What better day than Friday the 13th to have a public hearing about the unlucky souls who have been wrongfully convicted? The New York State Bar Association held hearings in Manhattan Friday to finalize its report analyzing the "systemic, procedural and statutory causes that contribute to wrongful convictions and propose solutions to this growing problem."
The Task Force studied 53 cases of wrongful convictions, and determined their leading causes to be: identification procedures, government practices, mishandling of forensic evidence, false confessions, the improper use of jailhouse informants and defense practices.
The 22-member Task Force is chaired by Judge Barry Kamins and includes Prof. William Hellerstein of Brooklyn Law School; Robert C. Gottlieb, who defended Marty Tankleff in his original trial; Brooklyn DA Charles J. Hynes; and Westchester DA Janet DeFiore.
Among those who testified were Jeffrey Deskovic, who was convicted based on a false confession, which occurred in Westchester prior to DeFiore's ascension to DA, and about which she ordered a task force of her own. Deskovic, who speaks regularly on wrongful convictions and writes for the Westchester Guardian, said the Fifth Amendment demands that coercive interrogation techniques--as taught in the Reid technique--be banned. And, pointing out that prosecutors having immunity raises the possibility of abuse, Deskovic argued that prosecutorial misconduct should be prosecuted.
Alan Newton, exonerated for rape after 22 years in prison, described being turned down for parole several times solely because he maintained his innocence.
Barry Scheck, cofounder of the Innocence Project, described how, a few years ago, an Illinois State Senator passed a bill requiring the taping of interrogations. [The shame is President Obama couldn't mention it during the campaign for fear of being portrayed as "soft on crime."]
Peter Neufeld, the IP's other cofounder, called for reliability hearings for confessions, while Scheck said that DNA is "no panacea" because only 14 percent of cases yield DNA evidence.
Bruce Barket, Marty Tankleff's lawyer in Suffolk County during his successful appeal, took Scheck's point a step further, saying DNA has become a "double-edged sword" because it creates too high a bar for the innocent. Barket said Tankleff would never have been convicted if his interrogation had been recorded, and that government must fund lawyers for prisoners with credible claims of innocence.
For his part, Robert Gottlieb, Tankleff's lawyer during the original trial, called for all interaction with police, not just interrogations, to be recorded.
Among the recommendations in the preliminary report are additional law enforcement training, pre-trial Brady conferences, blind line-ups, recording of custodial interrogations in their entirety, and corroboration of informant's testimony.
Written comments will be accepted by the Task Force until February 20th.
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