Today we called a client to tell him that 15 years after he was convicted, the state appellate court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial “in the interest of justice.” It was an exciting moment. A crowd of people packed into the room and hovered around the phone–our clinic had had the case for 11 years and over 22 students had worked on it.
Nonetheless, while the excitement of the moment prevailed, the reality of what the decision meant was bittersweet. “So, they’re going to try me again?” the client asked. Possibly. Despite the fact that someone else has confessed to our client’s crime, the State can still choose to pursue convicting him again. On top of that, they can still appeal to our state’s supreme court, and have the reversal thrown out. So while it feels like a win, it’s really only a step. A powerful, meaningful step–but the end result is still out of our hands.
In the meantime, even though the court has thrown out his conviction, the client will probably have to stay in prison pending the State’s appeal. We’ll ask for him to be let out, of course, but unless they allow him out on his signature (where they accept his promise not to flee), he has no money to post bond. As our client said, “15 cents an hour isn’t worth much. And items in the canteen are expensive.“
And so here we are. Gathered around a phone to tell Mr. Client that a court agrees with him–they believe that it is likely that he is innocent, and that his conviction was unfair. But other than that acknowledgment, our client’s not gaining much. He’s still going to be in prison for an indefinite period: he’s still going to have to do what he is told, no questions asked; he’ll still have to wake up at 4am for breakfast and eat his lunch at 9am; and he’s still going to be unable to do so much as walk outside to look at the stars at night, if that’s what he wanted to do. But none of this is because he is guilty. Instead, his current crime is that he’s too poor. And nothing we can do as attorneys can change that.
So we’ll wait–us in our offices, our client in his cell– and for the next who-knows-how-long, nothing will change. But we’ll still call it a win.
Despite the fact that someone else has confessed to our client’s crime, the State can still choose to pursue convicting him again. On top of that, they can still appeal to our state’s supreme court, and have the reversal thrown out.
This is something that has baffled me. If they have another criminal in custody how the State just pretty much say, “Well yeah we may have the right culprit for this crime but since we already have you on the hook for it we’ll just keep you anyway.” I can understand holding onto him until this other person is sentenced but this almost sounds like they want to hold two men responsible for the same crime (unless the crime in question was done by multiple people perhaps?).
I’m all for making sure they have the right person but sometimes I get the feeling its ego. The State doesn’t want to admit they f’d up and are willing to hold an innocent man to show they “weren’t wrong”.
There’s a case going on right now in Illinois where they locked up a guy for killing his young daughter and her friend. They kept him there even after it became clear that semen found on one of the little girl’s bodies wasn’t a match. The prosecutor claimed she could have somehow brushed up against a gob of it in the woods where they were found, or something.
That same idiot prosecutor refused to drop prosecution against another guy with the same circumstances, even winning a second conviction despite the DNA evidence. He argued that the victim, an 11-year-old girl, could have had consensual sex with one man and then been killed by another, leading to the interesting situation of the prosecution trashing a murder victim.
Tricia, I don’t know where you do your thing, but if you ever need a job, consider coming to Illinois. We could use you and a dozen more like you.
As a law student planning on gig into public intrest criminal defense of some kind this question has been on my mind: what is a win?
For the most part I’m planning or being a public defender which means I unlike Tricia won’t be working exclusively on cases when the client is innocent.So winning a trial could involve getting an acquittal for someone who is guilty. Is that still a “win” in the more subjective sense?
It’s a personal decision you have to make, whether the type of work will provide rewards you will feel validated.
I, for instance, would not find transactional work rewarding. That’s one reason I’m going into public defense work of Some Stripe.