A Los Angeles Supreme Court judge on Wednesday ruled that Maurice Hastings was virtually innocent of a crime for which he served 38 years in prison.
Actual innocence is a high standard and courts rarely award it. This means that the evidence conclusively shows that he did not commit the criminal offence. For Hastings, the verdict is an exclamation mark. For Los Angeles County’s criminal justice system, it’s a reminder of an enduring stain that may never be washed away.
That’s because prosecutors have repeatedly failed Hastings — and Roberta Wydermyer, victim of assault and murder. Prosecutors twice tried to put Hastings to death, but the first trial ended in a trial and the second in a conviction and life in prison without parole. Prosecutors had DNA evidence that could exonerate him, but they denied him when he first tried to get them tested 23 years ago. Later they said they couldn’t find it.
In 2021, Dist. attentive George Gascón’s Conviction Integrity Unit examined the evidence – semen left in Wydermyer’s body – and found that it did not match Hastings’s. It matched Kenneth Packnett, who was later convicted of similar crimes as the prosecutors pinned on Hastings. Packnett has since passed away.
Hastings, 30 at the time of sentencing, was released from prison in October at the age of 69.
What excuse does a society that prides itself on having the most advanced legal system in the world make for a person who has been unlawfully deprived of his or her liberty for nearly four decades?
Actual acquittals may be rare, but to our shame false convictions are not. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a $1.2 million settlement for Arturo Aceves Jimenez, who is serving 25 years in prison for alleged wrongful conviction in a legal proceeding. Last year, a judge in Louisiana released Sullivan Walter, 36 years after he was wrongly convicted as a teenager.
Two weeks ago, Lamar Johnson was released from prison in Missouri after nearly 28 years in prison, when his conviction was finally overturned by the court. A few years earlier, St. Louis’s now chief prosecutor noted that a key eyewitness recanted, previous prosecutors paid for the witness’s lodging and expenses without disclosing them — and that two other people had confessed to the crime.
Johnson’s release took years, and Missouri lawmakers intervened, as the criminal justice system was more interested in proceedings and politics than wrongful imprisonment. Circuit Attention. Kim Gardner, a Democrat and “progressive prosecutor,” was elected after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in suburban Ferguson. A conservative judge has appointed the Republican attorney general to intervene in their request for a new trial. It wasn’t until the state legislature changed the law that Gardner was able to move forward and overturn the conviction.
How do we compensate a person who has been so abused by our justice system? How can we compare the wrongful jail sentence to, say, the $1.2 million the county approved to settle the Aceves Jimenez case, or the nearly $29 million settlement with Kobe Bryant survivors for the gruesome but even lesser crime? damage from the ground crew taking pictures? of the remains of the basketball legend and other victims of the helicopter crash?
Wrongful convictions affect Americans of all races and backgrounds, but people of color are much more likely to be later acquitted, suggesting they are more likely to have been wrongly convicted in the first place, according to an assessment by the National Registry of Exonerations. be found guilty. .
Reformed prosecutors across the country have set up sentencing units to uncover and correct injustices committed — mostly unknowingly — by their predecessors. Most of the heavy lifting is done by outside organizations like the Los Angeles Innocence Project, which defended the Hastings case and helped bring it before Gascón.
Re-examination of questionable convictions should be accepted by all actors in the criminal justice system as the ultimate guarantor of the system’s legitimacy. Instead, such efforts are politically dangerous. For example, the Attorney General of Missouri is trying to fire Gardner, allegedly because she neglected her job. Gascón is facing the wrath of his own MPs, many of whom supported two attempts to recall him.
It is not for nothing that some critics speak of the ‘criminal’ legal System.” The word “justice” has to be earned, and all too often our system falls short.
Source: LA Times
Roger Stone is an author and opinion journalist who writes for 24 News Globe. He is known for his controversial and thought-provoking views on a variety of topics, and has a talent for engaging readers with his writing.
