Report Shows Record Number of Exonerations Due to Official Misconduct
By Patricio Muñoz-Hernandez
In 1991, Glenn Payne was convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault, which were bolstered by faulty forensic science and false testimony. In 2018, the criminalist who originally testified at Payne’s trial repudiated his testimony, resulting in the court vacating his conviction.
Payne’s story is not unique. In 2018, there were a record number of exonerations stemming from official misconduct.
Out of the 151 exonerations that occurred in 2018, at least 105 involved some degree of official misconduct, the majority of which pertained to homicide and drug-related offenses, according to a report by the National Registry of Exonerations.
According to the report, a common example of misconduct involves police or prosecutors concealing evidence that might prove a defendant was not guilty. In such cases, misconduct may include police officers threatening witnesses, forensic analysts falsifying test results, and child welfare workers pressuring children to claim sexual abuse where none occurred.
Nonetheless, David Angel, Assistant District Attorney of Santa Clara County, says the report’s findings are not as alarming as they may seem.
“I don’t think it’s fair to conclude on that number that there is an increasing likelihood of official misconduct,” Angel said. “I think what’s correct to conclude is that there’s a greater sensitivity to it” and “more resources are being allocated to looking for exonerations.”
Angel specifically points to the inclusion of Conviction Integrity Units (CIUs), explaining that a CIU is responsible for assuring that the District Attorney’s Office utilizes the most professional and ethical practices possible to reduce the chance of a future wrongful conviction. CIUs are also charged with evaluating and investigating past cases of potential misconduct. Angel emphasized the impact CIUs have had on the number of exonerations in the U.S. and specifically in Santa Clara County.
Angel explains that this type of unit did not really exist prior to the appointment of District Attorney Jeff Rosen in 2011. There are 44 CIUs in the United States as of 2018, which is more than three times the number in 2013, according to the National Registry of Exonerations report. The report shows that CIUs were involved in 58 exonerations in 2018.
Angel noted how the term ‘misconduct’ can be misunderstood. “We don’t want to jump to the conclusion that because there was misconduct, that means it was intentional … it may have just been an error,” since doing so would misrepresent the actual number of instances in which intentional misconduct took place, he said.
Another factor that contributed to the increased number of exonerations was a change in the law in 2017 that loosened the legal standard on newly discovered evidence, said Melissa O’Connell, staff attorney for the Northern California Innocence Project, a non-profit dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted and reforming criminal justice policy.
Describing the significance of changing the law and its impact on exonerations, O’Connell says “they couldn’t meet this astronomically high standard and now they can because we changed the law.” Additionally, she says that the change in the law came after years of unsuccessful attempts to meet the high burden of proof described by the law, pointing to California Penal Code § 1473(b)(3).
“We had the highest burden of proof in the entire nation,” making it “virtually impossible in all of our cases” to satisfy the burden of producing evidence, she said. The change to the law lowers the burden of proof, providing that “[n]ew evidence exists that is credible, material, presented without substantial delay, and of such decisive force and value that it would have more likely than not changed the outcome at trial,” and that new evidence “means evidence that has been discovered after trial, that could not have been discovered prior to trial by the exercise of due diligence,” according to Cal. Penal Code § 1473(b)(3).
Put simply, O’Connell says there are too many bad actors and that “it takes good actors to right that wrong.”
O’Connell cited Sergeant Ronald Watts as one of those bad actors. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, “thirty-one defendants who had been framed by police on drug and weapons charges were exonerated in the wake of a scandal involving corrupt Chicago police officers led by Sergeant Ronald Watts in 2018.” According to the Watts case, this was the largest contributing factor in 2018’s record number of exonerations.
As for an example of a good actor, O’Connell identified Craig Watkins, the former District Attorney for Dallas County, Texas. When Watkins took office in 2007, he created the nation’s first CIU, “resulting in 49 exonerations”, though she admitted that this isn’t always the case and sometimes requires initiative. “If everyone in the criminal justice system is doing their job, then we can reduce the risk that we wrongfully convict people, because that only magnifies the idea that we have problems with our system.”
When looking at misconduct more in depth, we see that there are some issues with how evidence is managed, explains W. David Ball, Professor of criminal law at Santa Clara University School of Law.
“Under Brady v. Maryland, what the prosecution is supposed to do is to disclose any evidence that is favorable to the defendant” says Ball. However, Ball notes how some attorneys do the exact opposite, prioritizing conviction at the expense of justice, thinking either “they really did it and I would hate to see them walk free” or “the people want to see that justice was served and nobody would know about it but me.”
Ball says that “obviously not all prosecutors think like this but when it comes to actual misconduct, this is likely how it happens,” suggesting that misconduct is not as straightforward and direct as many may think.
Instead, the underlying source of misconduct might be fundamental and systematic. “When one side has resources and information they aren’t providing and the other side is an overburdened public defender without the same resources, those are the issues that result in the wrong person going away for a long time,” said Ball.
(Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the October 2019 [Volume 50, Issue 1] version of The Advocate.)