The cynics, it turns out, were not cynical enough. The report starts off emphasizing that most of the wrongful convictions in Massachusetts “were investigated and tried 10, 15 and 20 years ago . . . before DNA came into general usage. . . . [T]his handful of high-profile cases from the 1980s and early 1990s did not suggest a present systems failure.” To which a reasonable person might ask: if there’s no problem, then why should the taxpayers spend the money you ask for in the report’s recommendations? And why did you waste your valuable time for more than two years studying the nonexistent problem? And, if there was a problem back then, why oppose a commission to identify other wrongful cases from the past?
The so-called Justice Initiative reached its conclusions based on its examination of 15 exonerations, 11 of which were from Boston. Several wrongful convictions from other counties were not examined. There was no attempt to look at other overturned cases, dismissed cases, or cases that strongly suggested wrongful conviction. There also is no apology for anything the prosecutors’ offices might have done wrong.
Anyone who doubts that wrongful convictions are a serious problem should consider these facts:
• The Suffolk County DA and Boston Police Department adopted an entirely new system for obtaining eyewitness evidence, released in July 2004, and trained all BPD detectives over the following six months or so on the new methods.
• The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2004 that any police interrogation not tape-recorded in full will only be admitted into trial with a strong warning to the jury questioning the credibility of the police testimony.
• The state’s courts adopted new rules mandating that police fully document identification procedures.
• Two Federal District Court judges severely limited the testimony of BPD and state-police ballistics experts, because their expertise and methodology are a joke.
• Governor Romney and the state legislature expanded the State Crime Lab from a $3.9m budget and four DNA chemists in 2003 to a $12.6m budget and 34 DNA chemists in 2006.
• Romney cleaned out the Chief Medical Examiner’s office and hired a new CME from outside the state, who is well on his way to rebuilding the office.
• The legislature passed a wrongful-conviction -compensation bill in 2004.
• The legislature increased compensation for court-assigned defense attorneys, as well as budgets for DAs’ offices.
• Two wrongfully convicted men were paid $3.2 million settlements (each) by the city of Boston to resolve claims of civil-rights violations.
The “Justice Initiative” report is vintage Reilly. It’s the worst sort of go-along-to-get-along politics. Voters should beware.
