Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

376 Pages·2011·2.296 MB·English

by  Brandon L. Garrett

Convicting the Innocent

Convicting
Innocent
the
WHERE CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS
GO WRONG
Brandon L. Garrett
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts • London, En gland
2011
Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Garrett, Brandon L., 1975–
Convicting the innocent : where criminal prosecutions go wrong / Brandon L. Garrett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 674- 05870- 5 (alk. paper)
1. Judicial error— United States. 2. Evidence, Criminal— United States.
3. Post- conviction remedies— United States. I. Title.
KF9756.G37 2011
345.73'064—dc22 2010037172
To the exonerees whose stories are told here
and to the innocent people who have not yet been exonerated

Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Contaminated Confessions 14
3. Eyewitness Misidentifi cations 45
4. Flawed Forensics 84
5. Trial by Liar 118
6. Innocence on Trial 145
7. Judging Innocence 178
8. Exoneration 213
9. Reforming the Criminal Justice System 241
Appendix 277
Notes 291
Ac know ledg ments 351
Index 355

chapter 1
Introduction
In October 1993, Ronald Jones sat on death row in Illinois waiting
to be executed. He had been sentenced to death for a gruesome rape
and murder in Chicago. Jones clung to one last request— for a DNA test,
which he claimed would prove his innocence. His lawyers off ered to pay
the $3,000 that it would cost to do the test. At the time, only a handful of
people had ever proven their innocence using postconviction DNA test-
ing. The prosecutors opposed testing, arguing that it would make no
diff erence. Indeed, there appeared to be overwhelming evidence of Ron-
ald Jones’s guilt. Cook County circuit judge John Morrissey agreed and
angrily denied the motion, exclaiming, “What issue could possibly be
resolved by DNA testing?”1
Eight years before, in March 1985, the victim, a twenty-e ight-y ear-o ld
mother of three, was out dancing late with her sister on the South Side of
Chicago. She was hungry and decided to get food a few blocks from her
home at Harold’s Chicken Shack. She ran into a friend on the street. As
they talked, a panhandler approached; people in the neighborhood had
nicknamed him “Bumpy,” because of his severe acne. “Bumpy” asked the
friend for fi fty cents. She gave him fi fty cents and all three parted ways.
Several hours later, the victim was found half- naked and dead in a
nearby alley behind the abandoned Crest Hotel. She had been stabbed
1