Wrongful Conviction----It can happen to you!

It was a wrongful conviction case that got me into this business.  Radio broadcasting, my first and greatest love, was luring me back after a 20-year hiatus.  But then I met Maurice Carter, an indigent black man from Gary, Indiana, sitting in a Michigan prison and claiming innocence.  That was in 1995.  The rest is history.

Until that time, naïve newsman that I was, I felt that prosecutors just wouldn’t get a warrant, an arrest and seek a conviction if they didn’t really have a case.  Little did I know. 

Today is Wrongful Conviction Day, being observed on an international basis.  The event was first organized by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (that’s the Canadian way to spell defense), based in Toronto and founded by former welterweight champ Rubin Hurricane Carter.  I frequently hear people say that all prisoners claim they are innocent.  Rubin Hurricane, on the other hand, told me when he was in Michigan drawing attention to the Maurice Carter case:  “When you hear a prisoner say he’s innocent, and he sticks with that story the whole time he’s in prison, you’d better listen!” 

Since that time, I have listened.  And I want to tell you something, as we observe this special day.  We hear the stories like those of Maurice Carter, and somehow we get the impression that it’s usually the poor, black people who usually wind up wrongly convicted…they have no funds for proper legal representation and they encounter racial bias among jurists and jurors.  While some of that is definitely true, the bigger truth is IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!

I can tell you horror stories of wrongful convictions of a doctor, a lawyer, a cop, a banker, a businessman, a teacher…all of them white, and all of them with the means to hire good legal representation.  Yet, each of these people found themselves behind bars for a decade before adequate proof was established that they had done nothing wrong!  In a couple of cases, the innocent inmate died without exoneration.

There’s a special way that you can observe this day in Michigan.  Your state legislature is currently considering a bill that would compensate people who have been wrongly convicted.  You can make sure that your legislator votes for this bill, and you can keep an eye on Pure Michigan to ensure that these victims of wrongful conviction are promptly compensated without years and years of red tape wrangling.

Aside from that, join me in a prayer today for justice in our system, especially for those wrongly incarcerated.

Quoting the writer of Proverbs:  It is not good…to deprive the innocent of justice.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Half-a-race!

The HFP Drag-Racing Fund-Raiser had the potential of being extremely successful, and could have raised several thousand dollars. Let's just say it was partly successful. For background purposes I'll explain that I was racing a 1963 supercharged Studebaker Lark that has a reputation of being one of the fastest stock Studebakers in drag racing today. The engine was built by one of the finest Studebaker engine mechanics in the country, and the car many times has achieved quarter-mile runs in less than 14 seconds! We promised to make at least ten passes in the Pure Stock Muscle Car Drags at Mid-Michigan Motorplex in Stanton, Michigan, this past weekend, and we asked for pledges ONLY ON THOSE RUNS REACHED IN LESS THAN 14 SECONDS. On Friday, here's how we fared: Run #1 13.936 @ 101.24 mph Run #2 14.027 @ 101.30 mph Run #3 14.091 @ 100.88 mph Run #4 13.805 @ 102.84 mph Run #5 14.058 @ 101.26 mph By the 5th run we discovered that ...
Read more

Gregory John McCormick: 1964-2008

Itchy is dead. The lifeless body of this talented rock musician, whose band Shock Therapy was a popular group especially in Europe, was found in a field in Detroit last Wednesday, November 5. The Wayne County Coroner's office informed father Glenn McCormick that the body of his son Gregory, better known to all of us as Itchy, bore no signs of trauma. Glenn said that Itchy, who had been living at his father's dental lab in Detroit, had been drinking to excess for some time. While the toxicology report has not been released yet, the general consensus seems to be that he drank himself to death. Our agency, while still named INNOCENT, first got involved with Itchy in 2005. The Detroit native, who called Germany his home, got involved in some unfortunate activity that placed him in the Michigan State prison system on a charge of arson of a dwelling. It was really just a bonfire in an alley, but an alleged parole violation placed him in prison for 1-20 years. I personally sat w...
Read more

Three lives, connected by a divine thread

My kids say it should be a book! The Doug, Pat and Mark story is a doozie!   About 25 years ago, while fighting to free Maurice Carter from prison, I read a newspaper column written by Pat Shellenbarger of the Grand Rapids Press on the topic of eyewitness identification. I contacted Pat re that story. That led to a friendship between Doug and Pat that continues to this day.   In subsequent months, Pat would go on to assist me in an investigation into the Maurice Carter case that eventually led to solving the crime.  That particular episode became a chapter in my book about the Carter case, SWEET FREEDOM, published in 2006.   Fast forward to 2009, A New York businessman claims wrongful conviction, and while serving time in a Michigan prison is handed a copy of my book. Mark Hartman, who was also convicted in Berrien County, was amazed at the similarity of these two stories and tried to reach out to me. His letters bounced.   Persisting in his efforts to c...
Read more