In October 1999, Warren Blackwell was convicted of indecent assault. He had, it had been alleged, raped a woman at knife-point on New Year’s Eve. He served more than 3 years in prison for this alleged crime. The conviction was overturned, well after his release, this month.
Mr Blackwell’s conviction was quashed because the credibility of his accuser was undermined. His initial conviction rested in large part on the testimony of his alleged victim. Once an investigation by the Criminal Cases Review Commission had damaged her reputation, her testimony was no longer deemed sufficient grounds for a safe conviction. The verdict on Blackwell was changed, belatedly, to ‘not guilty’.
The accuser, it turned out, had a history of making rape allegations. She had previously accused at least five men of rape, but never before had her claims been substantiated.
It would be dangerous to argue from the mere fact that a woman has alleged rape on a number of occasions without her alleged attackers ever being prosecuted to the conclusion that she is a serial liar. The conviction rate for rape is only 5%, and this is plausibly due to difficulties in proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt rather than because most allegations are spurious. A woman might genuinely be raped several times without getting justice.
However, in this case there was enough to call the accuser’s credibility into question. Not only had she made an unusual number of accusations in the past, but at least one of those accusations had been conclusively disproven. She had a history of making false allegations, a track-record of lying.
This case illustrates the importance of reputation in establishing a witness’s credibility. If someone is known to have lied in the past then their credibility is reduced, particular regarding similar claims in similar situations. Once the facts about Blackwell’s accuser were revealed, the case against him was substantially weakened, and he was rightly treated as a victim of a false accusation rather than as an assailant.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:26 am
Although this case exposes the outlandish miscarriage of justice towards the wrongly accused in the UK, we wish this were an isolated incident. The fact is, even in the United States, restitution for those incarcerated is certainly not guaranteed.
In fact, in many states, there are more government resources for those released on parole than there are for those who have been wrongly incarcerated and later exonerated and released.
Currently, an overwhelming number of people who have been exonerated of a crime are not compensated for the toll the incarceration took on their lives socially and economically.
Thus far, only 22 states in the US have laws in place to provide some level of compensation for those who were wrongly convicted. This means a majority of those who went back to court and proved their innocence are then required to sue for this compensation.
This process utilizes significant resources that a recently released inmate typically does not have. For those who do have the knowledge or financial ability to bring a case, the enormous cost of the additional legal wrangling involved may soak up much of the payout. Many victims of this outrageous process are handed the more daunting challenge of simply restoring their name, let alone consideration of a lawsuit that may or may not result in restitution for the time that has been lost.
What’s more, the payout often times received is meager in comparison to what is usually lost. Marty Tankleff for example was sentenced to a New York state prison after being wrongly convicted of killing his parents. Although his case was recently overturned, Marty just recently visited his parent’s graves for the first time since their deaths.
Ronnie Taylor, a Houston man who was recently exonerated of a crime he didn’t commit was engaged to be married before his arrest in 1993. DNA testing proved his innocence 14 years later – allowing him to finally marry his bride Jeanette Brown. (source)
The Innocence Protect, one organization established in 1992 utilizes DNA testing as a means to force new hearings for those who are wrongly accused. It’s website lists hundreds of cases of wrongly convicted individuals who’s cases were overturned after a conviction.
While the Weekly Vice does not subscribe to every point of view of the Project’s mission statement, one has to wonder where our culture would be without such advocates. Many wrongfully accused individuals have languished in prison for decades before their faulty convictions were tossed out.
Here are a few more examples of justice gone horribly wrong:
Dennis Brown from Louisiana was convicted of a 1984 rape and spent 19 years in prison before DNA testing confirmed that he could not have been the rapist.
Marvin Anderson became the ninety-ninth person in the US to be exonerated of a crime due to post-conviction DNA testing. Even when another individual confessed to the crime Lamont was accused of, the Judge upheld the conviction until DNA evidence finally confirmed Lamont’s innocence. He wasn’t exonerated until 1992, nearly 20 years after his arrest.
Orlando Boquete’s wrongful conviction of attempted sexual battery was vacated a staggering 24 years after his arrest back in 1982.
Robert Clark, wrongly convicted of rape, kidnapping and armed robbery in 1982, languished in prison primarily by mistaken eyewitness. Mistaken identity seems to be a common theme with the cases that later get overturned by post-conviction DNA evidence. Clark was finally vindicated 24 years later.
Luis Diaz was wrongly convicted in 1980 as the ‘Bird Road Rapist’, where 25 women were attacked, many of them sexually assaulted. Diaz was convicted for 8 of them. His case was overturned 25 years later in 2005.
Conclusion:
These are only a handful of the cases you can view HERE, however they are a sampling of the many instances where our legal system goes horribly wrong to such degree that compensation for one’s life cannot be calculated as a mere loss of wages as most restitution awarding states provide.
The Weekly Vice supports tough sentencing guidelines for all sexual assault cases, particularly those of minor children. We also believe however, that states should be equally aggressive with some level of state subsidy, restitution or other adjudged compensation that is deemed appropriate for each individual case. A dismal 22 states is not a goodwill showing for a nation who prides itself on a Justice For All philosophy.
Danny Vice
The Weekly Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com