Will Result in an Increase in Innocent People Being Forced to Plead
Guilty
Imagine you are given a choice: Plead guilty to a crime you didn't commit and receive
a sentence of four or so years, or take a chance with a jury and receive "25 years to
life." In addition, imagine that you are an African-American or Hispanic and you will
most likely have an all white jury in Orange County or San Diego County or some other
well-known conservative place and a person has said they saw you at the crime scene (the
person identified you in a photo presented by the police), or there is other shaky
evidence that can be used against you (an informant will be getting immunity or a lesser
sentence for testifying against you). What would you plead?
Recently DNA tests have been showing that many innocent people have been wrongly
convicted of crimes. Would you trust our court system and jury system to determine your
fate? Especially if the outcome could be a "25 years-to-life" sentence?
In addition, there is a naive belief that government officials will look out for
justice and protect the innocent. History, however, has repeatedly shown this to not
be true. Government officials in criminal justice fields are often evaluated for how
many people they can convict--therefore, there is a huge conflict of interest between the
criminal justice official's self-interest in promotion and whether justice occurs.
Recently the FBI had to pay $300,000 to whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst after Whitehurst
severely criticized the forensic work of the FBI and other agencies. The more power
given to the government officials, the more likely they will use it in their
self-interest.
The following are some statistics and comments from books and articles on how the
3-Strikes law could be used by prosecutors to increase the likelihood that innocent people
will plead guilty. PLEASE SEND US NEW DATA AND ARTICLES IF YOU HAVE THEM.
Innocence Project has sprung 32 people, 12 of them from death
row
Vincent Moto owed his 1996 release from Pennsylvania's Grateford Prison after a DNA
test was taken based on the Innocence Project.
In five years, the Innocence Project has sprung 32 people, a dozen of them from death
row. All were convicted by juries. Most had been fingered by eye-witnesses. Some even had
confessed.
In Illinois, 10 inmates have been released from prison as a result of DNA evidence, a
few with some help from the Innocence Project.
"There have been debates going on amongst criminologists, judges, prosecutors,
defense attorneys for 100 years about how foolproof the system is," lawyer Peter
Neufeld said. "This data blows those arguments away." OCRegister, 11/2/97
Former FBI crime lab worker blows whistle on FBI forensics
department.
The Justice Department agreed on March 11, 1998 to pay a $300,000 Privacy Act
settlement to FBI crime lab whistle-blower Frederic Whitehurst, who alleged that the
government spread false and derogatory information to discredit him.
The government also agreed to speed the release to Whitehurst of 180,000 pages of FBI
lab reports by examiners whose work he had criticized.
The Justice settlement is in addition to one Whitehurst got last month from the FBI.
The FBI agreed to buy $1.166 million worth of annuities that will pay the
50-year-old chemist annual amounts equal to the salary and pension he would have earned
had he worked until retiring at 57. The bureau also paid $248,580 in his legal fees.
The deal with Justice ends a suit in which Whitehurst claimed that, in retaliation for
his whistle-blowing, FBI and Justice officials tried to discredit him, his medical
condition, his wife, his fitness for duty and investigations of him. LATimes, 3/12/98.
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reposted without permission of Families to Amend California's 3-Strikes.
Date last modified: 3/26/98.
