Tuesday Sep 29, 2020

Ep. 6 - Innocent Then ”Proven” Guilty: Wrongful Conviction Exoneration with Don Thompson

We tell ourselves that prisons are populated by guilty people. We justify treating prisoners poorly, harshly because they "deserve to be there".

There is a long tradition underlying this myth. Ben Franklin reportedly said "it is better to let a hundred guilty men go free than one guilty man be convicted". The advent and continued improvement of DNA technology has proven that wrongful convictions are a regular part of our criminal justice system.

Mary and Lee welcome award winning attorney Don Thompson who is unfortunately an expert in wrongful conviction exonerations. Don has had five post conviction exonerations. They are amazing successes born out of epic systemic failures.

Don joined forces with The Innocence Project, out of New York City, which works to exonerate people based on DNA evidence.Here are some facts about exonerations pulled from The Innocence Project website:

"The first exoneration occurred in 1989, to date there have been 375 more. The average number of years served before exoneration is 14. 21 of those people had been on death row. 44 pled guilty to crimes they did not commit. All but 15 of the exonerations involved some form of false confession. 60% of those exonerated were Black and 31% were white."

In a functioning system the appellate system would conduct meaningful reviews of convictions and would catch wrongful convictions in short order, but it doesn't and that is in large part because Judges and District Attorneys fight tooth and nail to oppose meaningful review of the evidence to keep these convictions intact.

Don discusses his representation of Valentino Dixon who was wrongfully convicted of murder even though another man confessed on camera within a day of the shooting. Mr. Dixon's conviction was affirmed by the appeals courts. He served 28 years before being released and it was in large part because of the interest taken by Golf Digest, of all publications. It is a truly fascinating and frustrating saga.

Wrongful convictions hurt everyone, the innocent person loses years, decades of their life that can never be recovered, the victim and the public are decided and are sold a false sense of security while the true culprit remains free to commit more crimes, creating more victims, and tax dollars are spent incarcerating an innocent person. DNA does not exist in every case and there is no guarantee that it was preserved if it was collected begging the question, how many more innocent people are populating our crowded prisons?

Ep. 6 - Innocent Then ”Proven” Guilty: Wrongful Conviction Exoneration with Don Thompson

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