Two deer hunters were gunned down in rural Michigan in 1990.
Jeff Titus, then 39, was a nearby property owner. Mere proximity to the crime scene made him a suspect. But no physical evidence linked him to the crime, and he was hunting 27 miles away when the murders occurred. Police cleared him.
There was a plausible suspect: A serial killer named Thomas Dillon was stalking hunters, fishermen, and joggers in nearby Ohio at the time, and two witnesses — a woman and her son — placed Dillon near the scene of the Michigan murders. This information was filed away in the sheriff’s office. Also stashed in that file was information that a cellmate of Dillon told the FBI that Dillon had “referred to killing two people in woods.”
Cops are expected to solve cases, and 12 years later a “new team of investigators” at the sheriff’s office went after Titus. They had no new evidence, but charged Titus with the murders anyway, effectively second-guessing their predecessors who had cleared him. At his trial, prosecutors portrayed him as “a hothead who didn’t like trespassers.” Somehow a jury concluded from that flimsy speculation that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Since then “innocence projects” have sprung up across the country, typically based at law schools, including in Michigan. Titus spent 21 years in prison before the file was discovered by researchers working on his behalf. Based on its contents, a judge threw out Titus’ conviction, and he walked out of prison a free man on Friday, February 24, 2023 (read story here).
“How that information was not … provided to the prosecutor’s office before charges were authorized and then the trial happened — I don’t know whether or not we’ll ever have a good answer,” the current prosecutor said. We do know that information was known at the sheriff’s office, and went no farther. There is no good answer, and the cops who pinned the murders on Titus were at best sloppy when they reinvestigated the case.
Not all police investigators are dishonest or negligent but some are, and you don’t know which ones, so you should never trust police. This case shows why. How the Michigan sheriff’s detectives brought murder charges against a man with an alibi without any evidence linking him to the crime can only be attributed to a corrupt motive to “clear” cases at any cost. They robbed an innocent man of his reputation and 21 years of his life.
This isn’t an isolated case. Hundred or thousands of innocent people have been convicted of murder and other serious crimes, dozens of them sent to death rows. In many of those cases, DNA proved their innocence. And being innocent, they could only have been convicted with flimsy evidence (such as questionable eyewitness testimony), or based on pure speculation as in this case.
On paper, “beyond a reasonable doubt” seems like a high hurdle for prosecutors and strong protection of the innocent. Then how does a case like this get over that “high bar” and result in a conviction? In reality, when police investigators are lazy, dishonest, or unethical it’s no hurdle at all. It’s nothing more than a dice roll.
Snake eyes, you’re guilty!
What’s the solution? Smarter juries? Judges intervening? That’s complicated, because you don’t want the guilty to go free, either. I think the legal system needs better mechanisms for addressing its mistakes after they’ve occurred.
But the conservative Supreme Court has been going in the opposite direction by slamming the door shut on “actual innocence” appeals by throwing up technical procedural barriers, thereby condemning wrongly-convicted citizens to unjust imprisonment. The rightwing justices want what the police want: Closing the books on cases, no matter how flawed the investigation was.