The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project recently published its 2007 annual newsletter.  The newsletter provides updates on our most significant activities of the past year.  To read it, click here.

The Virginian Pilot newspaper today ran an editorial raising questions about Virginia's lab review process.  The editorial voiced particular concern about the secrecy surrounding the process and the fact that the procedures do not currently provide for an independent consultant on the question of whether a case should be re-opened.  To read the editorial, click here. 

Governor Schwarzenegger last week vetoed SB 511, a bill that would have required videotaped documentary of interrogations of suspects of violent crimes.  In his open letter to the California State Senate, the Governor justified his veto by reasoning that “Police interrogations are dynamic processes that require investigators to use acumen, skill and expertise to determine which methods of interrogation are best for the situation.  This bill would place unnecessary restrictions on police investigators.”

It is unfortunate that Governor Schwarzenegger fails to elaborate with specific examples of how, exactly, videotaped interrogations would impede police investigators.  In fact, just the opposite appears to be true; prosecutors and law enforcement officers in all of the states which currently require videotaped confessions have widely praised the practice.

Simply requiring videotaped interrogatories, however, may not be enough.  Several steps are important to maintain an unbiased depiction of the event.  One is recording the whole process, rather than particular parts.  Kevin Fox’s 2004 videotaped confession to the murder of his 3-year-old daughter is 20 minutes long, but the tape excludes the 14 hours of interrogation that proceeded the confession.  Fox was released in 2005 after DNA evidence cleared him and the charges were dropped.  Another essential step is framing both the interrogator and the suspect in the shot to avoid camera angle bias.  Camera angle bias is when the shot of the video is framed in such a way as to exclude certain details and focus attention on other details in order to make a confession appear voluntary.

The strongest arguments proposed by opponents of videotaped interrogations seem to be the cost of the technology.  But even to avoid one false conviction, this cost seems justified.  Furthermore, videotaped interrogations can help protect officers using legitimate techniques from accusations that confessions were coerced.  Videotaping interrogations, therefore, can help protect everyone by providing a concrete record of what happened during the event.  Keeping in mind the caveats of recording the interrogation in its entirety and taking steps to avoid camera angle bias, videotaping interrogations may be the single simplest step toward reducing coerced confessions and false convictions.

The primary issues raised in this week's hearing were (1) whether the prosecution covered up information about benefits awarded to snitches who testified against Mr. Hash, and (2) whether detectives declined, for political reasons, to follow up on leads suggesting that someone other than Mr. Hash committed the crime.  The judge ordered the parties to submit written presentations following the hearing.  He expects to make a decision early next year.

To read news coverage of this week's hearing, click here. 

On October 17, 2007, MAIP's Executive Director made a presentation to Virginia's Forensic Science Board, asking the Board to endorse a change to Virginia's post-conviction DNA testing statute that would allow prisoners to obtain types of DNA testing not performed by the state lab.  Specifically, MAIP urges the adoption of Y-STR testing, a form of DNA testing that can get results with smaller amounts of genetic material, and with material that was once believed to be too degraded even to test.  It is also useful for obtaining results where a small amount of male DNA might otherwise be masked by a large amount of female DNA in a sample.  The change would have an enormous impact on many of MAIP's prospective clients.  It is particularly crucial now, as Virginia undergoes the DNA re-testing program ordered by Governor Warner. 

Ms. Armbrust's presentation was covered by the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Free Lance-Star.  To read their articles, click here and here.   To read about Virginia's re-testing program, click here. 

While taking a walk in Philadelphia in May 1985, Vincent Motto, then 22 years old, was identified and arrested on charges for raping a woman five months earlier.  It would be ten and a half years later until DNA evidence would make him a free man again.  On his experience of being the victim of false imprisonment for over a decade, Motto describes, “You’re dead but you’re still alive.”

Motto however is not eligible for reparation for the time he spent in prison because Pennsylvania is one of 28 states without a law requiring compensation for exonerated individuals.  In our own Mid-Atlantic region, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia provide for compensation, while Delaware does not.  In Maryland, there is no cap on monetary compensation, but in order to qualify for it, you need a pardon from the governor. Furthermore, neither Maryland nor D.C. have specific guidelines to what constitutes “fair” compensation.

Of course, there are other alternatives toward securing compensation available for individuals like Motto.   For example, filing a private civil suit against the government.  The players from the Duke lacrosse case have recently filed suit for their mistreatment.  But, as is pointed out at the Life After Exoneration Program, “chances are your conviction, like most wrongful convictions, was not the result of prosecutorial misconduct or malicious prosecution. Even then, lawsuits take years, and you would need money to pay a lawyer.”  For many exonerees, who are already struggling to find a home, a job, and to rebuild familial ties and friendships, this is simply not a viable option.  An exoneree may also seek to secure an individualized compensation bill from Congress or his or her state legislature.  This process, however, is highly politicized, requires having “connections” in order to lobby a legislator on your behalf, and does not guarantee fair compensation to every exoneree.  The best options to guarantee a fair compensation are bills that direct a certain pre-set amount to exonerees based on factors such as their age, their earning potential, and how long they served unnecessarily in prison.  Even these bills have their drawbacks.  For example many such bills rely on the median state income as a basis for compensation, but this assumes that the earning potential of the exoneree would not have exceeded that amount.

Compensation for the wrongly convicted is necessary for a number of reasons.  First, exonerated individuals are unlikely to have any savings and require financial support for basic necessities, such as food, clothing, housing, healthcare, etc.  Second, compensation may help exonerated individuals regain lost time.  Many exonerated individuals are in need of job counseling in order to rebuild their careers as well as counseling services to help them and their families cope with the stress and strain of the prison experience and sudden release.  A pardon doesn’t make one’s life return to normal after years in prison, and suspicion may haunt an exoneree for the rest of his or her life.  Furthermore, because they are not parolees, many exonerees do not even have access to the limited job training resources available to individuals on parole.  Third, compensation can serve as public recognition on behalf of the government for the harm inflicted upon the exonerated individual.  Prompt and fair compensation can accelerate the healing process.

Of the over 400 exonerees in the United States, the average time spent in prison before release is twelve years.  No amount of financial compensation can ever repay what has been taken from these individuals, but it may be a start toward giving them a better future.

When Senator Larry Craig stepped into that bathroom stall on June 11th, he did not expect to emerge an unlikely poster child for false confessions.  Senator Craig has since attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, alleging that he was in a “state of intense anxiety” at the time of the confession.  Craig’s attorney, Billy Martin, stated that Craig was not "thinking clearly, and he waived his constitutional rights, and we're asking that to be reversed”.  Martin elaborated that Craig had been suffering severe "pressure" and "stress" from a recent interview with the Idaho Statesman newspaper over allegations that he was secretly gay and was panicked "from what this could do."  The senator's attorneys plan to argue that the police officer who arrested Craig suggested that pleading guilty was "an easy way out" because he claimed he would not alert the media.

Craig’s strategy brings attention to the issue of false confessions.  Saul M. Kassin, a psychologist at Williams College, classifies false confessions into three categories: voluntary, coerced-internalized and coerced-compliant.  Voluntary false confessions differ from the other two types because they are given no outside influences.  Most voluntary confessions are the result of the person wanting to become famous (or notorious), but they can also be caused by feelings of guilt over other incidents, the inability to distinguish fact from fiction, or to help or protect the real criminal.  Coerced-internalized false confessions occur when the suspect comes to erroneously believe that they committed a crime because of information they are being told by the interrogators.  Younger suspects, suspects who are tired, and highly suggestible individuals are most likely to fall victim to internalized false confessions.

Craig’s defense argues that his confession was in fact a coerced-compliant false confession.  A coerced-compliant false confession is when the suspect confesses because he or she sees confessing as the only way out of a situation.  The suspect makes the confession knowing it to be untrue because he or she wishes to escape a bad situation, avoid a real or implied threat, or gain some kind of reward.

As is pointed out on The Truth About False Confessions blog, there are a number of disturbing details surrounding the Craig confession.  One is that the tape of his interrogation exemplifies the techniques that tend to lead to false confessions.  On the transcript of Craig’s interrogation, Investigative Sgt. Dave Karsnia promises not to call the media if Craig cooperates.  If an innocent person were in Craig’s position, it would not be unreasonable to consider pleading guilty if he or she believed doing so could make the incident “disappear.”  Two is the quickness with which many have concluded that Craig must be guilty because he plead guilty.  Upon the breaking of story, Craig was stripped of his Senate committee assignments and condemned by members of both parties.

The irony of the whole situation is that Senator Craig, who has a voting record viewed unfavorably by civil liberties organizations, now finds himself benefitting from their advocacy on his behalf.  But, as written on the ACLU Blog, “you don’t have to endorse the civil liberties of other to keep your own."

Two major publications today featured stories on innocence issues. 

The New York Times ran a first-page article about the ways in which states are re-thinking their criminal justice procedures based on lessons learned from the nation's first 200 DNA exonerations.  The article highlights Maryland's recent laws on crime lab oversight and eyewitness identification procedures.  The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project's Executive Director, Shawn Armbrust, testified before the Maryland legislature on both of these bills.  To read the New York Times article, click here. 

The Washington Post today ran an editorial discussing the problem of false confessions.  The author, Shankar Vedantam, described a fascinating study in which non-criminal individuals were led, through mere suggestion, to admit to acts that they had not performed.  The article notes that approximately 25 percent of DNA exonerations have involved false confessions.  To read the Washington Post editorial, click here. 

In an article to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, D. Michael Risinger concludes that at least 3.3% of defendants sentenced to death in rape-murder cases in the 1980's were factually innocent of the charges.   Risinger reaches this shocking conclusion by comparing the number of DNA exonerations in rape-murder cases during this period with the number of capital rape-murder convictions where usable DNA connected to the perpetrator was found to be available when requested for testing. 

While Risinger stops short of deriving a universal wrongful conviction rate from this information, he notes persuasively that there is little reason to believe that this rate would be any lower when considering many kinds of less serious crimes and sentences.  He uses his conclusion to argue for reforms, such as those advocated by MAIP in the area of eyewitness identication procedures, that would cost society little, yet ensure that fewer innocent defendants are convicted of serious crimes.   

The article is well worth reading for anyone interested in the subject of wrongful convictions. 

 We are currently looking for the following types of volunteers:

Administrative/Secretarial Support. We are looking for someone to help us manage the high volume of mail that we receive from prisoners seeking our help.  We hope to find a volunteer who can commit 15-20 hours per week to reading and responding to prisoner correspondence as directed by our Assistant Director.  This work must be done in our office at the Washington College of Law.  Our ideal candidate is someone with strong writing and organizational skills, excellent attention to detail, and the ability to work independently.  We will consider college students, retirees, and other interested members of the community.  Legal experience is helpful but not required.

Driver And Reader.  Finally, we are looking for a member of the community who is willing to drive to courthouses around our region to retrieve and evaluate transcripts for innocence issues.  Travel will be within the states of Maryland and Virginia.  Unfortunately, we are unable to reimburse for mileage, though we do have a budget for case-related costs such as photocopying.  Familiarity with legal documents and innocence issues is useful, but we are prepared to train an otherwise outstanding candidate.  We would expect a volunteer to devote an average of at least two days a month to this project.    

If you are interested in any of these volunteer oppotunities, please e-mail a resume and cover letter to MAIP's Assistant Director, Eily Raman, at ERaman@wcl.american.edu.  Thank you!