DNA: Do Not Assume

The following is an excerpt from part two:

In its November 2008 issue, Texas Monthly published an article by Michael Hall about thirty-seven men who spent a total of 525 years in prison for crimes not committed. DNA technology has since proven them innocent. Of his ninety nine-year sentence, Charles Chatman spent twenty-six and a half years behind bars. He states, “It was like tunnel vision once they zoom in on one person. They were trying to get a quick conviction, satisfy society by just prosecuting somebody. That doesn’t do society no good to prosecute the wrong person.”

Another Texas prisoner, Carlos Lavernia, completed fifteen years of his mistaken sentence. He was identified in a lineup developed from photos fourteen months after the crime. The Anglo victim is positive that her assailant was a Cuban immigrant. In his report of prison experience, he recounts being in the shower when an inmate “stabbed me—twice, behind the ear and on the wrist. Guards saw me over there. They were saying, ‘Kill that motherfucker! Let him die!’” That exemplifies the intentions of those who locked him up in the first place. It typifies the discriminatory, hate filled aggressiveness of our society.

Anthony Robinson served ten of his twenty-seven years for rape. He says, “. . . you just don’t drive up and arrest people. . . I was thinking, ‘There is something really seriously wrong with this. This is some kind of sick, twisted joke . . . you just don’t take people to court and say, ‘Oh, this person raped me’—you gotta have some kind of corroborating evidence . . . I think what the prosecution basically decided was that we don’t need facts; we got a living victim here . . . No matter what I have in the way of proof, somebody’s always going to say that I got away with it. My thinking is that you can’t change that person.” After twenty-seven years, James Woodard was released based on DNA evidence. Texas Monthly’s account states that he “came up for parole numerous times but consistently refused to admit guilt, which could have won him early release.”

“Fear always springs from ignorance” Emerson

The following is an excerpt from part two:

Sex offender laws in the US require scrutiny. Some organizations such as ReformSexOffenderLaws.org are making headway in the interest of true justice. Our efforts would be well spent in support of such organizations so that the authentically dangerous predators could be identified and monitored accordingly. Rather, we spin our wheels, becoming distraught and losing sleep over a “problem” which is mostly hype.

Residency restrictions are “almost totally driven by emotion,” according to Richard Tewksbury, a University of Louisville professor of justice administration who studies sex offender laws. Regulations are founded entirely on fear, not fact. Without exception, all research shows there is no impact. The effect it does have is to make it harder for sex offenders to access treatment, find jobs and have a support system, all keys to crime free life. “If they can find a place at all,” says Tewksbury, “it is in the poorest, most disorganized, least desirable areas of the city, where is it more common for children to be unsupervised.”

What is most desperately needed, in the interest of reform, is education. Sadly, those who are most misinformed are likely to remain so. They are the ones who comment, “Lock them all up and throw away the key.” It startles the imagination for a “sophisticated society” to be carrying on in such a fashion. Unfounded fear instigates the ineffectual process of this punitive response. Ignorance insures its longevity.

Panic!

The following is an excerpt from part two:

The ReformSexOffenderLaws.org group points out how our system goes so far as to defy common sense:

“As soon as someone is accused of sexual behavior with a minor, their name is splashed all over TV and the newspapers, destroying their careers and good name, and their accuser is publicly labeled a victim. All of this happens whether the accusation is true or not... DAs, judges and juries indict or convict on the mere allegation of sexual violation without any consideration that supporting evidence is lacking. ‘Repressed memories,’ unsupported or even contradicted by physical evidence, sometimes become the basis for Conviction.”

Mass hysteria is perpetuated by the media and sustained by less-than-informed individuals. If the umbrella phrase “sex offenders” really described a group of dangerous predators, then it would be realistic to view it as naming an actual threat. But children as young as four years old—including minors convicted of consensual sex with other minors—fall under the sex offender umbrella.

“It includes persons whose alleged crimes are labeled violent, but where no force or violence occurred. The term “sex offender” encompasses an extremely wide range of people who have been judged guilty of behaviors from bad taste to serious abuse. In the public mind (and sometimes in the statements of public officials,) every sex offender is a person considered to have committed heinous crimes.”

All “offenders”—from those charged with public urination to teens convicted for consensual sex to those accused of a sexual violation, guilty or not—are grouped in the same “dangerous predator” classification. Those in our country who might feel threatened by living next door to a convicted sex offender in more than nine out of ten instances are living in fear of a nonexistent risk. Statistically, a very small percentage of offenders pose a real danger. This is quite similar in nature to previous panics aimed at other groups.

It doesn’t get better than that

The following is an excerpt from part two:

Beginning with the first flicker of our notoriety, there is not a soul who wants our innocence to govern the proceedings. The war-waging public does not want it. Can there be a more effective method for gay bashing? No one has to lift a finger. The town dogcatcher, promoted to detective, does not want us exonerated—further promotions do not come by being wrong. Downright emphatically, the courts are committed to a conviction. As with Pontius Pilate, let us give the public what they want. Certainly, DCYF is not in favor of objectivity. The glare of the spotlight causes them to turn their eyes the other way. They revoke our foster parenting license before we ever are arrested. Most decidedly, the media needs us to fry. What kind of glamour is there in exposing two gay men’s innocence?

When the media and politicians sensationalize cases such as ours it remains in their interest to be sure that their agendas are not challenged. The “tough on crime” illusion ensures that everyone is moved up a rung. Demonizing the accused becomes profitable in every way imaginable. Dollars float down from the heavens. The public is pleased that someone is found guilty. We can all live happily ever after. The other side of the coin is that a “debt to society” never gets paid in full—ex-cons wear the scarlet letter of shame up until their dying gasp. Pathetically, in the prevailing view of our sophisticated culture, “It doesn’t get better than that.”

Thanks for the favor

The following is an excerpt from part two:

Shortly after our release from prison, a school principal was arrested on child molestation charges. The circumstances of absolutely nothing to go on other than someone’s accusation, does not put him behind bars as it did with us. His status prevented him from facing the firing line. Popularity released him of his charges without going to trial.

In a 2009 Rhode Island incident, a business owner was arrested on two counts of first degree and six counts of second degree sexual assault. Four female workers reported the assaults to the police. The charges were dropped by the Rhode Island attorney general’s office due to lack of evidence. The testimony of four adult women was not sufficient evidence, yet in our case the fluctuating statements of a neurotic child were enough to get us locked up and tried.

Something about these equations does not add up—except in the minds of heterosexual supremacists and those gravely amiss, steeped in the current climate of sex offender hysterics. I do not know either of the accused men but I wish them the best. The best Sid and I could hope for is exactly the reaction that shackled our wrists. The best we could expect was being exposed to danger every breathing second behind bars. The best we could count on was disastrous representation at our bail hearing: Attorney Manfreak offered to represent us as a “favor to the court.” He recommended that we decline bail.

“See all those television cameras over there? Those are here for you. That’ll make matters much worse.” He suggested that we decline and then appeal later. When we obtained our own lawyers, they told us that there was no appealing to be had. Once we declined, we waived our right to bail. The “favor to the court” was to make sure we did not get out. We were confined to prison for the duration.

Somebody’s gotta pay

The following is an excerpt from part two:

There have been many instances of Catholic priests being found guilty of child molestation. Certainly, some of the assertions are factual. Certainly, there is nothing to stop any distorted, money-hungry “victim” from claiming that “the priest did those things to me when I was a child.” It’s a done deal—all that is left is to cash the check. Yet with new DNA technology, more and more convicted rapists are being exonerated. One man from Texas has recently been cleared of any wrongdoing after having been imprisoned for twenty-seven years. For him, as with many in our injustice system, arbitrary testimony used as evidence is relied upon as proof.

Freedom Writers is a heartrending and heartwarming 2007 movie starring Hilary Swank as an excited new teacher in the 1990s at a Long Beach, California high school. A new integration program jeopardizes the once solidly structured curriculum. The film is based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell, which evolved from a project she assigned to her students who, after a considerable struggle, came to respect her.

Andre, a black student, learns that his older brother is sentenced to a fifteen-year prison term for a crime he did not commit. He succinctly summarizes the unstated philosophy of the criminal injustice system in two sentences: “Justice don’t mean that the bad guy goes to jail. It just means that somebody’s gotta pay for the crime.”

Land of the free, home of exploitation

The following is an excerpt from part one:

My drug-dealing associate then informs me of his eventual deportation to Acapulco. I suspect that the handling of illegal aliens is not a compassionate enterprise. The firsthand accounts of overt neglect and abuse are distressing. The guards who facilitate bus transportation to the airport, Philadelphia in this area, are described as “typical C/Os.”

With that said, I pretty much know the rest of the story. Extended lunch stops at lavish roadside restaurants are commonplace. The deportees sit on the metal seats of the bus, manacles connecting bound wrists to bound ankles. The restraints are not removed even to use the toilet, which is a “crappy port-a-potty” situated in the rear of general seating. Forget any such thing as toilet paper. They are given miniscule amounts to eat or drink in order to minimize any inconvenience. José elaborates: “The less that goes in, the less that comes out.”

It is common for the “criminals” to be kicked, slammed, and shoved. If any of them collapse from exhaustion or malnutrition, they are left ignored in whatever position they land after falling from their seat. At the final destination, the “infirm” are dragged off and left in a pile until they are ready to be hauled away again. For the weak and elderly, that is likely to be “wherever they throw the dead bodies.” Sorrow for the plight of those prisoners causes me to weep. I am ashamed to be counted as one of the free and the brave souls who refer
to themselves as Americans.