U S A Criminal Justice

A man who commits a murder is proven guilty thirty years after another man was sentenced to life.

Now, of course, this would all be simplified if the state had executed the innocent man, so now it is an embarrassment.  Like all those videos showing cops murdering people now. Martin Stroud is the prosecutor who railroaded the innocent man.

Marty Stroud admitted in a letter published in a Louisiana newspaper last month that he was to blame for putting Glenn Ford behind bars in 1983

OK...  so... (Glenn Ford is the victim.)

In the letter, Stroud admitted that he was to blame for mistakenly putting Ford behind bars for the fatal shooting of a jeweler, despite no murder weapon or witnesses placing him at the scene.

'In 1984, I was 33 years old,' he wrote. 'I was arrogant, judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself. I was not as interested in justice as I was in winning.' 

Mistakenly?  Is that what we call it?  This is an otherwise unheard of event?  OK.. so what to do?

'Glenn Ford should be completely compensated to every extent possible because of the flaws of a system that effectively destroyed his life,' Stroud wrote.

'The audacity of the state's effort to deny Mr. Ford any compensation for the horrors he suffered in the name of Louisiana justice is appalling.' 

Ah, it is the systems' fault, not the individual whose actions are immune from prosecution.  Martin Stroud had nothing to do with this right?   Maybe, just maybe, if prosecutors were answerable for fun-time career-enhancing false prosecutions, there would be fewer executions and incarcerations of innocent poor and minority.  Just maybe.  Martin Stroud did nothing wrong, it is the system!

If Martin Stroud III actually had the slightest concern about what he had done to the man, he would take everything he gained in the last 33 years and give it to the man he personally railroaded up the river, and not condemn the taxpayers for not kicking in to cover up Strouds' malfeasance and personal aggrandizement.

But that ain't gonna happen.  This is America.

We need truth commissions, not government prosecutors.

Update:  Today, this -

The government has identified almost 3,000 cases in which FBI agents may have given testimony involving the now-discredited technique. So far only about 500 of those cases have been been reviewed.
Some 268 of those involved FBI examiners providing expert evidence in court that pointed to the guilt of the defendant – of which 257, or 96%, included false testimony.
Most shockingly, at least 35 defendants received the death penalty, 33 of which were the subject of false FBI testimony. Nine of the prisoners were executed and five died from other causes on death row.

Something like 90% of cases involve plea bargain with no trial, so figure about ten times as many people falsely convicted, but no chance of review since they admitted guilt to avoid a life sentence.

Truth commissions.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.