Which is the bigger journalistic sin – a media celebrity embellishing a war story to appear more heroic, or a journalism professor lying to free a murderer?
Without a doubt, the first receives a lot more publicity. Who hasn’t heard about Brian Williams?
But how many people know what David Protess did? If you haven’t heard of him, you have most likely heard of his “Innocence Project” at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism in Chicago.
For more than two decades, Protess, an anti-death penalty advocate and journalism professor, used his students to revisit selected Death Penalty cases, and prison inmates who claimed innocence. An early success led to an “exoneration” and then another, and then another.
The publicity from one case fed the next. The media loved it. Here was one of their own saving the day. Even better for the made-for-Hollywood story was that Protess and most of his students were white. The men they were saving from Death Row and prison sentences were black. Some of these inmates received multi-million dollar payouts in wrongful-conviction lawsuits.
In the past year, the Protess legend has unraveled. You probably haven’t heard much about it, though, unless you live in Chicago. Unfortunately, it’s not just a Chicago story.
Protess’ sins have infected the American criminal justice system, which wasn’t perfect to begin with (which criminal justice system on Earth is?). But Protess has made it increasingly difficult to tell the guilty from the innocent, lies from the truth.
Even worse, he has made the truth irrelevant. What a legacy for a journalist.
“Was a Killer Set Free?” shouted the headline from the Chicago Sun-Times on April 19, 2014 when it became apparent that a double murderer named Anthony Porter, who killed two teenagers in Chicago’s Washington Park, had been unjustly freed.
Protess could rationalize his unethical methods, which led prosecutors to free Porter, by telling himself that he was serving a higher good – abolishing the death penalty.
What have his lies brought to inner-city neighborhoods, where people live in fear of men like Anthony Porter? It’s a question the media don’t explore. Reporters and editors from major newspapers and public broadcasting stations don’t live with neighbors like Porter.
Thanks to Protess, Anthony Porter, a member of the Black Gangster Disciples, was cast as a victim. Porter had a reputation for beating and robbing elderly people; in the weeks leading up to the double murder of two teenagers, he shot a man over a barking dog and fired a gun at police.
Look at the photo of Protess in the arms of Porter when the killer was freed from prison. Look at the glee. At one point in his glorious pursuit of justice, Protess said he hoped that Harrison Ford would play him in the movie.
Well, a documentary was recently released called “Murder in the Park.” It’s probably not what Protess had in mind.
The typical Protess/Medill Innocence Project narrative could have been inspired by the old Perry Mason TV show. Protess, of course, plays Perry. At the last minute, as the condemned man is strapped down, the real killer is found – courtesy of Protess and (sometimes, but not always) attractive Northwestern coeds, who have managed to persuade the real killer to confess 10-plus years after the crime.
If the idealistic college students playing good cop couldn’t get a confession, Protess had a private investigator named Paul Ciolini willing to play the bad cop.
That’s what happened in the Porter case. A man named Alstory Simon was bullied into signing a confession that he killed teenagers, Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green, who were in Chicago’s Washington Park on a hot August night. Two eyewitnesses saw Porter shoot the young couple, and four more eyewitnesses put Porter at the scene at the time of the shooting. One witness had been robbed at gunpoint by Porter shortly before the shooting.
Protess, Ciolini and the Northwestern students ignored five of those witnesses and zeroed in on one, a young man named William Taylor, who had initially not wanted to cooperate with police: He was afraid Porter would hurt his grandmother.
After police located the other witnesses, Taylor agreed to testify.
Years later, as Porter’s execution was imminent and then-Gov. George Ryan was looking for reasons to justify his opposition to the death penalty, Taylor was visited by Ciolini and a Northwestern student named Tom McCann. Taylor did not want to help them; he didn’t have a problem with Porter’s execution.
McCann and Protess admitted during a grand jury investigation into the Medill Innocence Project’s tactics that they didn’t contact any other witnesses — only Taylor.
McCann testified that he had been coached by Protess in good cop/bad cop investigative techniques and that when visiting Taylor he played good cop, while Ciolini played bad cop.
The grand jury transcript, excerpted in Martin Preib’s excellent book, “Crooked City,” describes how Ciolini insisted to Taylor that Porter was an innocent victim of the police. Ciolini badgered Taylor until the man signed an affidavit saying he was retracting his long-ago testimony that he witnessed Porter shoot the teenagers.
A few days later, Protess and Ciolini visited Taylor, who had begged to be left alone. This time they took him out for dinner and much wine and handed him still another document to sign. Later, Protess drove Taylor to a news studio to be interviewed about his retraction.
It didn’t stop there. For the narrative to play out, Protess needed someone else to confess to the crime. That was Alstory Simon’s role. His name popped up in documents because his wife was a friend of one of the victims.
A crack addict, Simon was visited by a Northwestern team. He and his estranged wife (also a drug addict) were promised money and a movie deal. The professor would make sure Simon only got a short prison sentence. With a settlement, he would never have to work again.
Read Preib’s “Crooked City” book and blog for the twists and turns in this sordid tale. (“Preib’s is a voice that has almost never been heard in American writing,” said Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post. Preib is a Chicago cop who can write.)
Simon was released from prison five months ago after being locked up for 15 years. His estranged wife made a death-bed confession admitting she had lied when she said her husband killed the kids in the park. She said Protess had promised her money from book and movie deals and promised to help get her son out of prison.
Porter’s guilt is no longer in doubt except to Protess and his fans. Porter couldn’t even hit the wrongful-conviction jackpot. A civil jury awarded him nothing in a $24 million lawsuit he filed for being “wrongfully” imprisoned. Jurors believed he was guilty.
Simon has now filed a $40 million lawsuit against Northwestern University. Protess left the university under allegations that he misled the school in still another case.
Protess also left a huge question: Were all of his dozen exonerated inmates really innocent?
I wish I could ask Carol Schmal which men raped her seven times before she was shot in the head. She and her fiancé, Larry Lionberg, ended up as bit players in one of Protess’ early success stories – the “Ford Heights Four.”
Four black men had been convicted in 1978 of raping and murdering a young white couple in an area called Ford Heights. Eighteen years later, with a witness recantation and DNA testing available, the four were exonerated.
This case captured my attention when it broke in 1996 because one of Protess’ students, Laura Sullivan, had been an intern at the Southern California newspaper where I worked. It was a compelling story.
In the popular narrative at the time, Protess and his white coeds ventured into a black war zone on Chicago’s South Side, armed with nothing but sodas and chips, to get a true confession from a black woman named Paula Gray. She admitted she had lied about what she had seen and said the police forced her to lie. It was her lie that sent the Ford Heights Four to prison.
More significant (and certainly more trustworthy than a liar) was the students’ discovery of a police officer’s notes while sorting through a dozen boxes of case files. The notes suggested four other suspects were responsible. The reporting was solid.
With the help of a black, private detective named Rene Brown (who later complained that Protess had left him out of the publicity, no doubt because he marred the narrative of a professor and coeds riding to the rescue), three of the four suspects were found and convicted. The fourth suspect had died of a drug overdose.
Since the DNA evidence proved their semen was not inside Schmal, the Ford Heights Four were released from prison. Later, each was awarded more than $8 million.
The revelations now about Protess’ techniques, though, make me wonder: Just because there was no DNA linking the Ford Heights Four, were all of them completely innocent? Could some of them have participated in the crime but not left their semen?
One of the first witnesses, a neighbor named Charles McRaney, testified that he saw six to eight people – including three of the four men later exonerated – enter the abandoned townhouse where Schmal was later found. According to the Chicago Tribune, his testimony was disregarded when the case was revisited because prosecutors had helped him find a job.
Knowing what has now been revealed about Protess’ methods, there may have been more legitimacy to McRaney’s testimony. According to Prieb’s “Crooked City,” McRaney was visited by Ciolino, Protess’ investigator, who offered him a movie contract and money in exchange for recanting his earlier testimony.
Ira Johnson, one of the men subsequently convicted in the rape and murder of Schmal, told Sullivan and her classmate Stacey Delo what really happened the night of the crime. According to this account, written by Sullivan in The (Baltimore) Sun, Johnson, his brother and two other guys pulled into a gas station intending to rob it. Larry Lionberg was working the cash register, and his fiancée Carol Schmal had brought him some yogurt.
Johnson said his brother “liked the girl” so he put a gun to her head. She and Lionberg were driven to an abandoned townhouse, where he was forced to watch them repeatedly rape his fiancée. Later Schmal and Lionberg were shot in the head. (If four white men kidnapped a black couple and forced the man to watch his fiancée being raped, would the media explore that element as a race-based hate crime? That’s a question you won’t likely find asked by the media.)
I keep coming back to the number seven. That’s how many times Schmal was raped, according to early archived news stories. Seven. Did some of the men rape her more than once? Could other men have participated and not left DNA behind?
Or could it be that the men McCraney saw entering the abandoned townhouse (who were later exonerated) were there to watch or check out the goods?
By now, though, the facts about Schmal’s last night have been massaged away. In more recent news stories, she was simply “raped.”
How many of Protess’ “innocents” were still culpable in some way?
Even Dennis Williams, one of the exonerated Ford Heights Four, told the Chicago Sun-Times that when police contacted him as he watched one of the bodies being removed, “I had an attitude back then. They wanted to see what I had in the trunk, so everything I had in that trunk, I didn’t lay it on the ground. I threw it on the ground.”
Or is the concept of innocence meaningless in a community so amoral that friends readily give false testimony against friends – and then blame the cops?
In an exuberant ceremony at Northwestern University, then-Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, granted a pardon to Paula Gray, whose lies under oath put the original Ford Heights Four in prison (she had previously been convicted of perjury). Ryan hugged her. Also on hand was Williams, whom she helped put in prison. He hugged her, too.
There’s no money to be made off of condemning liars like Gray. Mistakes by police and prosecutors, though, can be career- and money-makers for Protess, his protégés and the law firms that feed off wrongful conviction settlements.
It’s like that circle Billy Preston sang about.
“I’ve got a story, ain’t got no moral/Let the bad guy win every once in a while.”
About 20 years after he wrote those lines, Preston pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Mexican day laborer. The singer caught a break in the circle of justice and was sentenced to house arrest.
If Protess and his protégés have their way, the bad guys will win a lot more than once in a while.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
I have to admit I’ve never heard of this Professor Protess. He sounds like the nun, Sister Helen Prejean, who made Death Row inmates her cause. I will tell you, when I was a teacher she was regarded in only the saintliest of terms.
I’d like to see ‘Murder in the Park.’ From what I’ve read here, it doesn’t sound like the newspapers who praised this professor are going back and reviewing how accurate he was.
I don’t think very many non-journalists instantly recognize Protess’ name, but they are familiar with the various iterations of the “Innocence Project.” He’s like Prejean in that the media attention and public adulation distorted his initial cause.
From what I can tell, it does not look like Protess’ proteges now working in the media have gone back to dissect the cases they worked on. When Jayson Blair was caught plagiarizing in the New York Times, the paper made a point of revisiting his stories to set the record straight. What Protess has done is more serious, but it hasn’t captured nearly the publicity.
The beneficent Governor Ryan let everyone on death row off the hook just before he went to a federal chokey for being a crook himself.
It’s tempting to make the old observation that it’s turtles all the way down.
I mean modernity seems to be constructed on a foundation of “social justice” or post-modernism or relativism or deconstructionism. Or, to drag poor L. Carroll into it:
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t- till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-that’s all.”
The collapse of meaning is what I’m on about. It’s like the point of the radicalization of the 60s was solely to destabilize meaning. Even if that wasn’t the intended point it is the chief outcome.
The paper ran for a week or two with a local story about some poor brute of an illegal who was held in the can for 900 odd days because he wouldn’t witness in a murder case. The media had that he had done nothing illegal yet by definition he was a criminal. Finally, he got 5 grand and cut loose. He’s a criminal allowed to carry on with his crime. The media no longer uses the term illegal for an illegal (nor terrorist for terrorist).
The listlessness of both the media and most government justice organizations in terms of enthusiasm for the truth or fairness is now their signal characteristic. As is their enthusiasm for championing whatever cause suits the feelings of the moment.
I’m meandering but I do appreciate what you’re writing. The world doesn’t even try to make sense anymore. Doesn’t even make a pretense about it.
Paglia’s manic interview earlier this week very nearly made sense of things. She struggled hard to explain that none of these folks in positions of responsibility have much real experience.
They’ve never done one to life in a steel mill, on a farm, in the military. Nor have their parents and increasingly their grandparents. Likewise are they strangers to real and ugly discrimination of most types.
Increasingly I am estranged from society because it is comprised of destructive children constructing reality out of words and phrases and imperfectly understood ideas and concepts. Or deliberately misunderstood words and concepts.
I’m reading Caro’s LBJ volume from 60 to 64 and and an excellent bio of Alexander Hamilton, too. It’s a severe struggle for society to develop and maintain order.
Our country’s best aspirations can’t be developed or maintained without appreciation and understanding of those who struggled to make real but imperfect justice obtain. Yet, our schools use the teaching of communists like Zinn and his adherents as the most apt tool for building the national future.
Finally, the Central Park 5 case is brought to mind. A brain damaged young woman who was the victim of criminal youth was turned into a civil rights farce.
Thanks for the comment, Larry.
The concept of social justice has been turned on its head. It especially troubles me that the American news media — which I used to belong to — leads the deception.
Yesterday while driving I caught part of NPR’s “On the Media,” a program I no longer make a point of listening to because its bias is so obvious. Host Bob Garfield mentioned casually that the West Memphis Three (subject of a documentary called “Pardise Lost”) were “wrongfully convicted.” That is absolutely false. They pled guilty. They are still guilty.
The ringleader, Damian Echols, must be a true sociopath the way he has mesmerized the news media (which rarely mention Mr. Echols’ cruel behavior in the courtroom towards his victims’ families).
It’s like the Central Park Five case you referred to. The media love to portray those innocent young black men as being falsely accused of raping a white jogger. What the media rarely say is that those young men were initically convicted because they pointed fingers at one another, accusing each other.
They couldn’t come up with alibis because they were elsewhere in Central Park — committing other crimes. If you go back and read some of the early archived news coverage from the New York newspapers, there were quotes from middle-aged and elderly blacks talking about how scared they were of young black men. Those quotes didn’t travel far, and they have been conveniently forgotten.
I’m sure that world has nothing to do with the world we now live in.
Three problems
1.) Given that this was a rape case they would have left DNA evidence. There weren’t any.
2.) The police did in fact interview other witnesses, who testified that Johnson Robinson Johnson and Rodriguez had been involved; the cops flat out ignored them. The students did interview the officers in question, and did confront them with the handwritten notes; one of the officers (George Nance) confirmed the interview. Either way the police failure to investigate those four assholes is pretty damning.
3.) Verneal Jimerson’s sentence had already been overturned. That’s the main reason (besides confessions) that tests were done. Other players already found out about the four men.
WM3:
1.) The confessions were contradictory and there is reason to believe the cops tried to manipulate Jesse (The judge stated that when they called trying to stop Jesse’s transfer that “you were calling me and asking me to make a ruling while I was in my den watching tv in my underwear”. to me the only reason the defense would make that call was if they had only just been told. In which case why did the prosecution decline?
2.) Being an asshole isn’t proof that you’re a killer (by that logic Terry Hobbs and JMB should also be looked at since they were abusive far more than Damian ever was.
3.) There was no physical evidence (the closest they had was a knife found behind Jason’s trailer and literally the entire park used that place as a dump.)
Central Park 5
1.) Reyes’s Dna was the only dna found; since it was a rape case the others would have left dna had they been involved.
Ryan, you state that because this was a rape case, “they would have left DNA evidence.” Not necessarily, although that is an assumption that is gaining too much credence in the media.
If someone participates in a gang rape by holding the victim down or keeping her from escaping, is he not guilty even if he leaves no DNA? What if he rapes the victim but does not ejaculate, which is not uncommon in gang rapes where there can be performance anxieties, joining in to be part of the pack.
Here in Oregon right now there has been a lot of attention about an alleged gang rape in which four football players are accused of assaulting a woman, who remembers one of them yelling out “Hey, Dawg, you gotta get some of this!” Would each player have to leave his DNA inside the victim for it to count as rape?
If DNA becomes the only standard for conviction of rape, couldn’t a rapist simply wear a condom to avoid prosecution?
While you condemn the police — and police do make mistakes, especially when they’re dealing with uncooperative witnesses — you seem to give a pass to the woman who lied and then sat back and said nothing while her false testimony led to four men being imprisoned for years. I don’t think police deliberately set out to arrest the wrong guys. That woman’s lie was deliberate.
Compounding her wrong was Gov. George Ryan, who gave her an attagirl. He could have used his pulpit to advocate for more honest cooperation from witnesses and others in the community.
She was bullied into confessing by the police and tried to recant; a scared mentally hretarded kid (what gray was) is more excusable than higher ups being informed of a lead and deciding they don’t care;
. A lot of times the cops do intimidate witnesses (they think it’s the only way) to get what they want. Either way it doesn’t change that when someone informed the cops of the four real killers the police chose to ignore it because it would be inconvenient. That’s not uncooperative witnesses that was the cops going nice but I do not care. In this case the cops who didn’t come forward deserve nothing but scorn.
They didn’t find condoms and even the seemingly damming “Antron did it.” “What” “the murder.” Probably referred to some other Schlub they attacked, The cops lied during the interrogation (which gets false results) and most importantly all the confessions contradicted not only each other but facts and plain sense. The crime matched reyes mo (bound with her shirt beaten by the eyes) and an officer testified reyes being in the park that night. Reyes involvement is so conclusive only an idiot would say otherwise.
In short the police got tunnel vision and as a result they indirectly allowed Reyes to rape and murder a pregnant woman (and rape others)
And Martin preib is an idiot. He goes on about the Madison hobley case while failing to acknowledge that the star witness was an arsonist (he led a gang that used arson and burge repeatedly blocked attempts to prosecute the witness for other crimes (including arson) and that the physical evidence disagreed (the can would have been burned, the prosecutors presented a two gallon can and in doing so ignored what both their witnesses claimed about a one gallon can; and the detective conceded that the fire could have started on the ground floor.) in short the real reason hobley angers him is because it was hobley who finally forced that monster john burge to face justice.
I can respect honest cops; i don’t worship cops and that’s what people like preib truly want. The cops in the fords height four fucked up; so did the police in the hobley case wm and Trisha meili case.
The police have become everybody’s favorite scapegoat, especially in black inner-city neighborhoods.
I don’t think even Martin Prieb worships police. He wants the media to be truthful and to ask tough questions of all sides — not just dissect every act by the police. We have a violent, black underclass that is treated with too much respect by the media.
“In short the police got tunnel vision,” you say. A cop’s tunnel vision might be the result of having repeated, similar experiences with a particular group of citizens.
We all have tunnel vision when it comes to the police. We see them as heroes or villains, when most of them fall somewhere in between and occasionally change sides. A villainous cop can do a heroic deed, and a heroic cop can lose his temper. In one of the popular buzz phrases of the day, we are urged not to judge convicted felons on the worst thing they have done. Yet the same people who employ that buzz phrase often want to judge cops on the worst thing they have done.
The mainstream media (especially NPR and the New York Times) have serious tunnel vision when it comes to covering race. They are quick to find compassion and excuses for black criminals. But black victims? The media are more likely to see a black victim if the perp is white or a cop. Black-on-black victims get the invisible man treatment.
In short Paula was never someone who lied and laughed. She was strong armed into making that deal and attacked when she came clean. Most of the time narrow minded arrogance causes police to make fuck upd
Burge may have willingly let a mass murderer go free to avoid admitting he fucked up (there is reason to believe that burge’s precious witness set the fire that killed seven people in the hobley case). Burge was a monster and in a just world he’d have spent the rest of his life behind bars. Yet preib and second city cop repeatedly try to portray burge as a victim.
I told preib about the michael Morton case where a man spent 25 years in jail before dna proved he didn’t kill his wife. The prosecutor buried evidence that could have exonerated morton (reports showing that his wife’s credit card had been illegally used, a witness report in which witnesses described a mysterious man walking towards a green van that had always been near the house for weeks). The real killer went on to murder another woman. The prosecutor got ten days for destroying morton’s life. Preib said he wanted to talk to officials (the prosecutor pled guilty btw).
He also tried to claim the officer in the Tyrone hood case was good even though the man said “excessive force is relative” and was proven to have been incompetent (one of the people he got to confess had been in prison at the time of the murder). In the hood case the victims father was the probable killer (various people close to him died in identical circumstances he always pocketed money after they were killed and he was convicted for murdering his girlfriend in the exact same circumstances).
Take Michael slager. The tape shows him shooting an unarmed man in the back as he ran before calmly planting his taser on the corpse. If he hadn’t been caught the police would have cheerfully covered it up (in fact they originally did try before the footage proved slager had murdered his victim in cold blood.)
In Eric garner the coroner called it murder. The Freddie gray case had the cops deliberately take a victim for a bumpy ride and ignored his screams of pain (even though by law suspects requiring medical treatment need to be given it.
The “underclass” has every reason to hate the cops. In the past cops who have reported abuses have been ostracized. White cops who do commit murder are never punished unless there is so much proof an idiot can see it.
So no preib doesn’t want fairness.
Ryan:
You talk about these officer-involved shootings as if they were one and the same. They aren’t. Each is different. In the Garner case, for example, the police were negligent not to call for medical assistance. Garner had health problems, and he may have contributed to his own death when he struggled, and they applied a chokehold.
The police probably regarded him as a nuisance. I don’t know anybody who becomes a cop so he can bust guys for selling individual cigarettes. Cops get caught between the business community and police in these kinds of issues. Local businesses complain about guys like Garner to their councilmembers, and the councilmembers complain to the police chief, and the chief kicks it down to the street officers.
As for Freddie Gray, initially there reports from another man who was under arrest and being transported in another compartment of the police van. He said Gray was trying to hurt himself. The man may have changed his story after the cops were accused.
The Slager case is bad because it does look like the cop planted evidence on a man he should have let go. It’s too bad the man ran. He would probably still be alive.
One thing the cases you cite do have in common is that those men may end up being worth more to their families dead than they were alive. I wonder how many men think about that.
And in many places racism has long been accepted. Part of it could be bigotry
If preib didn’t try to apologize for a serial torturer maybe I would believe him. As it stands he defends a man who encouraged others to suffocate others and use electroshock on their genitals. And may have let a mass murderer go free. Preib tries to portray this psychopath as a good cop regardless. Unless he admits that burge was guilty and repudiates it than no. The officer who blew the lid on the cpd’s secret vault policy was ostricized and the guy who leaked the torture info was forced to be anonymous because he feared being ostricized.
In the 90s an officer sexually assaulted a prisoner by sodimizing him with a broomstick. The police unions knew the guy was guilty and they still tried to cover it up.
And shouldn’t have run? Slager could have caught him on foot. At best he was too fucking lazy. He also allegedly laughed. Slager was scum and what happened was murder.
Garner: Chokeholds are ILLEGAL. The officer broke the law when he used it on garner.
Gray: Also the police commissioner confirmed that by not securing gray they violated policy on securing inmates.
Eyewitnesses claim the police used excess force and video footage showed him in agony.
In short it is racism a lot of the time. Many cops ARE racist and don’t care. They also get angry if even a little scrutiny is applied,
Down south there’s the good old boys who cover for each other.
In the fords height four the lying witness only lied because the cops bullied her. They were 100% in the wrong and the cops who didn’t come forward should have been fired and forced to leave in disgrace
It’s clear you hate cops, Ryan. No law against that, but there’s no point in discussing these cases with you because your mind is made up. You keep recycling a bad police encounter as if it represented all police work.
For example, you state (as if it were fact) that Michael Slager was “lazy” and didn’t want to give chase. I don’t know if he was lazy or not. He shouldn’t have shot Walter Scott, who was running away from him. I don’t know why Slager did what he did, but he knew it was wrong because he then tried to plant a weapon on Scott.
According to you, Slager should have run after him. What would you have had Slager do if he caught him? What if he had tackled him and then caused him injury? What if he had tackled Scott, and then they engaged in mutual combat while a crowd gathered? And if the crowd were predominantly the same race as Scott, then what?
I’ve known cops in that very situation. If they can’t get backup, they let the suspect go. Supposedly, they tell themselves “next time.” I suspect what really happens is that they seethe about it, particularly if it has already happened to them before or to other officers. Black neighborhoods are more troublesome for cops — including black cops.
It’s easy for us to play what-if. We’re not out there dealing face-to-face with a segment of the population who immediately hate us.
Also you didn’t address the Morton case or hood case. Or the hobley case (which burge apologists wail about because hobley put him away like the piece of garbage he was
Explain why john burge torturez inmates with Vietnam war torture and only gets 4 years for lying rather than stripped of his pension and left to rot for his crimes. Explain why officers who report corruption are shunned and threatened.
As for the wm3; given the circumstances (3 alleged child murderers) why did the state take the deal. At best it means they would have most likely lost at trial.
Jesse was in a special Ed class and a lot of the time the state only puts kids in those classes if they safe significantly dumber than kids in their group or they have severe disabilities. Either way it raises the real possibility that Jesse was dumber than kids in his group, meaning it’s more likely the police coerced off camera whether it was twelve hours or not. The most damning thing about confession 1 is that the cops wanted a clarification statement. The camera cuts out and when it’s on they have the statement.
Another problem is that mentally handicapped people will often say what they think authorities want them to say. They might not have a damn clue what it means but they say it because that’s what the authority (teacher police officer etc).
Also judge Burnett describes the defense trying to block jesses transfer as “you wanted me to make a ruling from my den while I was watching tv in my underwear.” This supports the claim that the defense only learned on the evening news and since the prosecutors were obligated by law, implies that a.) they broke it and b.) they wanted to talk to Jesse without attorneys. Combine with how blatantly inaccurate the confessions are with both common sense and the case facts and it’s obvious the confession is false.
The prosecutorial examiner had failed his exam thrice and numerous far more qualified experts (at least 6) confirmed the man was a buffoon.
Also, Damian was allegedly seen within son. The problem was that the witnesses actually said “we saw him with domini our niece.” The prosecutor said oh no no no you saw Jason Baldwin.” So the witnesses were too blind to recognize their niece…..but sharp enough to recognize the punk they met a few times and see mud on jet black clothing at night….while only having a short time to look while they were focusing on the other person.
The stepfather terry Hobbs sexually assaulted a neighbor in the 80s when she reported him for abusing his first family (he wasn’t married to Pam at the time.) in short he was a vicious dirtbag and his alibi is contradicted by common logic his best friend and other witnesses. His hair was on the knots used to bind his stepsons friend and given the circumstances (three 8 year olds retting their shoes being submerged in water for almost a day and being removed from the shoe and remaining while no hair left by the three accused was found)……and secondary transfer becomes a ludicrous idea.
Central Park 5; it actually was possible for Reyes to have acted alone the alleged statements could have referred to someone else since they attacked, the confessions contradicted the details, and other police have confirmed that sometimes due to pressure they assume a certain theory and than look only for evidence to support the theory.
Explain the Abner loumia case (when an officer raped loumia with a broomstick and the union still tried to cover it up.)
Explain why officers who do report corruption are shunned.
Unless you acknowledge those very real instances you are debating in bad faith
So why do you still refuse to comment?
Who says I’m refusing to comment? I’m ignoring you.
Seriously, go back and read some of your comments. You rant. Your hatred of cops interferes with your judgment. Not only are you unable to look at each case and each officer separately, but your dislike of cops seems personal. When I was a reporter, I occasionally had some nasty encounters with particular officers. That didn’t stop me from having a good relationship with other cops.
There now, you got your comment — in a blue moon.
I don’t hate cops. I know full well many provide a good service. However the problem of abuse and corruption is more widespread than you want to admit. I described many cases where officers willingly withheld evidence or coerced witnesses in order to get what they wanted, and in the process destroyed lives. Being a good cop otherwise doesn’t justify torturing people or destroying lives. I described how the officer who exposed a corrupt policy was shunned by his fellows for telling the truth. I explained how the allegedly damning statements in central park weren’t damning. I described incidents where the cops tried to cover up when their fellows committed acts of murder (Abner Loumia, who was raped by an officer with a broomstick.)
That’s the reason I’m angry. There are clear cases where cops have willingly committed murder and misconduct and you try to justify it or downplay it (you didn’t respond when I described how Martin Preib is obsessed about Madison Hobley and how Preib ignores that the police essentially bribed a witness that had a better motive for committing the crime.) that’s why I accuse you of bad faith debating. You refuse to acknowledge these real crimes
Most cops aren’t bad but anyone saying its “a few bad apples” is kidding themselves.
Again, you’re being a coward. Simply pointing out that the police ARE racist a lot of the time and that the police have a hard time acknowledging when their fellows commit crimes is not hatred.
I respect honest police officers but the sheer inability of cops to confront their corrupt fellows destroys trust.