(This is the second of two posts about the "Central Park Jogger" case.)
So what do I think? I don’t know if the five (or six, counting Kharey Wise) teens accused of raping the Central Park jogger did it or not. But I don’t need to know. I’m convinced that – even at the time, and even more so now – there is reasonable doubt about their guilt. And that should be all our system requires. Where reasonable doubt isn’t enough to prevent a conviction, we have a problem.
Armed Liberal writes:
I’m thrilled. And excited. And proud. I feel bad for the youths wrongly convicted (although my bad feelings are somewhat offset by the admitted fact that they had been wilding…randomly assaulting innocent people in the park…). I’m bothered by the fact that poor kids of color get worse legal representation than rich white guys like Skakel.
But none of this changes the fact that I’m proud because we live in a society where we are willing to face up to and admit our mistakes. To correct them where possible. No politically connected prosecutor was able to bury the confession or prevent the DNA testing that ultimately appears to have exonerated them.
I think AL has missed the point. The DNA evidence hasn’t exonerated them (it was known in 1990 that the DNA found didn’t belong to any of the defendants) – and, really, it can’t. Reyes’ confession is what exonerates them (assuming they are, in the end, exonerated, which still might not happen); the DNA evidence just makes his confession credible.
But I think AL is missing the real problems in the system. That Reyes chose to come forward and confess is a freak occurrence. Let’s suppose Reyes is telling the truth – he and he alone committed the rapes. It follows that the 1989 confessions were coerced (deliberately or not doesn’t matter) by police who took advantage of the defendants stupidity and youth. (As far as I know, the confessions are the only proof for the "admitted fact that they had been wilding," in which case it’s illogical for AL to assume that part of the confessions must be true while other parts are false. But maybe AL has another source that I don’t know about)
Armed Liberal complains that "we are dwelling on the ‘Oh, no, we were so bad‘ rather than the ‘we’re getting better‘." He writes:
I’m excited because I believe that these tools…the technology and the open legal system…that are the product of this society will be used in the future to prevent bad things from happening…
AL’s rather (to use his term) "self-satisfied" argument simply doesn’t mesh with the facts. DNA technology existed in 1990, when the teens were tried – and it showed that someone other than (or in addition to) the teens had raped the victim. The same "open legal system" that we have today was there in 1990. The only thing different now is that – freakishly – the guilty party has come forward and confessed.
Has anything changed since 1990? Not that I can see. It’s still "the fact that poor kids of color get worse legal representation." It’s still the fact that police sometimes coerce confessions. It’s still the fact that racism and sexism screw up the legal system. What, then, justifies AL’s self-satisfied claim that "we’re getting better"?
I agree with A.L. when he writes that we shouldn’t be "paralyzed with grief and self- loathing." But I don’t think that’s what Jeanne D’Arc is calling for. What she is saying, if I understand her correctly, is that we should listen to our internal doubts about the justice of the system, because those doubts are too-often right. If more people at the time had been suspicious of the confessions, maybe the convictions wouldn’t have happened. If we remember this the next time a case like this comes up, maybe we’ll do better. I think Jeannie’s worrying about injustice is probably more useful than A.L.’s complacent belief that technology and an open legal system are already fixing the problems.
Instapundit writes:
To my mind, the real test of a system isn’t whether or not it makes mistakes: by that standard, all systems will fail, since all make mistakes. The real test is whether the mistakes were made in good or bad faith, and whether the response to them, once they’re discovered, is marked by good or bad faith.
I’d agree, as far as that goes. But I’d add that there’s another test: whether or not we constantly attempt to improve the system, to make repeating the same mistakes less likely.
Talkleft has some plausible ways the system can be improved – but in an era when even Democrats favor making it harder for people to defend themselves against criminal charges, I doubt even a commonsense remedy like the Innocence Protection Act can make it through congress. And – again – without the freak occurrence of a voluntary confession, an IPA wouldn’t have helped these defendants.
What would have prevented these convictions? Laws forbidding lengthy, high-pressure police interrogations of minors would be a good start. Evidentiary laws allowing psychological evidence about the propensity of defendants to make false confessions. Laws requiring competent legal council during all police interrogations for major felonies, regardless of if the person being questioned asks for it. And a more skeptical press.
Talkleft has another suggestion (probably better than my suggestions, since she knows much more about it than I do), which would have helped in this case:
…false confessions account for 20 % of wrongful convictions. A fairly simple remedy exists: Require the police to videotape all confessions. Currently only two states, Minnesota and Alaska, require this. Other states (and the feds) need to follow suit. It is likely to substantially reduce the chances of another innocent person being convicted based on a false confession induced by their mental retardation or incompetency or by the overbearing conduct of a too-eager or manipulative cop.
If the goal is to prevent further false convictions of this sort, then these are changes we need.
Until we have those changes, I think that Instapundit’s false "real test" and Armed Liberal’s "it’s getting better" complacency both miss the point. The question (or "real test") is, or should be, has anything changed since 1990 to make this sort of unjust conviction less likely? And has the "trust the system-ness" and racism that made nearly everyone so sure the confessions were valid gone away? Until we can answer "yes," the folks who see this as a real and current problem – Body & Soul, Uppity-Negro, Sipyphus Shrugged, and Negroplease, for example – are the folks we should all be listening to.
UPDATE: Body & Soul just put up a new post on this subject.
UPDATE 2: New post from Uppity-negro.
(Some links found via Instapundit.).
