The story is far too familiar.Friday, DNA tests proved the innocence of James Bain, a Lakes Wales man who has spent the last 35 years in prison for a 1974 rape he didn’t commit.
Last year, former Satellite Beach resident William Dillon was released from prison after tests proved his DNA was not on a T-shirt that was a key piece of evidence in his 1988 conviction for the slaying of James Dvorak.
In 2004, similar testing exonerated Wilton Dedge of Port St. John of a 1981 rape charge after he served 22 years behind bars.
In recent years, at least 11 convictions in Florida have been reversed through new DNA evidence, often after inmates sought the tests for years, but were unconscionably stonewalled by state prosecutors.
The sickening roster of injustice is why there’s no denying the need for scrutiny of the state’s justice system.
It has caused untold human suffering, piled costs for needless incarceration on taxpayers and left the real perpetrators of heinous crime free to possibly rape or murder again.
Friday, a group of lawyers led by former Florida State University President Sandy D’Alemberte proposed such a probe, petitioning the state Supreme Court to create an “actual innocence commission” to examine the facts in the slate of wrongful convictions.
The court should quickly authorize the panel, which would be modeled on one North Carolina created in 2002 that led to reforms to ensure more innocent persons weren’t locked away.
The Florida commission would be made up of judges, prosecutors, public defenders and law enforcement agents, and should also include victims’ advocates.
Panel members should cast the broadest possible net to find the flaws in the handling of criminal cases that lead to the erroneous verdicts.
And scrutiny of police procedures — such as the accuracy of eyewitness identification — should be a top priority for the group.
Misidentification of suspects by witnesses, as happened to Dedge and Dillon, is a factor in 74 percent of the 245 post-conviction exonerations based on DNA evidence in the U.S. since 1989, according to the Innocence Project.
But its role will be advisory, without authority to hold accountable any prosecutors or law enforcement agents who may have broken the law in the Brevard-Seminole State Attorney’s Office during the 1980s.
In that era, officials used fraudulent dog handler John Preston and other sham tactics — such as tainted witnesses and jailhouse snitches who trade testimony in return for lesser sentences — to pin convictions on Dedge, Dillon and others.
Roger Dale Chapman, for example, apologized to Dillon in Tallahassee last month, saying he was told to lie by Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Detective Thom Fair. In exchange, he said, the state dropped sex charges against him.
That testimony spurred Sheriff Jack Parker to reopen the Dvorak homicide investigation, a warranted step to assure public safety as much as possible after such a long interval since the crime. But also not enough.
What’s still needed is this:
Gov. Charlie Crist or Attorney General Bill McCollum to order a grand jury investigation of repeated miscarriages of justice in the cases involving Preston.
They’ve ignored previous calls for a probe, but the issue isn’t going away.
We remind them again of their sworn responsibility to pursue justice.
t’s our hope the commission’s findings result in specific remedies and changes to state law to protect the innocent from gross travesties of justice in the future.
But its role will be advisory, without authority to hold accountable any prosecutors or law enforcement agents who may have broken the law in the Brevard-Seminole State Attorney’s Office during the 1980s.
In that era, officials used fraudulent dog handler John Preston and other sham tactics — such as tainted witnesses and jailhouse snitches who trade testimony in return for lesser sentences — to pin convictions on Dedge, Dillon and others.
Roger Dale Chapman, for example, apologized to Dillon in Tallahassee last month, saying he was told to lie by Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Detective Thom Fair. In exchange, he said, the state dropped sex charges against him.
That testimony spurred Sheriff Jack Parker to reopen the Dvorak homicide investigation, a warranted step to assure public safety as much as possible after such a long interval since the crime. But also not enough.
What’s still needed is this:
Gov. Charlie Crist or Attorney General Bill McCollum to order a grand jury investigation of repeated miscarriages of justice in the cases involving Preston.
They’ve ignored previous calls for a probe, but the issue isn’t going away.
We remind them again of their sworn responsibility to pursue justice.
Source: www.floridatoday.com
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