I’ve never been to Texas, so I only have impressions of the place, mostly unfavorable.
There’s the politics, of course, and a criminal justice system that’s downright frightening. Texas is the state most likely to execute an innocent person. There have been close calls, and at least one likely mistake.
I shudder every time I read about another innocent person victimized by Texas’s corrupt system. A c0uple months ago, I reviewed John Grisham’s book about lying cops and a shady prosecutor who railroaded a town drunk into decades in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.
Today’s episode comes from a news story (here) about another victim of that system. After 20 years on death row, 3 trials, and 47 years of appeals, he was exonerated and freed by an appeals court that said his trial was “riddled with state misconduct.”
The court said “evidence favorable to [him] was withheld and … some of the evidence presented … was later revealed to be false.” But it doesn’t stop there. The decision continues, “And when it comes to solid support for actual innocence, this case contains it all — uncontroverted Brady violations, proof of false testimony, admissions of perjury, and new scientific evidence.”
The question isn’t only how such cases slip through the system’s supposed safeguards; it’s also why it took so long to correct so plainly a wrongful conviction. The answer is our individual rights are far more fragile than we believe, and depending on the state, the legal system is far less geared toward justice than we’d like to believe. Moreover, there’s no consistent avenue in the courts to assert innocence claims, and a great deal of resistance in the courts to hearing such claims.
And what about holding those responsible accountable? Lying cops who send innocent people to prison or death row are almost never punished. Aggressive prosecutors, determined to win, who knowingly violate ethical safeguards are rarely hauled before bar disciplinary boards. Some states even have laws barring lawsuits by innocent victims of their corrupt criminal justice systems.
In other words, in some places there are no disincentives, and that’s why it keeps happening.