Boston's $10 Million Boo-Boos

Bernstein says that "In Powell's case, the Suffolk County DA agreed to turn over the evidence," as if, in other cases, the Suffolk County DA has not.  In fact, as Bernstein knows very well, it was District Attorney Conley who made it a policy not to oppose post-conviction DNA testing for relevant evidence.  Stephen Hrones knows this as well and has lauded the policy for what it is -- an affirmative, permanent, and uniformly-applied protocol with the specific intent of reducing the likelihood of a wrongful conviction to the smallest degree possible in a human endeavor like the criminal justice system.

No, Jake, that's not the implication of Bernstein's statement, as it is immediately followed by "in other Massachusetts incidents [as opposed to Suffolk county/Boston incidents], that has not been the case." And it's lovely that Conley has such a just policy- but there should be legal requirements and safeguards for this kind of thing, so they are not to be decided at the whim of a particular DA. Conley will not be Suffolk DA forever, nor is he DA for all of Massachusetts. I take it you oppose legislative intervention and are untroubled by these types of multi-million dollar settlements?

In an ironic twist, the Boston Police Dept and two of its officers and families have been unfortunate secondary victims in the wrongful convictions in the Roslindale Bomb cases of 1993.  Through an agreement with Suffolk DA Dan Conley's predecessors, the ATF led the investigation and the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts prosecuted Thomas A. Shay and Alfred Trenkler for building the bomb that killed Boston Bomb Squad officer Jeremiah Hurley and maimed his partner, Francis Foley.   As the Boston Police Dept and the Boston legal community is slowly coming to realize, both Trenkler and Shay are "perfectly innocent," as is explained in my online book, "Perfectly Innocent" on the website www.alfredtrenklerinnocent.org. In this case, it is the Boston Police Dept. and the Hurley and Foley families which deserve justice, along with Trenkler and Shay.     It is hoped that the new, to-be-confirmed, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz, will act as forthrightly as Dan Conley has with claims of wrongful conviction, and will closely examine the claims of wrongful conviction in the Roslindale Bomb cases.  Of the first five of Trenkler's jurors I was able to contact, four of them read my book and all five wrote to Judge Rya Zobel to disavow their 1993 guilty verdict and ask for a retrial.  Judge Zobel has chosen, or felt bound by judicial rules, so far, to ignore the growing tide of truth in this case, but Ms. Ortiz has more flexibility.  She can launch, or simply approve, a preliminary re-investigation of the case, where it can be shown that the case against Alfred Trenkler was a house of cards, each of which was unbelievable, unreliable or untrue.     One such "card" was an inmate informant with a nickname in the Federal prison system of "little stories" who was brought from Texas to Massachusetts and coincidentally placed in the same Intake Unit as Trenkler and who miraculously produced from a few minutes of conversation over three days a confession by Trenkler to the crimes. Other "cards" were people who wanted favors from the police and U.S. Attorney and whose testimony came to fit the Government's theory of the case.    Alfred Trenkler and Thomas A. Shay should be exonerated in 2009 as they had absolutely nothing to do with the Roslindale Bomb. They are "actually innocent."  Every day of wrongful imprisonment for these men is a tragedy.  Upon their exoneration, the Federal Government, and not Boston or Suffolk County, will be responsible for compensation for their wrongful convictions.  

Why would you suggest that I was opposed to post-conviction DNA testing when I immediately went to bat for it?