OPINION: Advice from an Exoneree Who Spent Thirty-four Years in Prison
By: Jack Sagin
Jack Sagin with his sister shortly after being released. Photo By: Michele Canny,
On October 11, 2019, I walked out of prison a free man after 34 years of wrongful incarceration. In 1986, a Monterey County jury convicted me of murder, even though the only evidence against me was the claims of two jailhouse informants. After many years of fighting on my own, or trying to work with lawyers appointed by different courts, the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) took up my case. Through the work of NCIP, evidence collected from the victim’s body was DNA-tested, revealing the DNA of five possible perpetrators on that evidence. My DNA was on nothing. On August 30, 2019, the Sixth District Court of Appeal reversed my conviction.
Over the many, many years I spent in prison, and the thousands of hours I spent talking about my case with my lawyers and discussing the legal system with my fellow prisoners, I have some advice for those attorneys and law students who don’t want to be responsible for helping to send an innocent person to prison.
First, if you choose to be a lawyer and represent people, you need to represent them to the best of your abilities –– your client’s life is in your hands. People accused of crimes are presumed innocent until proven guilty –– please don’t take that away from us by treating defendants differently, based on what they have been charged with. From a traffic ticket to a mass murder charge, we are all relying on you to help us and no matter how hard your job might be, the job of an innocent person who has to serve time for someone else’s crime is much, much harder. Don’t give up on them even if they tell you that they are guilty! They are still depending on you to do your best to protect them because you are the only person who can.
Second, please don’t accept what is in the police reports as the truth, without further investigation. Everyone, including police, tells their story in the way that they want others to hear it. If you just rely on what law enforcement says, you are only hearing one side of the story. If you are a prosecutor, send your investigator out to speak with people again –– make sure that you have been diligent in your investigation before you ask a jury to send a defendant away from his family and children to die in prison, no matter how bad the crime is that he is accused of committing. If you are a defense attorney, send an investigator out to talk to witnesses and investigate the crime scene –– you need to do your job.
Third, be truthful. For prosecutors, charge people with what you think that the person has done, not what you think you might be able to convince a jury that he or she did. Serving time for something you actually did is one thing. Serving time for something either that didn’t happen or that someone else did should not happen. At any of the many prisons where I served time, I was not the only innocent prisoner. You have a lot of power and you should use that power to make us all safer, not just because you can.
For defense attorneys, don’t just pat your client on the head and tell him everything will be okay! Respect your clients enough to tell them the truth when you give advice about their case. Some of my attorneys told me that they were working on things when they weren’t. Some of them told me that I had nothing to worry about when I had everything to worry about. Some told me that things would happen a certain way and when they didn’t work out that way, it was really hard to get over. Give your clients the truth, even when you think that the client doesn’t want to hear it. In the long run, it is much easier to deal with something hard and disappointing before you get your hopes up.
(Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the March 2020 [Volume 50, Issue 3] version of The Advocate.)