EDITORIALS
Protect the innocent
Reforms in justice system needed, state lawmakers should act now
The current political chaos aside, state legislators and Gov. David A. Paterson are in the midst of what could be one of the easiest yet most important decisions they are likely to make in this or any year.
After years of ignoring New York’s documented problem with wrongful convictions, state leaders are considering a range of reforms that would diminish the possibility that the criminal justice system will get it wrong and convict an innocent person.
Erie County residents became uncomfortably familiar with this disturbing phenomenon in the past few years. Anthony Capozzi was convicted of rapes he did not commit and Lynn DeJac was found guilty of a murder she did not commit. Each spent years in prison before DNA science and dogged police work helped to free them.
Organizations such as the Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted defendants, have detailed the sources of wrongful conviction. They include incompetent defense attorneys, unethical prosecutors, careless evidence handling, bad science, witness misidentifications and, strangest of all, false confessions. All occur more than most people ever realized.
The problem occurs across the country, but New York has seen more innocent people freed from prison than most other states and, conversely, has done less than most to fix an intolerable problem. Although the Legislature refused to investigate itself, the New York State Bar Association recently issued a telling report on wrongful conviction and, just last month, the state’s top judge, Jonathan Lippman of New York’s Court of Appeals, announced he would establish a permanent task force to examine wrongful convictions and recommend ways to minimize them.
In that context, Albany is finally considering a slate of reforms. They include:
• Improving eyewitness identification procedures. Eyewitness identifications have been shown to be inherently unreliable. Capozzi spent more than 21 years in prison because he was wrongly identified as the Delaware Park rapist. As a consequence, the real rapist, Altemio C. Sanchez, remained free and soon turned to murder.
There are strategies available to diminish the potential for incorrect identification, including sequential viewing of suspects instead of a traditional lineup, and ensuring that the officer conducting the procedure does not know who the suspect is.
• Recording interrogations in felony cases. False confessions typically occur when suspects, under pressure by police, say what they think police want to hear in an attempt to end their misery. Police, sometimes inadvertently, tell those suspects details of the crime that only the perpetrator would know, then use that newly gained knowledge to pressure them into a confession.
Videotaping custodial interrogations would discourage that occurrence, and document it when it does occur. Police are often reluctant to agree to taping interrogations, but many who have experienced it report that it better serves the cause of justice while forcing them to become better at their jobs.
• Increasing prisoner access to DNA testing. With more than 24 wrongfully convicted New Yorkers having been exonerated, access to such testing is obviously necessary, though some penalty needs to attach to guilty inmates who abuse the process.
• Preserving evidence. This should be automatic. Only through the voluntary preservation of DNA evidence was Capozzi exonerated. Such evidence must be maintained at least until all issues of guilt or innocence have been completed on appeals.
It is encouraging that Paterson and legislators are talking about these issues. New Yorkers should let their representatives know they see this as a law enforcement issue. Ensuring that only the guilty are convicted is the right thing to do from all perspectives. Ask the families of the women Altemio Sanchez murdered.
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