[Vision2020] Re: Wayne's Analysis of Criminal Innocence

[Shelly]

So - seven people are lieing. They are "opening up their life" to the courts
at the expense of lieing. Wait - 8 people are lieing. Including Mubita.

"Mubito's alleged crimes amount to nothing more than failing to utter
certain statements mandated by law for those HIV positive who know they are
positive, in special circumstances, or uttering false statements about ones
HIV status in the same special circumstances.  You, and apparently many
others, believe they have enough evidence to feel reasonably certain, before
the evidence has been presented in a court, that Mubito both knew that he
was HIV positive, and either kept quiet about this, or deliberately misled
one or more of his sexual partners, regarding his HIV status."

Once again............. he should not have "uttered" "certain statements" to
his partners? 

Once again, the media is reporting, along with the police department that
MUBITA KNEW HE WAS HIV POSITIVE!!!!!! Oh wait! They could be lieing?????
They almost always do, according to your analogy???

Regarding face to face counseling, if you would have done your homework
before posting such ridiculous statements you would have known it was a 
counselor" that reported to the police to do a "well check" regarding Mubita
possible being suicidal. Who cares "how" he was notified of his status? HE
WAS NOTIFIED!!!! 5 TIMES!!!!!!! OH wait! The Health Department are also
liars.

Sorry Ted.................. the facts are out there. Especially regarding
Mubita as he "willingly" subjected individuals to a possible life of hell.
Granted, there are many drugs available and more on the rise to help insure
a prosperous life with HIV. I STRONGLY believe Mubita's name and photo need
to be out there to notify the possible victims THEY NEED TO BE TESTED. Why
can't you see this? Do you fully understand HIV? Maybe you should call the
Health Department and tell them everything you are stating here and see how
they react? Or better yet............... ask them all your questions. Oh
wait .... they will probably lie to you.

If we cannot believe in our elected officials, why should we believe in a
jury? Or a judge? Why bother?

Shelley Roderick 


 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: Tbertruss at aol.com
Date: 12/22/05 22:44:28
To: CJs at turbonet.com; vision2020 at moscow.com; deco at moscow.com
Subject: Wayne's Analysis of Criminal Innocence
 

Wayne, Shelley et. al.

In your example of the driving habits of some who reside near where you live
 you witnessed the alleged wrong doing.  Your certainty that this wrong
doing occurred is thus at a very high level, unless you are to question the
reliability of your perceptions or memory, or maybe your speedometer.

You did not witness, as far as I know, the alleged crimes Mubita is charged
with committing, so the parallel between the dangerous drivers you describe
with your eye witness accounts, and your knowledge chain regarding the facts
of the Mubito case, is not exactly analogous. 

Mubito's alleged crimes amount to nothing more than failing to utter certain
statements mandated by law for those HIV positive who know they are positive
 in special circumstances, or uttering false statements about ones HIV
status in the same special circumstances.  You, and apparently many others,
believe they have enough evidence to feel reasonably certain, before the
evidence has been presented in a court, that Mubito both knew that he was
HIV positive, and either kept quiet about this, or deliberately misled one
or more of his sexual partners, regarding his HIV status.  

Much of this evidence I do not have access to, and reports in the newspapers
 or police reports, or rumors around the Palouse, are for me only a starting
point to investigate the truth, especially at this point in my life, after
observing numerous times the inaccuracies and flat out falsehoods that get
into print and other media and, yes, falsehoods from law enforcement.  Even
my best friends recall events we shared with serious inaccuracies!  See book
review at bottom for more info on how faulty memory impacts guilt or
innocence in our legal system.

One question I pondered about the Mubito case was whether he received any in
person face to face counseling regarding his alledged HIV positive status,
or was he contacted only by phone, e-mail or snail mail to inform him of his
HIV status?  He may have not received all the proper information regarding
what it means to be HIV positive.  Also, what are his capacities to
understand the full implications of what it means to be HIV positive?  But I
digress!  I am starting to litigate the case on Vision2020.

I agree that the public health issues should be addressed aggressively,
regardless of Mubito's guilt or innocence.  This can be done with no
impediments resulting from giving the Mubito case all the time it needs for
all the facts to be examined and logically assessed for truth or falsehood
in our legal system.  

The one issue that should immediately concern the public regarding the legal
issues in the Mubito case is bail, where some harm to the community might
result from the accused being released, or where the accused may flee. 
House arrest is another option, as has been discussed.  If someone is
carrying a potentially lethal virus that they may have been spreading with
willful intent, is it outrageous to suggest bail should be denied, till the
potential risks such an individual poses to others is fully assessed?

What I find troubling is why so many people are so quick to need to achieve
certainty that Mubito is guilty?  I can understand this motivation when
someone is committing crimes and getting away with them, like the dangerous
drivers in your example.  But in Mubito's case, he is confined, apparently
not able to make bail, and of no threat to the public at this time.  

If we trust our legal system, why not respect the very important principle
of innocent until proven guilty, and let the system do its job?  

There is no doubt that too much discussion of the certain guilt of an
accused facing charges can hamper the legal system in assuring a fair trial.
 Prosecutors and judges can feel pressure from the public to make decisions
based on a kind of mob frenzy, rather than the guide of lady justice
blindfolded holding the scales (fairness) and sword (the power of the legal
system).  Unbiased jurors can be hard to find when the press and media and
even list serves create a bias in huge numbers of people regarding a
specific criminal case.  Potential jurors need to state honestly that they
can listen to the evidence with an open mind in a trial.

If I was a defense lawyer, Wayne, I'd reject you from serving on the jury,
if there is one, in the Mubito case, absolutely, based on your statements on
Vision2020.

When the actual details are examined of the numerous criminal cases where it
has been proved that innocent people have been sentenced as guilty in a
court of law, many of the complexities are revealed regarding how this can
happen when so many people are so certain that someone is guilty.

I encourage everyone to read this book review, if not the book itself:


The National Center for Reason and Justice 


[Copyright 2000 Mark Pendergrast. First printed in the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution and the Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 February 2000. Posted
here with explicit permission from Mark Pendergrast. 

Book Review 



Actual Innocence: Five Days To Execution, 
And Other Dispatches From The Wrongly Convicted. 




by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, & Jim Dwyer. 
Doubleday, 2000. $24.95. 298 pages. ISBN 0-385-49341-X. 



Reviewed by Mark Pendergrast 


Chilling. Disturbing. Terrifying. Appalling. These words describe not only
the gruesome rapes and murders detailed in this book, but the fate of the
innocent men who were accused of these crimes, convicted, and ultimately
cleared by DNA evidence. What emerges from these pages is a chilling,
disturbing, terrifying, and appalling portrait of the much-touted United
States legal system. While the accused are supposed to be presumed innocent
until proven guilty, it appears that the convicted are presumed to be guilty
even when proven innocent. In case after case, prosecutors and judges have
attempted to keep innocent men locked behind bars, citing the need for 
finality," a word that is all too real for those on death row. 

Why? Although it defies common sense, the law of the land was stated by
Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1993: "A claim of actual innocence is not
itself a constitutional claim." Thus, the title of the book, Actual
Innocence, is ironic. It is a technical legal term used dismissively by many
judges. In a recently aired Frontline documentary, The Case for Innocence --
which featured lawyers and authors Scheck and Neufeld -- filmmaker Ofra
Bikel asked Texas Judge Sharon Keller whether a man cleared by DNA tests
might be innocent. "If you're talking about the point of view of actual
innocence?" Keller asked, clearly startled by the notion. "Oh! Um, I suppose
that is a possibility." But that wasn't the point for her. Whether the
convict was actually innocent was irrelevant. 

Scheck, Neufeld, and Dwyer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative
journalist, offer compelling case histories of men such as Walter Snyder,
convicted of raping Faye Treatser in Virginia. They document how, once
police zero in on a suspect, everyone recasts the evidence and their
memories to make him match. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously fallible,
particularly if, as in Snyder's case, his picture is first shown to the
victim, then she sees only him sitting on a bench at the police station.
Eventually, though Treatser first passed over his picture, she proclaimed
herself "100 percent sure" he was her rapist. 

Snyder was convicted in 1986 and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Like many
innocent men, he refused to take the course for sexual offenders and was
consequently denied parole. (Ironically, real sex offenders who play the
game are paroled earlier.) Eventually, despite a string of incompetent or
greedy lawyers, Snyder got a new DNA test which proved the rape sperm was
not his. But in Virginia, as in many other states, a convict has only 21
days after his conviction to prove his innocence. This had taken seven years
 The only option was to ask Governor L. Douglas Wilder for a pardon. Despite
the support of the state's Attorney General Randy Sengel (unusual, since
many prosecutors resist DNA evidence), Wilder waffled until sympathetic news
stories on Snyder's case forced Wilder to grant a pardon. 

Actual Innocence is not an easy read emotionally, but it is very clearly
written, with a strong narrative thrust and interesting historical anecdotes
that will appeal to lay as well as legal readers. It is gratifying that 64
convicted men have been cleared by DNA evidence. But that isn't the point. 
What matters most is not how these people got out of jail but how they got
into it," the authors observe. In a succinct summary, they tick off the
contributing factors: "Sometimes eyewitnesses make mistakes. Snitches tell
lies. Confessions are coerced or fabricated. Racism trumps the truth. Lab
tests are rigged. Defense lawyers sleep. Prosecutors lie."

Each of these short sentences summarizes a disturbing chapter in the book.
Jailhouse "snitches" frequently fabricate hearsay confessions in order to
shorten their own sentences. Police routinely lie and use mind-games to
extract so-called "confessions" from innocent people. If you are a black man
accused of raping a white woman, you are in deep, deep trouble not only from
overt racism but because "they all look the same" to many white witnesses.
Before the iron-clad DNA tests arrived, junk science ruled the courts, with
ambiguous blood evidence and bogus hair identification, and such evidence is
still used. Underpaid public defenders may be overworked idealists, but they
can also be incompetent and/or uncaring. 

Most disturbing is the callous and sometimes vicious attitude of prosecutors
 Take the case of Robert Miller, convicted in 1987 of the rape/murders of
two elderly women in Oklahoma City. Miller was sentenced to two death
penalities plus 725 years. After Miller's incarceration, the same pattern of
rapes of elderly women continued, with the same modus operandi, and the
guilty man, Ronald Lott, was captured. Even though prosecutor Ray Elliott
knew about Lott, he kept it to himself. The jurors never heard that Lott had
admitted to identical crimes in the same neighborhood. And even when DNA
evidence cleared Miller and implicated Lott in the murders, Elliott insisted
that Miller must have been present. "We're going to give Robert Miller the
needle," Elliott gloated. "He's just blowfish." The prosecutor summoned Lott
and offered him a deal if he would implicate Miller, but Lott refused. Today
 Ray Elliott is an Oklahoma judge. 

This book documents several cases like this, in which prosecutors, cops,
pathologists,and others either lief or distorted evidence. But why would
they do that? Generally, it is because they were truly convinced that this
man was guilty, and so a little tweaking of the evidence was justified. Once
invested in this belief system, it became very difficult for them to reverse
themselves and admit they had incarcerated an innocent man. So they denied
it and fought the DNA evidence. 

What is to be done about the situation? The authors make specific, workable,
common-sense suggestions throughout the book, summarizing them in an
appendix. The most obvious recommendation is to use DNA testing wherever
possible, within weeks of a crime. And test old evidence. "Hundreds of
thousands of rape kits from unsolved cases are thrown out or sit in dead
storage for years with no effort made by the authorities to run DNA tests,"
they write, "squandering opportunities to identify serial offenders and
clear the wrongly convicted." Other recommendations include videotaping all
police interrogations, limiting the use of snitches, making crime labs
independent of police and prosecutors, disallowing junk science, paying
court-appointed defenders more, compensating the wrongly convicted, and
putting a moratorium on the death penalty. 

But until police, prosecutors, and judges are held legally accountable for
their actions, their near-absolute power will continue to corrupt absolutely
 They are generally immune from prosecution themselves, and until that
changes, these travesties of justice are likely to continue, in one form or
another. "Under the current setup," write the authors, "a prosecutor can't
be sued for knowingly allowing perjured testimony or for deliberately
covering up evidence of innocence." 

Scheck and Neufeld run the Innocence Project, specializing in cases where
DNA can clear the wrongly convicted. But what about innocent people who
cannot rely on DNA evidence? After a conviction, it is very difficult to win
an appeal without compelling new evidence. Actual Innocence should be
required reading for everyone involved in our justice system, but it raises
many more questions than it answers. 

—Mark Pendergrast is the author of Victims of Memory and, most recently,
Uncommon Grounds.
------------------------

Vision2020 Post by Ted Moffett
 
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