Allow me to begin with a personal anecdote: I’m not a religious man. However, I do teach Jewish texts to middle school students, and this week we happened to critically analyze the 10 Commandments. These students, who understand that significant portions of America’s legal code are influenced by Judeo-Christian ethical principles, were particularly enamored by one of the commandments:
Don’t bear false witness (in a court of law) against your neighbor.
לֹא תַעֲנֶה בְרֵעֲךָ עֵד שָׁקֶר
Why, they asked, is this so important? How does this have the stature of, say, don’t murder or don’t steal?
The collective answer to which we arrived: because falsely bringing evidence, or withholding evidence, against someone in a trial that leads to his or her conviction is akin to stealing and murder. In essence, their life is being taken from them, the years stolen, their potential killed.
Given the severity of such an action, it has always been unconscionable that in this country, those judges and prosecutors who have willingly participated in the wrongful conviction of innocent Americans have rarely been punished, and have never been jailed, for their actions.
Yesterday, for the first time, that changed:
Today in Texas, former prosecutor and judge Ken Anderson pled guilty to intentionally failing to disclose evidence in a case that sent an innocent man, Michael Morton, to prison for the murder of his wife. When trying the case as a prosecutor, Anderson possessed evidence that may have cleared Morton, including statements from the crime’s only eyewitness that Morton wasn’t the culprit. Anderson sat on this evidence, and then watched Morton get convicted. While Morton remained in prison for the next 25 years, Anderson’s career flourished, and he eventually became a judge.
In today’s deal, Anderson pled to criminal contempt, and will have to give up his law license, perform 500 hours of community service, and spend 10 days in jail. Anderson had already resigned in September from his position on the Texas bench.
Now, outrage is warranted when you consider that a man who was party to the wrongful conviction and 25-year incarceration of an innocent man will receive only 10 days in jail.
However, this moment is historic in that a judge and former prosecutor is actually being punished in a meaningful way, having to give up his career for his misconduct. Though, to be sure, a significant jail sentence, rather than a symbolic one, would reveal a truer form of justice.
While this moment is historic, that fact is itself a part of the tragedy of the justice system in America. For as Mark Godsey, director of the Ohio Innocence Project, wrote:
Rogue cops and prosecutors going unpunished is the rule rather than the exception. In Illinois, two police officers whose improperly grueling interrogation techniques led to the wrongful conviction of Juan Rivera and others were not penalized when their 3rd degree tactics came to light. Rather, they were recently hired at taxpayer expense to teach interrogation courses to other police officers around the state.
A recent study found prosecutorial misconduct in nearly one-quarter of all capital cases in Arizona. Only two of those prosecutors have been reprimanded or punished.
In order for such misconduct to be curbed, meaningful punishments for such gross criminal actions will need to become the rule, rather than the exception.
For as my students now understand, stealing someone’s innocence, and years of their life, is just about the most heinous crime possible to commit.
It’s about time we treat it as such.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, now out from Oneworld Publications.
Follow him on Twitter@David_EHG.
I realize that perhaps we should rejoice that at last one lawyer who has now risen to become a judge has been penalized but this man stole 25 years of another man’s life…the punishment does not begin to fit the crime. An eye for an eye might be more appropriate but of course our judicial system would never go for this type of justice. Since this judge is so successful career wise I hope a financial settlement is at least part of the settlement .
Another glaring example of this is the Central Park 5. Taking away not one person’s life–their childhood in some of the cases– but 5. Through interrogation techniques that can only be described as mental torture, and gross negligence to fact and circumstance 5 young men of color were denied their teen years and sent to prison for a crime that was later proven to be committed by someone else. Nevertheless, New York City hasn’t prosecuted any of the police or the prosecution team and wont even reach a monetary settlement for the 5 victims. There are even people who will not believe that they weren’t guilty despite a confession by the rapist and matching DNA.
A friend once remarked to me: “The US Justice System is the best that money can buy; if you don’t have money, you don’t get justice!” I think that fits well, here. While I don’t see retribution of any kind as helpful to anyone, it does seem that in mending, repairing and transforming our world, we might find time to employ a bit of equality in our justice pursuits, which is not based on our Western perceptions of temporal wealth/value!
Of course, as noted, the punishment does not fit the crime. We rejoice that this may be a beginning.
In the meantime, one of the responders on here says : “An eye for an eye might be more appropriate but of course our judicial system would never go for this type of justice.”
The only possible comment to that is: Amen. Thank God.