Sunday Sites #3 with Bill Newmiller

Bill Newmiller's son, Todd, is serving 31 years in Colorado for a crime he did not commit. He wrote this for Genpop:

Let me be clear: I’m no bystander. I’ve seen firsthand how truth and justice can become casualties in the war on crime. Every weekend I visit my son who is serving a 31-year sentence for a murder he did not commit. I’ve seen the devastating effect his wrongful conviction has had on our family—its financial devastation, emotional devastation, spiritual devastation.

Once, in what seems a different life, my concerns about our criminal justice system were vague and so distant from what was a satisfying and secure middle-class life: a lasting marriage, three wonderful children (all college graduates, the oldest a physician, a happy healthy granddaughter), an adventurous career as an Air Force pilot, a year as a member of the FBI, a second career as a college English professor.
 
Sure, I’d read with horror the rising number of people who’d spent years in prison for crimes they hadn’t committed before being exonerated by the Innocence Project. But it was a detached horror, something like the horror of hearing about a shark attack while sipping a latte in Denver. 
 
The horror of learning a son is suspected of murder is far more palpable. And it grows at every twist and turn of a process driven not necessarily by truth, but too often by deception and bureaucratic self-justification. Our horror mounted at each step of process. We watched helplessly as a flawed investigation gave way to a flawed prosecution that produced a flawed trial. Our hearts sank when what we thought would be the final barrier that would hold against a rising tide of injustice, a jury’s judgment, announced guilt.
 
And, yes, the horror turned to anger when we heard a post-trial interview with one of the jurors. I carry the audio file of it in my pocket on a thumb drive. On it a reporter notes that the juror says our son “could have” committed the murder.  “But did he do it,” asks the reporter. The juror answers, “well, I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s the evidence….”
 
Four years have passed since our nightmare began, and we have learned more about the frequency of false conviction. Samuel Gross, law professor and researcher from the University of Michigan writes, “we now know that more than 2% of death sentences in America are based on false convictions.” Empirical research by D. Michael Risinger, Professor of Law at Seton Hall, reveals that in murder-rape cases the false conviction rate is at least 2.3% and may be as high as 5%. Even more worrisome than these statistics is the nagging possibility that false convictions in such serious cases may be just the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath the waterline? How many of the 2.4 million men and women now incarcerated are actually guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted? Risinger’s research suggests that at least 55,000 inmates bear the burden of a false conviction. Maybe 120,000.
 
Yet Risinger’s statistics are on the low end of the spectrum. Most in the innocence movement believe the numbers to be much higher. Recently, former FBI Director William Sessions revealed that when the FBI began DNA testing, he was shocked when the returns came in from the first 100 cases they reviewed: in thirty cases—almost a third—DNA analysis showed they’d been going after the wrong person. Consider the scope of this tragedy.  How many of the guilty walk free while the innocent pay the price? How many other families live our nightmare?
 
The causes of false convictions are manifold: Among them are eyewitness misidentification, the use of unreliable forensic technologies, the mishandling of evidence, false confessions, investigatory incompetence or misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, the use of unreliable informants or snitches, and bad lawyering. A misstep at any point can send criminal investigations and prosecutions arcing towards a false conviction. Only by understanding how the process fails will we find sensible remedies for a system that too often convicts the innocent.
 
The research of people like Gross and Risinger as well as the records of the Innocence Project reveal that our family—solidly middle-class, well-educated, of European descent—is unusual among the large group of those who suffer from a false conviction. Like many other tragedies, false convictions fall disproportionately upon the poor and those who have suffered other forms of social injustice. But our case testifies to the enduring truth of Martin Luther King’s words from forty years ago: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” All of us need to understand the personal risk we assume when we ignore a significant and growing injustice.

Email Bill Newmiller

Bill's Blog, Bearing False Witness

Todd's Column at Newspeak: I am Ahab

Free Todd Newmiller Group on Facebook

Freedom March - Marching for Awareness of Wrongful Convictions

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