be just a First, but where this “First” could be a precursor..it is other things that will begin to lead towards this to be viewed.
Such as: November 4th, 2013/Mindhunters Article
Judge Mike Heavey- Judges For Justice 11/4/2013
Judges for Justice’s mission statement explains:
A wrongful conviction is a failure of the justice system in the most fundamental sense. Our mission is to provide independent, impartial and experienced judicial analysis of cases of alleged innocence. We use our experience in an effort to make a neutral and independent analysis of the case. An independent judicial evaluation may be instrumental to governors, parole boards, the press, and other interested parties in their assessment of innocence. In appropriate cases, it may expedite the release of the innocent.
A nonprofit organization made up of former judges whose stock in trade is to be both impartial and incisive can be a powerful force for both justice and truth. They will be skeptical of all claims, but understand the dynamics of investigation and trial so as to get to the facts of what really happened.
We wish Judges for Justice all the best and look forward to joining them in their efforts. There’s a First, and then there’s things that can lead into more than just a First.