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Justice delayed is justice denied, goes the saying, but really, we all know that justice delayed is better than no justice at all. And so it may be for Richard Lapointe, whose 20 year old conviction for raping, killing and setting alight his grandmother-in-law has become a cause celebre of sorts for people across the State.
Today, after 4 appeals and 2 habeas corpus petitions¹, he finally received the relief he sought and that many people thought he long deserved. The Appellate Court² issued an opinion [PDF] today ordering a new trial after finding that a Brady violation undermined their confidence in his conviction.
In order to understand the significance of this decision, we must first have a bit of background on the facts of the case: On March 8, 1987, the defendant called the emergency telephone number, 911, to report a fire at the Manchester apartment of the victim. Earlier that day, he and his wife had visited the victim between 2 and 4pm, as was their custom. They returned home where they all remained until approximately 7:45pm when the defendant received a call from the victim’s daughter stating that she hadn’t heard from the victim and asked the defendant to go check on her. Important to note is that the defendant’s wife was giving their son a bath between 6:15 and 7:00pm while Lapointe sat in the living room watching TV. Continue reading →
In other news, scientist finds that the sun is really, really, hot and sports commentator opines that in order to win you have to score more than the opponent. Honestly, I wish the headline of this post, which is a version of the headline of this news story, was an Onion article. It’s not. Also, this is from Canada, so your mileage may vary.
The Reid method, for those who don’t know, is a classic police interrogation interview technique which is used to wrangle and coerce confessions from suspects. A simple Google search reveals much about the Reid technique, which you should peruse at your own leisure, preferably after you’re done reading this post. But since I know you’re lazy, here’s a link to the technique’s “Nine Steps“. You can see how coercive and insidious they are.
The Reid technique, despite its flaws and criticism about its tendency to produce false confessions, has been the standard method of conducting interviews across North America for near 20 years now. It’s routinely used – and defended – by law enforcement organizations. Courts have upheld the use of these coercive tactics time and again.
So leave it to a Canadian judge to unequivocally declare that this technique is improper and dangerous. In Regina v. Chapple [PDF], the Honorable M.C. Dinkle. The judge does a wonderful job of outlining the tactics employed by the police officers in this case:
Dinkel said Calgary police subjected Christa Lynn Chapple to an eight-hour interview and interrogation that “had all the appearances of a desperate investigative team that was bent on extracting a confession at any cost.”
Even though the accused asserted at least 24 times that she wanted to remain silent, Detective Karla Malsam-Dudar disregarded that right, continuing to prolong the interview with lengthy monologues, constant interruptions and persistent questioning.
The accused’s free will was overborne to the point where she told police what they wanted to hear, the judge concluded.
But more notable than the specific facts of this case was the overall condemnation of the technique itself, which the judge called “a guilt presumptive technique” designed to “extract confessions from the accused”. He further excoriates:
Innocence is not an option with the Reid Technique. Those who defend the Reid Technique may suggest that the problem lies with the interrogators who misuse the technique and not the technique itself. They may also say that the technique is intended to be used only in circumstances where the police are sure of an accused’s guilt. These factors are of little solace to me and of no assistance to those innocent individuals who have given false confessions over the years at the hands of Reid Technique interrogators.
The judge notes, with some disappointment, that even years after other judges first began to question the use of this technique, it is still widely in service today. False confessions were recorded in approximately 25% of the exonerations cataloged by the Innocence Project. The dangers of using such a coercive technique should be obvious to those whose stated goal is the pursuit of truth and justice, yet more often than not, it is used to achieve precisely the opposite result and serves as nothing more than confirmation of their bias and tunnel-vision. The goal isn’t the truth, it’s an arrest, a confession and a conviction, truth be damned.
H/T: Lisa Steele for the pointer and The Trial Warrior for providing a link to the opinion.
There is a moderately entertaining movie called Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge and starring the less-stoned Wilson brother about a man of perfectly average intelligence who goes into cryogenic deep freeze for a long time and emerges 500 years in the future where the stupid have out-reproduced the intelligent and the Earth is ruled by grunts and monosyllables. Reading some reactions to the death penalty repeal here in CT, it seems to me that the future is now.
First, CT News Junkie reported, in a story with the provocative title ‘Lawmaker Guided By Experience As Defense Attorney’, of the tale of Representative David Labriola. Labriola, a Republican, drew upon his experience as a criminal defense attorney to vote against the repeal of the death penalty, in something that can only be described as fzzt-fzzt-does-not-compute-err-ROR-err-ROR.
You see, AttorneyRep. Labriola represented Miguel Roman. Miguel Roman, you might or might not remember, was the fourth man exonerated in CT with the assistance of DNA evidence. Unfortunately, before that happened, Roman spent 20 years of his life in jail for a crime he did not commit. His actual sentence was 60 years for a murder – one of three that the police believed were linked. Having represented a man you believe is wrongly convicted and has spent decades of his life unjustly in prison is not something a defense lawyer gets over quickly and it is certainly not something that builds confidence in the infallibility of the criminal justice system.
Yet, we have Labriola:
He said the sophistication and reliability of modern DNA analysis is one of the reasons he supported the death penalty statute, which a majority of his colleagues voted to take off the books Wednesday. DNA evidence provides the state with greater assurance that offenders handed guilty verdicts are, in fact, guilty, he said.
I suppose that’s somewhat logical so far, if a bit naive. But here’s the key part:
Labriola recalled that he did present DNA evidence in Roman’s case more than 20 years ago. He said it was one of the first DNA cases in the country. Though the DNA clearly didn’t belong to Roman, prosecutor John Massameno was able to argue that presence of another person’s DNA did not mean Roman was not guilty.
[Ideally, at this juncture, I'd like to Professor Farnsworth uttering his signature "Whaaaa? - you can hear it in your head, can't you? - but I can't find it online. So this equally appropriate reaction will have to suffice.]
This is far beyond any timey-wimey plotline that Steven Moffat could conceive of, but I’m going to try and untangle it. Labriola believes:
1. The death penalty is appropriate.
2. Because DNA evidence provides great assurances that offenders are actually guilty.
3. He knows this because he represented an offender.
4. In whose case DNA evidence was presented.
5. And the DNA evidence excluded his guy.
6. And still his client was convicted.
7. And spent 20 years in jail.
8. ????
9. PROFIT!!!!
Labriola concludes with:
“I think working as a defense attorney for the last 25 years gives me insight into a wide range of issues and some crimes are so heinous that the death penalty is the only justifiable punishment,” he said.
It’s almost as if he got to logical step number 8 above, realized that he was going up the down staircase and ended with the handwavium encrusted “well, I know better”. As a fellow criminal defense lawyer, that last quote of his is especially troubling. I’ve often written that in order to do this job well and honestly, one cannot judge one’s clients and one must take the place of the client and view the world through his eyes. We are the client. We are his advocate and his shepherd. Where does Labriola stop? If some clients are deserving of the death penalty, are others deserving of life without the possibility of release? Are others deserving of 60 years in jail, because, in his opinion, they’re bad people? How do we differentiate the role of the prosecutor from that of the defense attorney? At what point do we stop becoming an advocate and start becoming a mouthpiece – a mere messenger?
For many in this field, capital defense is the holy grail. It is the one job that embodies every ideal that leads us to this work: the defense of those who are most undeserving, the fight for another’s life, the pushback against the mightiest weapon the State possesses in its arsenal. Death penalty defense is more than a job. It is the embodiment of an idea. I believe that one can be a great defense attorney and not like all the crimes that our clients are charged with. Great lawyers refuse to represent people accused of sex crimes. I disagree with that, but I can see it. I believe, however, that anyone in favor of the death penalty has no business representing individuals accused of crimes.
It does not compute.
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Lagniappe (a word I have shamelessly borrowed from today’s MLK-themed edition of Blawg Review, hosted by the inimitable Mark Bennett): “Judge” Andrew Napolitano goes on FOX to suggest that CT delay the implementation of the death penalty repeal by, oh, 5 years so we can quickly execute the 11 men on death row. The stupendous idiocy of that position hardly merits the waste of more pixels.
On Monday, Hubert Thompson walked out of Hartford Superior Court a free man. He felt the sun hit his face, breathed fresh air and went where the hell he damn pleased. He had just been granted a new trial after serving well over half a decade in prison for a rape he didn’t commit.
After DNA taken from the victim was discovered to still exist in a vault somewhere, his attorney sought to have it tested. The results excluded him as the source of the DNA and implicated another man. On Monday, his motion for a new trial was granted [I don't have a copy of the actual motion, but if you go that page, you can see a copy of the order page, which has some details on it].
[I've been sitting on this post for 3 days now, since there was absolutely no media coverage whatsoever and I didn't want to find myself in the enviable position of being the source of a news story that frankly half a dozen "news" organizations shouldn't gotten their hands on this week. That it took 4 days before the intrepid folks at CT News Junkie tracked down this story independently speaks volumes to the focus of the "mainstream" news outlets, which are quick to splash sensationalist headlines of people's arrests but reluctant to find out about real stories of injustice even when repeatedly informed of them. This is why independent news outlets like CTNJ and New Haven Independent have the drop on most traditional news media.]
How did Mr. Thompson get arrested, charged and convicted, you might ask, despite the title of this post? A faulty identification by the victim, ‘natch. Just in time, too, as the legislature today holds a public hearing on another eyewitness identification bill that would improve upon the one passed last year. But it also comes at the right time in the context of the death penalty debate, serving to remind us and our legislators that even here in the land of steady habits, we are not perfect. We make mistakes and one day, these mistakes are going to converge in a death penalty case. That we’ve been lucky so far is no reason to maintain faith in the infallibility of our particular death penalty scheme.
Thompson was convicted in 1998 of a rape and kidnapping that occurred in 1994. He was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison. At the time there was no usable DNA evidence, but the victim identified Thompson as the perpetrator.
Just this month, the State lab finished testing on the victim’s underwear to find that it excluded Thompson and implicated another man. Which is fantastic for Mr. Thompson, but just imagine, for a second that there was no testable DNA remaining. He’d still know he was innocent, but no one would believe him. He’d probably serve 12 years and be left to the ravages of the system with no way of proving his innocence.
There are people like that in our prisons. People who are innocent, but have no way of proving it. And a large number of them are convicted based solely on eyewitness testimony. Why do we continue to rely on this faulty mode of evidence? Why do juries? People: if you’re reading this and you’re on a jury, be extremely skeptical. There may be no white knight in 5, 10, 15 years to save an innocent man. Maybe it’s time we all started requesting instructions on the dangerousness of eyewitness testimony. We should ask that juries be instructed that 75% of wrongful convictions involved an identification of the exonerated. Something has to be done.
Just not what State Rep. Hewett wants:
However, Rep. Ernest Hewett, D- New London, said Thompson’s case lends support to a different proposal he’s pushed in the past. Hewett wants to allow the pre-conviction collection of DNA data at the time of a felony arrest. “Can you imagine if we increased our database to arrestee DNA, how many people we’d get? They’re just walking the streets,” he said. “Those people that are running wild out there, continuing to commit crimes, their profile would be in our database.”
This, apparently, is his pet project. I’ve written in the past about how this would run afoul not only of our basic Constitutional rights, but also the principles underlying those rights and would only serve to push us closer to war with Oceania [and a debate on this bill last year produced, in my estimation, the "Best. Quote. Ever"].
Hewett, as you can see from prior posts, is prone to saying things that make little sense. He says that Hubert Thompson’s DNA exoneration, – and for that to work, they’d had to have DNA from the victim, the suspect and Mr. Thompson – this particular case, lends support to the idea that we should take DNA from people when they’re arrested. Apparently he missed the part where they didn’t test the DNA in 1998 because there wasn’t any usable DNA in the rape kit, not because they didn’t have Mr. Thompson’s DNA or that of the real suspect.
As time went by, extraction methods and protocols improved, allowing the lab to extract DNA from samples previously thought to be unusable. It’s that advancement in technology that permitted the exoneration of Mr. Thompson, not him suddenly deciding 5 years into a 12 year sentence that “hey, you know, maybe I should start working on this whole ‘getting out of serving time for a crime I didn’t commit’ thing”.
We’re all allowed to have positions on things and our pet projects – God knows I have so many – but can’t we at least expect our elected officials to be able to understand, articulate and properly apply theirs?
That eyewitness identification is a troublesome area of the criminal justice system is well known to regular readers of this blog. That the movement toward long overdue reform is lethargic and a source of much consternation to me is well known to the readers of this blog. So, it presented a bittersweet moment when I learned that the Connecticut-centric NPR show “Where We Live” was going to do an episode on the problems of eyewitness identification and the enacted legislative reforms. That the complexities of this issue cannot be given – heh – justice in a one hour time slot goes without saying, but there is something to be said about this seeping into the collective general consciousness. So, all for the better, I suppose.
Until a caller called in with a comment toward the end of the show (which you can listen to in its entirety here). The caller “Wayne” offered a personal anecdote, which I paraphrase below:
I’m a cab driver in New Haven and back in 1979, I had transported an individual, who it turned out had just committed a murder. So, as a witness, I was called to testify at the trial and identify him. Now, when I had transported him, he was a thin fellow, riddled with a drug addiction, unkempt, mousy and had that lean and hungry look. After getting 3 squares a day, regular sleep and no sunlight for a year at the taxpayer’s expense, he looked like a different man. He’d put on weight, had grown hair and was looking well-fed. I couldn’t recognize him at all. I couldn’t see the person I had transported a year earlier, so when asked to identify the passenger, I figured, heck, it has to be that guy sitting next to the defense attorney, looking quite out of place in a suit. So I pointed in that direction. Luckily, there was other evidence and he was convicted.
Read it again if you’re sitting here thinking “well, what’s the problem?”. The problem is that this witness admitted that he had no idea whether the defendant was indeed the same person who he had transported a year ago, but pointed at the guy sitting in the courtroom anyway, thereby making an in-court identification that jurors could – and would – rely upon to convict him.
Putting aside the desire that witnesses be honest and forthcoming about their inability to recall the defendant as the perpetrator – they rarely are – this highlights a recurring problem for which there may be no solution. In most criminal trials, there is one person sitting across from the jury who just doesn’t belong to the scene. There is one person who best resembles a Microsoft photoshop faux pas: the defendant. Either he isn’t wearing a suit, or wearing one that’s ill-fitting or is wearing the same shirt that the juror saw him wear during voir dire, or he’s just…sitting there. Looking out of place. Uncomfortable.
And everyone can see it. Even the witness. And that makes identifications in court essentially meaningless. Because, when asked to identify the perpetrator, who else is the witness going to pick out? The prosecutor who’s just been asking him questions? The defense attorney who’s been objecting? The judge? Don’t be silly.
I’ve been thinking about this all day and I’m not sure that there’s a solution. But there is a problem. And the problem is that it turns bad memories into good ones. It turns hunches into convictions. It’s the same problem with juries: the defendant’s here, he’s arrested, he must be guilty. Innocent people don’t just end up in trial for no reason. If the system has got him, it’s got the right guy.
We can control this to some extent during pretrial hearings on the suppression of identifications, but in trial, there’s no apparent remedy. It’s yet another failing that we have to live with and work to overcome.
The Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory, once considered among the best, most independent and most efficient in the country, is now facing some serious scrutiny by the NIJ, an arm of the Feds. Norm Pattis wrote about this two days ago and it got picked up by the Courant yesterday. Some of the problems facing the lab are well known to those dealing with them on a regular basis: they are severely understaffed, have an astronomical backlog of cases and even had to deal with some expired DNA kits over the last two years, which, while they did not lead to false positives, surely took up some time with re-testing.
But this is much worse. Apparently there’s a 160 page report of the audit done by the NIJ which criticizes several aspects of the lab’s operations, including the qualifications of the supervisors and the ability to adequately and accurately process and examine the evidence:
The audits focused on the sections of the lab that deal with convicted-offender databases and DNA testing. State crime labs must adhere to federal standards for DNA testing.
The DNA audit team raised questions about supervision, reporting of case results, evidence control, data security, quality assurance, adherence to standard operating procedures for DNA analyses, and validation techniques for DNA test results, among other issues.
These are significant questions that undermine the reliability of DNA results, which are often used by juries as the be-all and end-all of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. DNA evidence is the gold standard, considered fool-proof and error proof, in the minds of the layperson. To have a report that calls into question basic things like evidence control, quality assurance and even SOP for analyses is troubling, to say the least.
How accurate are the results reported by the lab over the last few years? How many cases did this affect? How many convictions were obtained on the strength of these criticized standards and procedures? The implications are staggering.
The state lab didn’t provide the Courant a copy of the report of the NIJ, but every criminal defense lawyer must send a letter to the lab requesting that unedited copy. What exactly does it say? We need to know that, unfiltered, without the alterations and suggestions of the state.
I know several of the people who work at the state lab and I like most of them. I don’t envy them right now, because it seems that a lot of these problems are brought about by severe underfunding. But whatever the reason, the credibility of the lab and its results is now in question and that’s not a good thing – either for the lab itself – or for the people who have been convicted or are awaiting trial as a result of the lab’s testing.
And if you’re waiting for DNA results in your case, you may have to wait a long, long time. From this graphic in today’s paper edition of the Courant, the backlog for DNA testing and analysis is now 4 years!
Last March, a state police official briefed the Criminal Justice Policy Advisory Board, made up of police, prosecutors and a cross-section of members of the public.
The facts were alarming, [chief of criminal justice planning for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, Mike] Lawlor said: 3,900 “unstarted” forensic cases; 1,800 backlogged firearms cases as of March, up from fewer than 800 in January 2009; statutory deadlines looming in more than 160 felony cases.
“There have been outrageous backlogs with the processing of evidence – DNA, fingerprints, computer hard drives, everything,” Lawlor said. “Police in some cases have had to wait months, sometimes a year or more, for results, and that has affected decisions on arrest and identifying suspects. It’s also delayed trials. It’s been a problem for police and prosecutors statewide.”
Lawlor, ever the prosecutor, forgets one important demographic: the criminal defendant. He who is innocent until proven guilty, but more often than not cannot afford to post bail and thus sits in pre-trial incarceration for months and years pending the outcome of DNA testing. This is as much about solving cold cases and identifying suspects through DNA analysis as it is about the speedy resolution of those cases where people are deprived of their liberty based on questionable policies and procedures at the state lab. If nothing else, we should all start filing motions for bond reduction in cases where DNA analysis is outstanding and will take forever.
In a long overdue move, Gov. Jerry Brown of California just signed into law SB 687, which bans judges and juries from convicting defendants based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of jailhouse informants. From the bill itself:
This bill would additionally provide that a judge or jury may not enter a judgment of conviction upon a criminal defendant, find a special circumstance true, or use a fact in aggravation based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of an in-custody informant, as defined. The bill would provide that corroboration shall not be deemed sufficient if it merely shows the commission of the offense, the special circumstance, or the circumstance in aggravation. The bill would provide that the corroboration of an in-custody informant shall not be provided by the testimony of another in-custody informant.
This is a major step forward in the fight against unreliable and wrongful convictions. Jailhouse snitch testimony has obvious problems, which have been chronicled here before, and in fact, this bill is identical to one passed by the California legislature in 2008, only to be subsequently vetoed by the Governator. Despite opposition from some prosecutors offices, Gov. Brown made this requirement the law of California and for good reason. This survey [PDF] from the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Law School found that fully 48% of wrongful convictions were brought about by jailhouse testimony. The Innocence Project states that 15% of DNA exonerations were in cases of convictions that featured snitch testimony. Here’s a Pew Trust report [PDF] on the problems with this kind of testimony.
Surprisingly, California now becomes only the 18th state to enforce this kind of prohibition. Most other states take a half-hearted approach, like Connecticut, providing only for a “special” jury instruction warning juries to consider this kind of testimony skeptically. From the model jury instructions:
Generally, the court should not instruct the jury on the credibility of a particular witness, but the Supreme Court has recognized three exceptions: the complaining witness, an accomplice, and an informant. See State v. Patterson, 276 Conn. 452, 470 (2005); State v. Ortiz, 252 Conn. 533, 561-62 (2000).
The exception for informant testimony was first recognized in State v. Patterson, 276 Conn. 452 (2005). “Because the testimony of an informant who expects to receive a benefit from the state in exchange for his or her cooperation is no less suspect than the testimony of an accomplice who expects leniency from the state, we conclude that the defendant was entitled to an instruction substantially in accord with the one that he had sought.” Id., 470. Though originally limited, in Patterson, to informants who had actually been promised a benefit in return for his or her testimony, in State v. Arroyo, 292 Conn. 558 (2009), the Court expanded it to any informant. “[T]he trial court should give a special credibility instruction to the jury whenever [jailhouse informant] testimony is given, regardless of whether the informant has received an express promise of a benefit.” Id., 569.
If the testimony is so inherently unreliable, then courts and juries should be prohibited from relying solely on such testimony to convict people. But that, I suppose, is a matter for the legislature and not the courts.
