Thursday, February 28, 2013
Ask Thomas
Many thanks to Professor Giovanni for a riveting, irreverent, depressing, inspiring two hours. If I were in charge of this blog, I would just feature the steady stream of quotable quotes, such as "what you don't condemn, you condone," or "we want it done more than we want it done right" or "we mistake certainty for leadership" or, my favorite, "we hide from our humanity because we have a role to play." I will just say there are real life lessons there and leave it at that since I want to open the blog up to your questions for Thomas. Your professors, delighted at being students again, asked a lot of questions this morning -- perhaps you didn't get to ask yours? Or you want to push back on something concerning you? Ask away. Not only can Thomas respond, but you should feel free to engage one another's comments as well as you would during a regular week. Engage!
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18 comments:
Hello Mr. Giovanni,
Thank you so much for an amazing class. It was truly inspirational and intense class. I left the seminar thinking “wow” with all the information discussed, and even just some of the quotes (as Professor Reitz mentioned) alone.
At the beginning of the seminar, we discussed our reactions to the case. Some of us stated how surprised we were about how unethical and wrong Ken Anderson, as well as the police officers behaviors was in handling the case. However, others were surprised, but not as much because they had expected stuff like to happen. We further discussed that prosecutorial misconduct does happen often, maybe not to this extent, but it does occur in a courtroom.
My question to you is, when these cases of prosecutorial misconduct does come to trial, how seriously are they taken by the judges/jurors. What is usually the sentence given to prosecutors if found guilty of prosecutorial misconduct? The reason I ask is because the prosecutor is on the state’s side of trials.
How willing are human beings, jurors, judges, “society”, etc. willing to accept that someone who is given the responsibility of being an authority figure, to justice to our society, and ensure our safety (by prosecuting the “criminals”) engage in such unethical acts. Are we willing to accept this and prosecute them as they should be for the extent of their prosecutorial misconduct? Or will society hide from their humanity again and give lighter sentences/circumstances because they see it as the prosecutor just “doing their job” for the state?
Mr. Giovanni, thanks so much for the class! Depressing, angering, educational, and inspiring.
What struck me the most was the rhetoric on: "Do people make systems? Or, do systems make people?"
I do think it's both. People obviously construct the systems we rely on for justice, but then those systems become reinforced and so entrenched in our society that there begins this dual process of the system shaping us and our values, and us subsequently shaping the system.
With that said, I wanted to talk about something not exactly related to prosecutorial misconduct, but to our ideas of justice in society. I wanted to hear your opinion on GEO Group and their financial backing of FIU's new football stadium. More importantly, how a university could decide to accept such money from this source. For those that don't know, GEO operates for-profit, private prisons. Talk about taking "what you don't condemn, you condone" to the extreme... Where is the universal ethical responsibility to protect justice, and does the university's position (accepting a hefty donation to advance educational opportunities) exonerate them from any wrongdoing, in your opinion?
I personally have begun to see it as a validation of inhumane practices and operations. No one or entity, especially a university, should be associating with that. We should be uniting to bring it down.
In regards to Michelle's question, and to play devil's advocate, I wonder how often prosecutors engage in such unethical conduct and are right. I'm not saying I agree with the actions, but perhaps a jury will feel sympathy for such "shortcuts," since they have helped to put so many presumably guilty people away and may serve a prosecutor well in most situations.
On that note, another quote/societal stance that struck me: Our apparent shift to-- "better to put one guilty person away for 100 wrongly convicted people, than to let one guilty person go free for the innocence of 100 people."
Great questions/comments, Michelle and Joe. Also a question for Thomas: when are you writing a book?
I would also like to thank Thomas Giovanni for a very engaging class, I was and am extremely facinated by this topic/issue.
As I was sitting in class I remembered being horrified when I first saw the news about the Georgia woman convicted of the vehicular homicide of her son. I could not believe how the system had taken a horrific event in this woman’s life and made it even more horrific by charging her with her son’s death. I was also remembering how I had paid close attention to the case of the West Memphis three. The three Young men who were wrongly convicted of killing three boys in the early 1990’s. I had been so fascinated by the obvious injustice in that case and how these three young men had been convicted without any evidence.
Reading about the Michael Morton case reminded me of the gross and inexcusable manner some law enforcement officials use their position and power to railroad a case to fit their theories and to get a conviction under their belts. It just seems to me that the justice system in many circumstances is not really there to seek justice but rather to appear powerful and above everyone else.
However as outraged as I feel about the some of the practices that goes on with our law enforcement I also put alot of responsibility on our jury system. I might be wrong for saying this and I know how everyone hates to serve on a jury but this is part of our justice system and it is our responsibility as American citizens to serve and do the job we are required to do, to the best of our abilities. Just like law enforcement officials and officers of the courts, the jury has a responsibility to outweight the facts of a case and take their time in deciding someone’s future. The fact of the matter is that in a trial, we are not just deciding the fate of the person accussed, we are also deciding the fate of potential victims, if we put the wrong person away and let the guilty one walk the streets because we did not take our time to analyze the facts. I believe the jury is the check and balances that is put in place to check for mistakes and errors and to make sure that law enforcement and prosecutors as well as judges do their jobs right. People make mistakes. Not everyone is able to function to their full capacities at all times, this is why we should take the time to make sure the correct steps are taken. I know jurors are not law educated people but they are given the information necesary to undertake their responsiblities and many times they just believe the officials know what they are doing so why question them. In many instances juries go in to deliberate a case and in a matter of a couple of hours they come back with a verdict
Like profesor Reitz said, where is our humanity? We fail in our role as human beings when fail to see past what we are told or what we fear.
I am not trying to blame jurors for the gross misconduct of these officials however I think that jurors should be able to question what does not look right to them instead of assuming that law enforcement officials know what they are doing when they charge a person with a crime.
My question to Thomas Giovanni is as a result of such cases and also with the verdict handed down in the Casey Anthony case, is there any proposal to educate and/or better instruct jurors to carefully look at the evidence presented to them?
Do you think if jurors are better educated to the process will that in turn force officials to make sure they cross every (t) and dot every (i)?
When are you coming to teach full time at John Jay?
Michelle: I'll be brief(er) because I want to try to get to everyone's comments. As I was saying about all of us (police, prosecutors, defenders, judges--and i'll add corrections professionals here also) there is almost no oversight or accountability for any of us for what we do to the poor. This isn't just the case with the criminal justice system, though, is it? Think about your own placements? What kind of treatment are people getting as they navigate various aspects of the system? If we as a nation, as a culture, should be judged by how we treat the "least of us," what crimes are we guilty of? Neglect, at the least.
To your point about prosecutors, Anderson Cooper did a good video piece a few years ago about the appalling lack of accountability, even in confirmed cases of misconduct: http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/10/video-prosecutorial-misconduct/
Professor Angela J Davis has written two excellent books on this, the most recent being Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor.
Sadly, the most common consequence of a major violation is a great career for the prosecutor who did it, since it ended in a major conviction, and probably won't be detected for many years.
Joseph:
As usual, you guys are asking much larger questions than the question itself. GEO isn't the only, or the "worst," citizen (Citizens United "citizen," that is) to do some good with ill-gotten gains.
To go back to early days, our modern library system was built by a purchase from Thomas Jefferson, a man with questionable employment practices, from slavery to rape (not arguing whether slaves and masters can have consensual relations).
A FEW years later, my own alma mater, Morehouse College, as did many colleges, faced issues during South Africa's apartheid era, for taking money from Coca-Cola and other companies that were doing business there. People were killed over there, people got scholarships and internships over here. Only when the protests got large and loud did divestment begin to occur.
In many ways, the NCAA profits from a wildly unbalanced--and arguably exploitative--profit-sharing arrangement with athletes. Many kids are educated, though. And many more are touched and inspired by their work both on and off the court. Are you going to enter a March Madness pool?
And on a very personal note, the odds are incredibly high that we're all wearing at least one clothing item today that was made with sweatshop or some other exploitative labor arrangement. When we're bargain hunting, one thing we're searching for is who's paying their employees the least. None of us favor sweatshops, but few of us follow through to the clothes on our back. For me, this realization isn't meant to shut down all criticism, but it does lower my high horse a bit. It's hard to be an American and not be complicit in some serious economic/social injustices, just by getting dressed and eating breakfast (we don't want to even get started taking about farming, labor and the environment..)
So for the question isn't really what we do IF we find an easy example of an unsavory investor, it's really, what is our tolerance level for the existing system, which in large measure, depends on those people.
For example, Goldman Sachs is one of the major players in a hoped-for reform, social impact bonds. Their crimes are both ongoing and historical. But if you're running one of these programs, do you give the check back, and go back to failing to serve your clients? Check out the website: http://www.goldmansachs.com/what-we-do/investing-and-lending/urban-investments/case-studies/social-impact-bonds.html?cid=PS_01_33_06_00_00_00
Personally, when I see that many women and brown people on a major corporate website, I, like Thomas Paine, "smell a rat."
Minerva, i'm sure i'm not the first person to note that you are aptly named: your comments about juror responsibility were quite wise.
i find it amazing that we will shame people who don't vote in national elections, but will chuckle with those same people about how we managed to get out of jury duty. and by "amazing" i mean "screwed up."
i can't tell you how many times i had to shut down a client's family as we were picking a jury for their son/daughter's case. inevitably, one of the family members would say to me, "there are no black people here. this isn't fair." (like it's my fault.) i would say back to them, "what did you do when it was your turn to serve?" they say something like "i had to work," "i was busy" or my favorite--"i don't like court." so i'd say back to them, "well, today is all your neighbors' day to have to work/be busy/not like court and this is the jury we get."
but even when we get a jury seated, you very much answered your own question as you asked it. jurors, like most of us, are "educated" much more by their lives in general than they can be in any court interaction, such as the jury "training" that some states, including NY, have begun doing to make the experience better. we tend to trust the "experts" in any situation. how often do you catch yourself saying "well, he's the expert," or "she's the doctor," "he wrote the book..."? When that trust is deserved, things probably go well. You probably don't want to second guess a highly respected oncologist when she suggests a course of treatment for your cancer. But is that trust deserved in the criminal justice system? and to what use is that trust put? those are questions i hear in your comment.
public opinion surveys routinely show that people trust police judges prosecutors and defenders, in that order. if the judge let the evidence in, it must be good. if the judge told us to not ask about certain subjects, must be because they don't matter; if the judge gets angry with the defender or the client, they must deserve bad treatment. jurors see the prosecutor as a nice person fighting for "justice"; maybe they even voted for the chief prosecutor; the defender didn't say much and the client didn't even testify in his defense. What should they think, regardless of the quality of the evidence? how do they evaluate the quality of the evidence, except in the most egregious situations?
and they can never know why avenues of inquiry weren't followed up on, but they can guess, right? so if the defense called no witnesses, is that because the defender is over-worked/burned out/stupid/careless? or because there's nobody to say anything good about the client because he did it? most of us would think the latter, unless we knew the system.
you're getting at a level of civic education and critical thinking/skepticism/sympathy-empathy that we need to teach in elementary schools--one of the major american factories in which we manufacture citizens.
Here's an older, short thing to read about public opinion and criminal justice: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/sl_crimepunish_publicopinion.pdf
groups such as Spitfire Strategies, http://www.spitfirestrategies.com/, are trying to help advocates change our messaging to change the minds of the public, but it's a slow ride from here to justice.
To All,
Thanks so much for having me come to class. As they say, "to teach is to learn twice," and every time i do this class, i learn much, both in preparing and in the interactions with you all.
It's really heartening to see generations of young professionals coming into this work with your eyes more open than mine were when i was at your point.
I've said before that the Fellows Program is like a time machine. the class and the internships give you all such valuable professional and personal pushes forward. you're having discussions and experiences well ahead of your peers. you're lucky to have such a dedicated team. by having these discussions, and figuring out more of who you'll be in this world earlier, you can move thought forward, rather than spending so much time walking where we've already been.
with all the doom and gloom i talk, i hope it's clear how much i love this work. however many losses i've had, and for all the negatives i see in this culture, i hope you see that it's we on the left who are among those who are the most optimistic about America, and about the positive potential of government in general. if we thought humans couldn't do much better than this, we'd just be asking for more cages to put bad folk in. if we thought government wasn't a major part of the answer, we wouldn't be asking for it to change, but be trying to tear it down. we're far more optimistic about human and government potential than those who claim a form of "patriotism" while blithely condemning millions of poor americans to suffer in the grip of various unjust systems, just because they're poor (and because they're black, brown).
progressive reformers in the center to far left (less than "radical") get out of bed every day thinking This Can Get Better, from education policy, food justice, labor rights, all the way through to ending mass incarceration. we may walk under a cloud of problems, and we often bring the rain to the picnic, but we're always in search of some sun..
(that was a bit over the top, but i'm always sensitive to how the accurate criticism of what is can be perceived as a cynicism about what can be, when exactly the opposite it true.)
Dear Mr. Giovanni,
Thank you for taking time to visit us last Thursday, my classmates and I benefited immensely from and were very much impressed by this eye-opening experience.
During the lecture, I could not help but worship every theory and rebellious word that came out of your mouth, with one exception—your opinion on community involvement in criminal justice system. At one point in the lecture, you spoke of disappointment over current criminal justice system’s lack of direct input from community (please correct me if I have misinterpreted your message). I, however, arrived at a contrary conclusion with regard to this matter. When speaking of community input, collective sentiment and public opinions jump right into my mind, and I believe these forces could potentially undermined the integrity of the criminal justice system. Why? It is because collective sentiment and public opinions are often filled with biases and misunderstandings, and they are capable of demonizing defendants who do not enjoy great public reputation. I can think of a time when community input was an essential component of the criminal justice system, namely the long and dark 19th century where Southern justice system allowed too much community input to sway court decisions for trials that involve minorities, especially Black males. It is safe to argue that vigilantism and lynching is extreme versions of excessive community input into criminal justice system, because these two forms of grassroots violence directly reflected the collective sentiment and public opinions in a given community.
To a certain extend, it is arguable that Michael Morton was a victim of community input, though I may be stretching this argument a bit too far. But can any of us guarantee that the testimonies of his neighbors, who apparently did not have a favorable impression of Michael, did not reinforce the two leading investigators’ suspicion of Michael? Now imagine if this type of opinion could find its way into criminal justice system as “community input.”
Finally, here is my question for you, Mr. Giovanni: in what ways could direct community input benefits our criminal justice system? Thank you very much for your valuable time.
Best,
Sylvie
Appreciate the response, Mr. Giovanni, thank you. A lot to reflect on. This is a question I've personally tried to come to terms with throughout the last two semesters. It's such a complex and really tugs at me on an emotional & social justice level.
Dear Mr. Giovanni,
After reading the comments and listening to some of the other fellows’ feedback, I am even more disappointed that I was unable to attend the lecture. However, I am hopeful that my final interview for the New York City Teaching Fellowship went well and I can report back to you in a few weeks with good news.
Reading “Innocent Man, Part One” highlighted many similar issues that reoccur within the criminal justice system. In many ways, his tragic story seemed to mirror the prison-industrial complex here in the City. Like Michael Morton, minority populations are stigmatized, which, in turn, creates this underlying stereotypes that their communities have more crime and need more policing. Most of the evidence to justify these claims is based on emotions and there is a lack of evidence. “Larger than life figures” like Commissioner Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg use their “credibility” to espouse views that are unfounded, and, more importantly, unsupported by the data, such as stop-and-frisk reduces crime. Along the same lines, the NYPD often treats individuals as suspects—like Morton—based on prejudices and biases. All of these factors play a significant role in the evidence presented, the views of the jury, and the ability for a defendant to defend herself. So, with this in mind, I have two questions. First, do you think trial by jury is a truly democratic expression, especially when the defendant is a minority in a community? Second, what mechanisms and reforms would you make the current system with juries to ensure fairness without taking out the “trial by peers” principal?
I became quite interested in the part of the article when Morton’s son Eric mentioned that he saw a man in the shower with his clothes on. Rather than going to the police, Morton reasoned that “he did not want [Boutwell or Wood] anywhere near his son,” in turn leading to this point being ignored from the case. To me, this seems analogous to certain underlying reasoning occurring within the City. Given the negative views of the NYPD, combined with the discriminatory policies, many individuals within low-income, high-crime areas resist going to the police or speaking to them. With this in mind, it is easier to understand why more vigilant justice occurs. So, are elected officials and those within the NYPD aware of the detrimental consequences of policies and their impact on community participation or do they chose to ignore it and justify policies due to the costs outweigh the negatives?
To jump off Sylvie’s point, I too am disappointed from community input. In many ways, the current criminal justice systems serves as a pipeline—much like in the Morton case—where a lot of discretion is given to the NYPD and prosecutors without many safeguard for individuals, especially those who are unaware of rights. The current prevailing view within the City is to concentrate policing in selected communities and within their schools. Right now, we are witnessing selected community input and the failure for additional community input to temper it or to provide an alternative narrative, such as the crime decline reflects access to education increases, access to medical treatment increases, capital infrastructure changes, and many similar potential causes rather than more policing and more misdemeanor arrests. However, the communities most affected for crime are not asking to be stigmatized and to give up their rights. Unfortunately, their input in working with police is further undermined by their perceptions. That is not to say that I am disappointed with these individuals—my friends, family, and neighbors—because they should not have to fight for basic rights; however, there is a very real component absent from the current debates. As a result, the community participation from the populations that are most affected by crime do not have any say and very little recourse mechanisms, especially when there is little minority representation or the mayor’s and commissioner’s unwillingness to tell the truth.
On one final note, Morton’s story reminds us all of the collateral damage that the criminal justice system creates on families and individuals. The emotional burdens for Morton’s son are severe and relationships between families destroyed. The criminal justice system and finding “justice” are not some mere abstraction in which we test out potential ways to find it. So, in closing, Mr. Giovanni, if you were mayor for the day, what two steps would you take to create a criminal justice system—just in the City—that aligns with your vision?
Thank you again for time and input, and I hope I get the chance to speak and see you again soon.
Mr. Giovanni,
Thank you for your inspiring and thoughtful class. I was angered, depressed, but also felt a sense of hope – at least one person who is in the system understand how the system works and isn’t shy about speaking truth to power, or teaching it in a classroom setting. I left the thinking about accountability, and who is responsible for what? Our criminal justice system is so large, complex, and often times muddled with bureaucracy that one could get lost easily and quickly. With that said, it can also be difficult to point the finger when it comes to an incident(s) of injustice. As we saw in class, we were all furious with the District Attorney, and in my opinion, rightly so, however, I also believe that the blame does not solely fall to him. As you stated, we all are, in some form or another, responsible and complicit in this injustice, and in injustice that happens everyday.
However, while I agree, I think many of us are often time powerless, or feel powerless, to fight such a huge system riddled with loopholes, formal and informal processes of legal discourse, and good honest people who are “only doing their job”. As Professor Stein stated, there probably isn’t a person hiding in an elaborate throne room whisking away at his/her mustache, plotting to see how to make injustice the norm, but the question of accountability does not go away. It is here that a problem, a serious one, exists. Who do we blame? The question is not even about the who, but being strategic about who is held accountable for injustice, because depending on the who, the actions taken after that identification can have serious implications for the criminal justice system. Holding one assistant DA accountable is very different than holding Obama accountable, and I mean true accountability.
Given that the problem of finding who is accountable and pointing the finger, my question to you is this – is it possible to whole multiple cogs in the machine accountable at the same time? Or is it more pragmatic and efficient to pin the blame of an incident of injustice on one person? Furthermore, what might accountability look like? Prison time? Stripping the individual of their license to practice law or take away the gavel or the badge? If accountability would be established in an institutional way, what would it look like?
Thank you! And I seriously think you should write a book, teach a John Jay, and come back for one more seminar! Thank you.
Thomas. Thank you for the generosity of your spirit, for sharing your deep understanding of the system as it does exist, for telling it like it is (can we ever get out of the morass if we're always looking to "see the other side"?), and for making the point in your last comment about hope. That last point is as important as your careful critique of the systemic forces that shape what happens at all levels of the criminal justice system (and alas, in the larger society; alas, in the global political economy). I agree with you: critics who understand how structure works are those most hopeful that transformative change is possible. You come to a place of hope--a most threatening place for power.
Yes, we are all complicit and accrue relative benefits vis-a-vis the exploited and those vulnerable to exploitation. The system generates the contradictions; each one of us negotiates this--first, by being aware--knowing it, understanding it, being clear about it, then finding spaces of resistance--doing the action, the activity that we feel is ours to do, our bit.
Thomas, you give to the world so much--a large "bit." More than that, you make us feel less alone.
Thanks for all the kind words. I'll try to just touch on a couple of things that were written since my last comment.
Sally,
If i were mayor for a day (and i'd have to be king, because as mayor i couldn't actually just decree anything, but i get the point) i'd implement two laws for all government or government-funded service providers, not just the criminal justice system:
1. Treat everyone to whom you deliver services as if they were the child of your best friend.
2. When i'm gone, this law shall not be amended,rescinded or altered in any manner.
People would still get punished, but only because they had to be. what happens to so many people now as the first option would be the last resort, and only for a few.
can you imagine an educational system where that was the rule? Public housing conditions?
What i'm really getting at with that is not only a change in service delivery, but a call to activism for the service providers. school principals who really treated the children in the school as if they were loved ones of their loved ones would be in the Chancellor's office every morning, rioting about funding, police activity, bad teachers, etc. Same with those responsible for housing, or any number of services.
They would call me the Sympathy Mayor..
sally,
trial by jury, rare as it is, is another one of those areas in criminal justice that would be fine, if we did anything even close to what we promise we're going to do. fair trials in front of informed jurors, fairly picked, is a good idea. we ought to try that one day.
you're allegedly entitled to a jury of your "peers." but what's a peer morphs into ridiculous shape in the context of a jury trial, when a 20 year-old from harlem is judged by 40-somethings from the upper east side. think about the absolute lack of empathy that must have been present for that jury to convict the georgia woman we talked about. (there are other possible reasons, including the "just doing my job" mentality, but if they could picture themselves there, i believe the outcome would be different, no matter what the jury instructions were.)
also, as a result of lawyer/judge arrogance, trials are very much about the business of keeping jurors uninformed, rather than giving them information. both sides spend most of their time in a paternalistic attempt to keep the jury from hearing information that they believe is bad for their case, and the judges spend much of their time also limiting information.
one of the most fundamentally disgusting things about our jury system is that jurors aren't allowed to know the potential punishment the person faces, while at the same time, those who write about the theoretical system use lofty terms about the jury being the "conscience of the community." that's part of why the drug war got to rage on so long: people really don't know that people are serving 10 and 20 years for marijuana, or that someone is going to jail for life for their third strike, when that last strike is a bar fight. then the nullification conversation begins..
check out the site for Families Against Mandatory Minimums for some of those horrifically long sentences.
and file this under "to teach is to learn twice." looking for some jury nullification info, i came across this article--http://www.policymic.com/articles/10603/jury-nullification-in-new-hampshire-becomes-reality
New hampshire is apparently going to let defenders argue nullification, and montanna is too. That's a great start, and you won't be surprised to learn that the state is 93+% white, and richer and older than the national average.(http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/33000.html) but as with many social justice reforms, we have to start with folk that folk like..
Nicolas:
your question about who we hold accountable, and how we do it, is an excellent one. we tend too often to think in "one size fits all" boxes when it comes to deterring bad behavior, but i think those who study behavioral sciences and group dynamics would tell us that the context really matters. for example, without legitimacy--the belief that the authority imposing punishment has the right to do so--no amount of punishment will ever truly work.this is PART OF why even with increasing mandatory minimums, expanding death-eligible cases, or even stop and frisk tend not to work. the people most affected do not see the punishment regime as legitimate forces in the community. it decimates public confidence. thus, people tend not to participate in helping police solve serious crimes.
class also matters. james baldwin once said that the most dangerous man is the man with nothing to lose. well, a corollary (or whatever smart term goes here) to that idea is that the most compliant person is the one who feels they have everything to lose. middle/upper class professionals can be relatively easily controlled if they know career, status or money are at stake.
this is why i'm in favor of really slamming down on people in power, whenever they're caught, because the herd will respond. if you put a few prosecutors in jail with any sort of regularity--and saddle them with all the collateral consequences that go with a conviction--that's the end of prosecutorial misconduct as a systemic problem, in less than 5 years. nobody hates black people enough to lose their job, their freedom and to starve their families. (well, almost nobody..)
but the punishment has to be relatively swift, and the group has to believe they are relatively likely to get caught. this is actually a place where the "rational person" theory of behavior, one of the dumbest legal fictions, would actually work--with the very lawyers who made it up. they have enough to lose, they are fundamentally a conservative group (almost all lawyers are. i don't mean politically; just as it regards risk-taking) and they have a current status and future plans that could be derailed if they were caught by a robust system of checks and balances.
on average, when the innocence project is involved, it takes 13 years for a person to be freed. that's too long.
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