Better 10 Guilty Men Go Free than to Convict a Single Innocent Man

Published: 2009-6-9
"Better 10 Guilty Men Go Free than to Convict a Single Innocent Man"
Article provided by Paul Cramm
Visit us at www.kansascity-criminal-attorney.com
The essence of this quote forms the very cornerstone of the system of justice that separates the United States from virtually every other civilized nation. Think about the presumption of innocence; the requirement of proof beyond reasonable doubt; the requirement of a unanimous jury verdict. These core elements of our system of criminal justice all flow directly from the premise that the wrongful conviction of a single innocent person is ten times worse than a guilty person going unpunished.

Many of us are instinctively patriotic; downright “‘jingoistic” about the protections afforded us by the Bill of Rights: the right to be free from unlawful search and seizure of our person or effects; the right to remain silent if accused of wrongdoing; the right to be represented by counsel; the right to a trial by jury.

We take off our hats and hold our hands over our hearts when we hear the national anthem at a sporting event. We get misty eyed at images of our enlisted men and women returning from active duty. We hang our flags on Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day the Fourth of July and Presidents Day.

How many of us, however, grumble disparagingly under our breath during the evening news when a photograph of a suspect is displayed during a report of a criminal investigation, based on nothing more than the suspect's race, ethnicity or socio-economic status? How many of us could truly be fair and impartial jurors in a criminal case after we have seen or read wholly unsubstantiated news accounts of the alleged incident? How many of us refrain from commenting about sensational and salacious tidbits spread about a criminal case we have seen or heard about on the news? How many of us would honestly and sincerely honor the Defendant's Constitutional Presumption of Innocence?

If you grew up in an upper middle class (or better) family and neighborhood, there may not be anyone in your immediate or extended family who has ever even been accused, let alone convicted, of a criminal offense. It’s possible that someone in your family got a DUI on his or her way home from the annual company Christmas party, or maybe someone in your family got caught with a misdemeanor amount of marijuana while in high school or college. But the reality is that true, firsthand experience with the criminal justice system is rare among most middle and upper class registered voters: the people most likely to be called for Jury Duty.

We live in truly amazing times. An event can occur in New York and someone in Los Angeles can log on to a near "real time" live video feed. We can call from San Diego to Maine on our cell phones, from our cars, and tell each other the events of our day. News media like CNN and MSNBC provide round-the-clock coverage of national and international events. Cable networks provide real-time coverage of trials across the nation. All of this provides us access to information that may be deemed wholly unsubstantiated, unreliable and inadmissible at the ultimate trial of a sensationalized crime.

Thus, can we be "good jurors" in today's day and age? Are we able to decide cases based solely on evidence admitted into court, regardless of what we may have seen or heard about a case from local and sometimes national or even international news media? Often times being fed dramatized information from the day of the crime, which happened long before trial was scheduled? Moreover, do we all still agree that it truly is “Better that 10 guilty men go free than to convict a single innocent man” or has it become too easy to ignore the reality of wrongful conviction; as long as it isn't happening to our own neighbors?

The Innocence Project has now had some 100 death sentences overturned based upon post-conviction evidence. According to their study of the first 70 cases reversed:

• Over 30 of them involved prosecutorial misconduct.
• Over 30 of them involved police misconduct which led to wrongful convictions.
• Approximately 15 of them involved false witness testimony.
• 34% of the police misconduct cases involved suppression of exculpatory evidence.
• 11% involved outright evidence fabrication.
• 37% of the prosecutorial misconduct cases involved concealing exculpatory evidence.
• 25% involved knowing use of false testimony.

Keep in mind; these statistics involve Death Penalty cases wherein the State sought to literally kill the innocent person who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How many of those 100 innocent, wrongly accused citizens were convicted in the media before jury selection ever began in their trial? How many were wholly deprived of their Constitutional Presumption of Innocence? If we allow ourselves to make watershed decisions far "upstream" about whom is and is not deserving of the protections afforded by our Constitution, our entire system of justice becomes a hollow shell with a predetermined outcome.

I recently had the privilege of meeting Dennis Fritz at local book club meeting to discuss his book “Journey Toward Justice.”
Dennis was charged along with Ronald Williamson for the murder in Ada Oklahoma that prompted John Grisham to write “The Innocent Man.” In Dennis’ book, he describes in a way that only first-hand experience allows what it was like to be accused, arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned for 11 years for a crime he did not commit. The fact that OUR esteemed system of “justice” is responsible for what happened to this innocent man is chilling. We all need to remember that our system of justice is what truly separates us from all other civilized nations. The way we as a community treat those accused of crimes defines us as a nation. We must treat those accused of heinous crime with blind and impartial fairness as much for them as we do for our own integrity.

Sources:FindLaw KnowledgeBase

CBS 60 Minutes Story with Video - 26-Year Secret Kept Innocent Man In Prison

(CBS) This is a story about an innocent man who has been in prison for 26 years while two attorneys who knew he was innocent stayed silent. They did so because they felt they had no choice.

Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a McDonald's in Chicago in 1982. Police arrested him after a tip and got three eyewitnesses to identify him. Logan, his mother and brother all testified he was at home asleep when the murder occurred. But a jury found him guilty of first degree murder.

Now new evidence reveals that Logan did not commit that murder. But as correspondent Bob Simon reports, the evidence was not new to those two attorneys, who knew it all along but say they couldn't speak out until now.

Alton Logan's story cuts to the core of America's justice system.
Full Story here CBS "60 Minutes"Here
Watch "cbs "60 Minutes" Video Here

Here is what The Carnegie Legal Reporting Program @ Newhouse supported by the Carnegie Journalism Initiative says about the "60 Minutes Story"
"60 Minutes" drops the ball in wrongful conviction story
CBS "60 Minutes"
Mon, March 10, 2008

Shame on "60 Minutes," correspondent Bob Simon, and producers Robert C. Anderson and Casey Morgan for squandering a chance to tell an important story well.
Their report last night on the case of Alton Logan was "60 Minutes" at its best (powerful on-camera interviews with all the key players) and at its worst (cheap emotion, lacking any intellectual engagement with the real issues). Logan has served 26 years in prison for the murder of a security guard in a Chicago robbery.
Today a judge hears arguments that Logan is innocent and deserves to be freed or retried. Revelations by two defense lawyers triggered the hearing, and the CBS story.
The lawyers represented a man who confessed convincingly to them, before Logan's conviction, that he was the real killer. They came forward only after their client died last November.
It's a shocking and sad story about an injustice no matter what you think of the lawyers. But, with those two lawyers telling Simon how and why they did what they did, it tees up a story that might answer two key legal questions:
Did they have to keep silent?
And why should client confidentiality trump the truth?Simon and his producers skip past those questions while going long on drama and moralizing. Simon opens the report by describing the defense lawyers' motivation: "because they thought they had no choice.
See what you think." And then he proceeds to deny the viewer any opportunity to think, based on facts and perspective on what Illinois' rules say, about the principles at stake.
The lawyers' on-camera quotes don't help much.

They do make the point, over and over, that their loyalty had to be to their client, Andrew Wilson. But they don't come close to explaining why that's important. "It's just a requirement of the law," one lawyer, Dale Coventry, tells Simon. "The system wouldn't work without it
Well, why not? Simon doesn't ask them -- or anyone else.
At another point, Simon intones that the choice of concealing or revealing the wrongful conviction seems easy.
"It's perfectly obvious to someone who isn't a lawyer," he says to bait his lawyer-interviewees, and to play to the story's blatant lawyer-bashing theme.
Simon, et al., fail to summon any other sources to explain why it shouldn't be perfectly obvious -- or at least arguable -- that we need the system as it is to prevent lawyers from betraying clients whenever they or others decide the betrayal would serve a higher good.
And why has Logan served another four months since Wilson's death without even getting a hearing until now, much less a prompt release? "It's all rather complicated," Simon tells his audience in a patronizing dodge.
Too bad neither he nor his producers and employer see it as their job to turn complicated facts and arguments into a coherent story. Instead, we get spleen-venting and weepy melodrama.

Ken Middleton Proven Innocent Remains In Prison For Life

Billboard located on the outskirts of Kansas City, MO.

Barbara's Journey Toward Justice Mailbag

Barbara,

I am writing you about the death of my step-mother and wrongful conviction of my father. My father married my step-mother when I was just 5 years old. They had a wonderful marriage and I had great role models in both of them. I love and miss her very much !

It is unfortunate that the injustice that followed left my father and I unable to properly grieve.
I was just 20 years old in 1990 when my step-mother died after mishandling a gun. Little did I know but the nightmare would not ever end. Not yet anyway.

My father was convicted on circumstantial evidence. Based on police and prosecutor corruption the skilled prosecutor's were able to convince a jury to convict. I know many people will take that the wrong way. " I was framed". What many fail to understand is that this happens more than you might think it does !

Please don't take my word for it visit my website at free-kenmiddleton.com here. You will see all the documentation of destroyed crime scene photo's, altered gunshot residue test and expert witness testimony 100% exonerating my father !
My father's case was reversed in May of 2005. After the trial judge was presented with 2 experts witness's testimony that my father could not have shot my step-mother.

Mathematically and physically impossible !

She overturned her own case. 14 years later !

You might be asking yourself then why is he still in prison ?

That is were this case should shock and disturb everybody that reads my website.

After the trial judge overturned her own case and wrote that my father would have never been convicted with a proper trial the prosecutors had it thrown by the appeals court saying that she did not have the authority to re-open his case so her findings that an innocent man is in prison are moot !

What's more unbelievable is that these same prosecutor's offered my dad an Alford plea and his freedom if he would plead guilty.

After 14 years in prison and before the judge overturned the conviction my dad absolutely refused to consider the plea. I ask you what guilty man would turn down his freedom ? None. Most innocent men with less courage would have taken that offer !

As of January of 2008 a proven innocent man remains in a Missouri prison. Please take the time to click on my website Here and see the proof for yourself. The Kansas City Star articles about my father and I can be read there. As well as the billboard that I purchased in downtown Kansas City in my attempt to bring awareness to this injustice.

Sincerely,

Cliff Middleton

John Grisham "The Appeal" Legal Thriller

Grisham's next legal thriller has been titled as "The Appeal"

John Grisham’s upcoming 384-page legal thriller that will be released for sale on January 29, 2008, has been titled as “The Appeal.”

In an interview to Des Moines Register, Grisham said the fictional book, set in Mississippi, will focus on the election of state Supreme Court judges.

“It’s a real political hotbed issue right now,” he said. “And these races have become just rotten with special-interest groups, cash and judges taking huge campaign donations from lawyers and parties with cases pending before the court.”

“It’s turned into a terrible system, and I hope to bring some attention to that issue.”

Source: Random House, Des Moines Register

Looks like 2008 will be THE year full of legal thrillers for John Grisham, with "The Innocent Man" lawsuit, and his new book "The Appeal."
For those who do not know John Grisham has been named in a libel lawsuit filed over his nonfiction book, "The Innocent Man". The book is about the 1982 murder of Debbie Sue Carter in Ada, Oklahoma.

At the center of the lawsuit is an Oklahoma prosecutor by the name of William N. Peterson. He got murder convictions on two men, Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson, who did 12 years in prison before they were cleared by DNA evidence. Fritz and Williamson's experiences are chronicled in two books, John Grisham's first nonfiction book, "The Innocent Man," and Fritz's, "Journey Toward Justice".
Bill Peterson got questionable convictions on two other men, Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot, in a separate murder case. They are still in prison.
Robert Mayer, is the author of “The Dreams of Ada.” A book written primary about the murder of Denice Haraway and the subsequent investigation, prosecution and conviction of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot.
The other Plaintiff is Gary Rogers, a former agent for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.
Bill Peterson and Gary Rogers were instrumental in the conviction of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz in the murder of Debbie Sue Carter in Ada, Oklahoma in 1982.

The lawsuit also names:
•Dennis Fritz, the author of “Journey Toward Justice.”
•Robert Mayer, author of “The Dreams of Ada.”
•Barry Scheck, one of Fritz’s lawyers who helped exonerate him, and a co-author of “Actual Innocence,” that discusses the case of Williamson and Fritz.
•The Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, publisher of “The Innocent Man” and “Actual Innocence.”
•Random House Inc., which owns Doubleday Dell.
•Broadway Books, publisher of “The Dreams of Ada.”
•Seven Locks Press and/or James C. Riordan, publisher of “Journey Toward Justice.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges civil conspiracy, libel, placing a person in a false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Peterson says the defendants "coordinated their efforts to launch a massive joint defamatory attack" on him and the detective.

"There's no merit," to the suit, James C. Riordan says. The reason his book published two days before Grisham's was competitive.

Comment from Dennis Fritz, author of "Journey Toward Justice".
“The problem is that Mr. Peterson convicted two innocent men, sent Ronnie and I to the penitentiary for 12 years, based upon alleged evidence that did not go beyond a reasonable doubt." Fritz said the lawsuit is merely a power play by Peterson “to regain what he has lost because of his actions, or mis-actions.”
“He cannot handle the truth that’s been brought out in both Mr. Grisham’s book as well as mine. Dennis Fritz said every word in his book is true as he remembered the events of that time.
“Factually, it’s backed up exactly by every word out of the transcript,” he said. Fritz said that Peterson achieved their convictions through “several huge mistakes, worse than mistakes, travesties of justice.”

I will have updates on my blog, Barbara's Journey Toward Justice here
UPDATE - OCT. 2008
Dennis Fritz, "The Innocent Man" and John Grisham's Real Life, "Appeal" This story is just unbelievable. A libel lawsuit against Dennis Fritz, author of Journey Toward Justice and author, John Grisham headed to court of appeals. Click here for more on story

John Grisham and Dennis Fritz Lawsuit - Publisher welcomes libel suit

Seven Locks Press in Santa Ana is small-time, publishing about 25 titles a year. But it has joined big boys Doubleday and Random House, as well as author John Grisham and defense attorney Barry Scheck, as defendants in a defamation lawsuit involving the justice – or rather the in justice – system in the small town of Ada, Okla.

The lawsuit is one of the best things that's ever happened to Seven Locks and its owner, Jim Riordan.

"Quite frankly, when I get to put my name next to Grisham and Random House – I'll take that any day," says Riordan, who I met a few years ago when he was working with Deacon Jones on a charity fundraiser.

At the center of the lawsuit is an Oklahoma prosecutor by the name of William N. Peterson. He got murder convictions on two men who did 12 years in prison before they were cleared by DNA evidence. He also got questionable convictions on two other men in a separate murder case. They are still in prison.

The cases spawned three books: "The Dreams of Ada" by journalist Robert Mayer; "The Innocent Man," the first non-fiction book by author Grisham; and "Journey Toward Justice," by Dennis Fritz, who was one of the wrongly convicted men. To varying degrees, the books are critical of Peterson, who has been the elected district attorney for 27 years.

Seven Locks is Fritz's publisher. The first editions of the Grisham and Fritz books and an updated version of Mayer's were all published within weeks of each other last fall. Book tours and publicity ensued. Even Fritz, the least-known writer with the smallest house, got on "Dateline," "Hannity and Colmes" and other national shows. In Oklahoma, Peterson seethed.

Last Friday, Peterson and a detective who worked on the Fritz case sued the publishers, the authors and attorney Scheck, who represented Fritz, wrote the foreward for Fritz's book and wrote about the case in his own book, "Actual Innocence." Grisham had also provided a cover blurb for Fritz.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges civil conspiracy, libel, placing a person in a false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Peterson says the defendants "coordinated their efforts to launch a massive joint defamatory attack" on him and the detective.

"There's no merit," to the suit, Riordan says. The reason his book published two days before Grisham's was competitive.

By rights, Riordan says, Fritz's book should have gone to a major publishing house, but with Grisham's in the works at Random, no one else wanted to touch it. So, Riordan says, he bought it on the condition that it would be finished in time to compete with Grisham's, not complement it.

You tell from his voice that Riordan is as emotionally invested in Fritz's story as he is financially. He talks about how when Fritz finally got out of jail in 1999, he went to a motel and was puzzled when they wouldn't give him a key – just a piece of plastic that resembled a credit card. And how when he went to a gas station, no attendant came out to wait on him.

"That's what losing 12 years does to you," Riordan says.

I read "The Dreams of Ada." In about three days. In most true-crime books you're scared of the defendants. In this one, you're scared of the prosecutor. I have "Journey Toward Justice" on deck. It's sold about 35,000 copies so far, the fastest-selling book in Seven Lock's 30-year history. The lawsuit will only help.



read more Orange Countrys News Source FRANK MICKADEIT
Register columnist

UPDATE SEPT. 2008 CASE DISMISSED Grisham - Fritz - Mayer - Scheck Lawsuit
Click here for update