Did I miss a bit in this article - the innocently convicted man did 25 years. The prosecutor, knowing his innocence, withheld the evidence that allowed this conviction to pass but only did 500 hours (approx. 3 months) of community service and 10 days in prison.
An innocent man lost 25 years of his life and the man who caused this eventually, after a reasonably successful career lost what may as well equate to some vacation time...
Am I the only one who is horrified at this? Okay, so he got more than a slap on the wrist, but what the fuck is this?! That's bullshit! Pardon my linguistics, but my horror at this injustice leaves me short for words.
The only restitution that would make this even marginally okay is if the prosecutor/judge had been required to:
- House the convicted man.
- Set him up with training that would allow the convicted to re-integrate meaningfully into today's society.
- Assist the man to find meaningful and gainful employment.
- Set him up with a pension plan that would have been equivalent to see him through retirement.
- Set him up for success in the manner in which he would have been able to provide for himself had he been a free man.
- Feed him, clothe him and pay his utility bills until such a time as his income would allow him to successfully stand on his own two feet.
Even then, he owes this man 25 years of his service to make up for what was taken from him. If that bankrupts his accuser, so be it.
There is context here the article doesn't disclose. The prosecutor didn't "know" Morton was innocent. He failed to disclose exculpatory evidence, namely the fact that Morton's three year old son was at the scene and said his father wasn't home at the time of the murder.[1] It was undoubtedly unethical to withhold that. If there were doubts about the reliability of the child's testimony, that was the jury's call to make, not his. But not disclosing that statement is a far cry from prosecuting someone despite "knowing his innocence."
[1] http://www.innocenceproject.org/news-events-exonerations/pre... ("Anderson did not turn over a transcript of the victim’s mother telling an investigator that Morton’s 3-year-old son Eric had told her that Morton was not the attacker and other evidence pointing to a third party assailant.")
According to articles linked from this one - there was also a lot of other evidence withheld:
* a strange van lurking in the neighborhood
* the wife's credit card turning up in a different city after the events
* dna evidence from semen in the bed
* dna evidence from a bloody bandana
(both things with dna point to the same person who wasn't morton)
And from the article you linked:
The investigator also received evidence that the attack was committed by a third party intruder -- a neighbor reported that she observed what appeared to be someone staking out the house and someone attempted to use the victim’s credit card in San Antonio. - See more at: http://www.innocenceproject.org/news-events-exonerations/pre...
That Anderson had all of that is enough to point to a reasonably strong suspicion of knowning, if not stricly knowing of Morton's innocence.
Here is the Innocence Project's original habeas petition: http://www.innocenceproject.org/files/imported/morton_writ_f.... It does not mention either the bandana nor the semen in its list (at 8-9) of evidence withheld by the prosecution in violation of Brady. The semen had been introduced at trial to support the prosecution's theory that Morton had masturbated over his wife's dead body (see 13). Morton requested a DNA test in 1990 that showed the semen was his.
Also note that the investigation and trial were in 1986-87. The first use of DNA testing in a criminal was in 1987, and testing would not be routine until many years later.
DNA testing which ultimately exonerated Morton wasn't available in the US in 1987; a single lab in the UK had pioneered the techniques but they weren't widely available. Arguably a bigger factor than the prosecutor's misconduct in Morton spending so long in jail is whatever procedural rule or individual prevented the DNA evidence from the bandana being brought up and tested until 2011. That was about 23 or so years too late.
The semen in the bed could instead actually have been a core part of the prosecution's crime of passion narrative if it had gone to trial: woman is killed in her own bed in act of brutal sexual violence a day after husband leaves her a note complaining about her unwillingness to have intercourse with him. Reports of unrecognised vans being parked in residential streets might be a police lead but are certainly not exculpatory evidence, and the credit card claims were apparently inaccurate (the police had her not-stolen credit card in their possession)[1].
Overall Anderson's actions are pretty consistent with someone certain he'd got the right man and willing to breach regulations to avoid him taking it to trial and getting off on the basis the evidence against him was as circumstantial as it was compelling. Misconduct which undoubtedly influenced Morton's plea, but it's still likely the judge would (reasonably) have ruled hearsay attributed to the accused's three year old son inadmissible and green vans irrelevant, leaving him highly likely to be convicted unless his defence team were able to successfully lobby for newfangled DNA fingerprinting techniques to be explored. There was, after all, a clear imputed motive consistent with the evidence, no sign of any break-in and no alternative suspects. Even conviction at trial might still have significantly improved Morton's chances of getting the bandana DNA raised at a much earlier appeal but one can't fix the failings of America's judicial system by levying probably unwarranted accusations of malice at one rule-bending prosecutor.
His failure notwithstanding, is there some reason why the defense didn't call the son to testify as a witness in court? Not trying to defend Anderson, but genuinely curious.
Also, I think this thread seems to be overly focused on eye-for-an-eye justice and laying the blame solely on the prosecutor (e.g. comments that he should be personally liable for compensation), but it seems to me that the entire justice system failed Morton, not just this one transgression. Morton received a lump sum for every year served, a lifetime annuity of $80k, job training, and educational aid.
Nothing in the world is going to give him those 25 years back, including bankrupting or imprisoning the prosecutor, but at least he was compensated in some way.
However, I will admit I was fairly disgusted by Anderson's plea bargain, not just because he deserved a harsher punishment but because it's not exactly a strong deterrent to prevent this sort of thing in the future (though perhaps the Michael Morton Act may help in that regard).
It's not an eye for an eye, it is holding the prosecutor accountable for his bad behavior and making him make it right. Making him do time doesn't make it right [besides the fact that the amount of time he was made to do was a slap in the face to the victim]... that's revenge or eye-for-an-eye punishment. It doesn't help the victim recover his life in any way shape or form. All it does is avenge what was lost - at the taxpayer's cost. Not the cost of the guilty party.
I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm murdered, avenging my death isn't going to help my family. I wouldn't want him to see a day of jail time. Make my murderer go to the lengths I do to take care of my family every single day for the rest of his life, just as I would have had I not been murdered. This man lost 25 years of his life. The judge guilty of that should be responsible for fixing that. The system may be partially to blame here, but you cannot tell me that a man smart enough to be a public prosecutor couldn't discern that he was exploiting the weaknesses of that system for his own gain without regard for the human cost to this man and his family - and his wife's family?
If you do something bad that fucks up someone's life, it should be on you to help fix that as best it can be fixed. This isn't an eye for an eye, this is doing what's right.
Just as companies are responsible for the conduct of their employees, the state is responsible for the conduct of government officials. It's the responsibility of the state to fix things as best it can be fixed.
Just because 'that is the way things are done' doesn't make it right.
You (the hypothetical you, not the real you) are responsible for your own actions. The company doesn't control how you act, you do. It's fair enough that the company is held accountable, but you should be equally held accountable for willful negligence, gross misconduct, unprofessional conduct etc. etc. That's on you.
Just because this prosecutor is a Government official, doesn't immediately remove his culpability, nor his accountability. He was wilfully negligent and ruined an innocent man's life. The Government didn't do that, he did that. It should be on him to fix it. He should be held accountable to the extent of his means to make it right. If it is beyond his means to make it right, it should then fall to the Government to provide the shortfall.
There is ample psychological research that people essentially surrender there sense of self when acting as part of a larger organization. The incentives and pressures imposed by the organization are generally far more relevant to behavior than any individual motives.
Think about this individual case. Did Ken Anderson end up in this prison because the prosecutor was personally out to get him? I don't think so. I think he ended up in prison because of a system that is "tough on crime" and is designed to heavily incentivize high conviction rates sometimes to the extent that it produces wrongful convictions.
If you are "incentivized" to do something you otherwise wouldn't by an undercover cop, you're still considered guilty of the crime, and doubly so because you were caught red handed in the act, unless of course you can prove entrapment, which is extremely difficult ... when you are doing something wrong, and you know it, even if you are being pressured by those above you to do that, you still know it's wrong. This is why we have whistleblower protection and this is also why soldiers can be court-marshalled for following orders that they know to be illegal.
Did he convict an innocent man due to his own wrongdoing and did he knowingly withhold evidence? Clearly.
Did he prove that he was coerced into this behavior in some way, thus proving entrapment and absolving himself of any guilt in this matter? If he had, it's doubtful he would've been fined and sentenced to jail time and community service, ergo, I'd say he did not.
So he did something wrong, he did so knowingly, even if he had "surrendered his sense of self" to the institution, he is still guilty of wrongdoing that destroyed another mans life - by the very same argument that the entrapped would have to prove that the entrapment led him to behave this way.
A prosecutor is part of an institution for years that, by default, it's reasonable to assume has some culpability for the crime.
Someone caught by an undercover cop is interacting with that cop for the first time. For this reason, by default, the cop is not assumed to have culpability.
> His failure notwithstanding, is there some reason why the defense didn't call the son to testify as a witness in court? Not trying to defend Anderson, but genuinely curious.
He pleaded guilty, so it presumably wasn't an option. I doubt he had much contact with his son whilst under arrest on suspicion of murder so probably didn't know what his son had seen when making the plea, and three year old's memories fade pretty quickly (the son apparently had no recollection of the incident whatsoever later in life and grew up believing the father was guilty and not having the slightest interest in the appeal process). Even if the son had been able to testify at the time I suspect most judges would advise the jury not to take a denial that Daddy was there from an infant at face value.
Again, a man - and his son - lost 25 years of their lives because he failed to disclose evidence he had. The personal destruction he caused is unfathomable - imagine yourself, after having your spouse killed, thrown in jail for a crime you know you didn't commit, pleading guilty because you were convinced this would be the best for you and your child you'll most likely never see again. This is way beyond unethical.
The original post said that Andersen prosecuted someone "knowing his innocence." But was that really Andersen's intent?
Sometimes the exculpatory evidence can be clear-cut and you can conclude that the prosecutor knew the defendant was innocent and still went forward with the prosecution. Those cases merit very severe punishment. But here, the main piece of withheld evidence was a statement by the victim's mother about a statement by the victim's three-year old child. The statement itself was inadmissible hearsay.
It should have been disclosed, but does failure to do so really rise to the level of malicious intent to prosecute someone Andersen "knew" to be innocent?
> Sometimes the exculpatory evidence can be clear-cut and you can conclude that the prosecutor knew the defendant was innocent and still went forward with the prosecution. Those cases merit very severe punishment.
The article claims this is the first time a prosecutor has been incarcerated.
There are lots of really terrible cases where prosecutors assisted in manufacturing evidence to wrongfully convict people, and received no punishment: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/supreme_cour.... The system needs to be overhauled to hold those people accountable. But I'm not sure this case is the poster-child for ones where the prosecutors need to do long prison sentences. Brady violations should carry some punishments. But I don't think a strict liability "eye-for-eye regardless of the prosecutor's state of mind" approach like people are advocating here is the way to go.
The premise of the court system is that we don't have some infallible technology to tell us whether someone is guilty so we go through this whole process to try to figure it out. If a prosecutor wrongly does something that can change the outcome of a case, the severity of the act is measured by the years taken from an innocent man.
You can reasonably argue that there is a difference in severity between e.g. withholding evidence and manufacturing evidence, but that difference is only worth so much when they both predictably cause the same outcome. And a term of incarceration of five days... it could be twenty times that long and still be overly lenient.
> Sometimes the exculpatory evidence can be clear-cut
That's irrelevant. The prosecutor chose to withhold the evidence to further his case. Even if he wasn't sure the suspect was innocent, he cannot claim he acted in good faith when he knowingly withholds evidence. As a prosecutor he knows very well he should present all the evidence he has. It is not his job to judge what's relevant and what's not.
You are both ignoring the threats he made to extract a plea bargain, and the lack of serious consequences for prosecutorial misconduct. He acted like a thug, and should be sentenced like one. He ought to die in prison and see his family impoverished to compensate his victim.
I "love" how Huffpost frames this as "meaningful punishment" as if saying so makes that farce acceptable. I'm with the OP of this thread, that judge owes this man 25 years.
Anderson is a real piece of work. He tried everything to fight Morton's appeals, his own sanction. It is also a huge embarrassment for the State Bar; since they previously awarded him "Prosecutor of the Year".
> I "love" how Huffpost frames this as "meaningful punishment"
The author frames it as meaningful punishment, and is the director of the Ohio Innocence Project. I'm not sure I totally agree, but compared to zero punishment in the past, this is a major improvement.
An innocent man lost 25 years of his life and the man who caused this eventually, after a reasonably successful career lost what may as well equate to some vacation time...
Am I the only one who is horrified at this? Okay, so he got more than a slap on the wrist, but what the fuck is this?! That's bullshit! Pardon my linguistics, but my horror at this injustice leaves me short for words.
The only restitution that would make this even marginally okay is if the prosecutor/judge had been required to:
- House the convicted man.
- Set him up with training that would allow the convicted to re-integrate meaningfully into today's society.
- Assist the man to find meaningful and gainful employment.
- Set him up with a pension plan that would have been equivalent to see him through retirement.
- Set him up for success in the manner in which he would have been able to provide for himself had he been a free man.
- Feed him, clothe him and pay his utility bills until such a time as his income would allow him to successfully stand on his own two feet.
Even then, he owes this man 25 years of his service to make up for what was taken from him. If that bankrupts his accuser, so be it.