On July 4, 2001,
associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in a speech before the
Minnesota Women's Lawyers Group, stated:
"If statistics
are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to
be executed."
Justice O'Connor was more correct than she
knew!
The truth- twenty-two
(22) innocent people have been executed in America between 1950 and 2000 our
system of Justice not only failed them, but it failed us as well. Our criminal
Justice system is a system that for the most part, simply does not work.
The miscarriages of
justice have occurred in several forms, from witness fabrication for a reward,
to government officials who know the truth but fail to come forward. Prior to 1963, it is hard to determine how
many inmates were truly innocent, as the law did not require that the accused
had a right to counsel. Then, in a
landmark decision in 1963, the United States Supreme Court mandated that an
accused must have the right to counsel and that if he could not afford one, the
state would provide counsel free of charge.
Even after this landmark decision, innocent men and women have been
convicted and sentenced for crimes they had not committed, all in the interest
of justice. The sad part is, the real criminal got away with a crime and remained
free to commit more.
As of December 2000, there were two million
prison inmates throughout the United
States.
3,711 of these inmates were on death row.
The Innocence
Project, which is doing a superb job in attempting to even the playing field,
consists of a loosely knit association of criminal defense lawyers across America. They search for the truth when justice has
failed. Through DNA testing and
reinvestigation of death row cases and major felonies, they have been able to
exonerate many inmates, but at what cost?
In some cases, these people have been imprisoned from 10 to 34 years
before their innocence was proven, and some never get out.
Why does this happen?
People are wrongfully convicted for
many reasons, stemming from:
1.
Simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time;
2. “ Ineffective” assistance of
counsel;
3.
Perjured testimony of witnesses, usually for a reward;
4.
Evidence tampering and concealment by police and FBI;
5. Prosecutorial
misconduct, withholding evidence of innocence, or manufacturing evidence of
guilt, usually to further a personal career;
6. Judicial incompetence -- judges who do not
understand the application of the law; and
7.
Jury
misconduct -- jurors who want to please, and forsake their
duty and integrity.
A perfect example of such a case is the story
of Peter Limone. His story should shock
you:
In 1965, the Boston mob hit and killed
Edward Deagan. Joseph Barboza; an FBI informant; testified at the trial of
Peter Limone and four other defendants, and identified them as the hit men.
Based on his testimony, Mr. Limone and the other four were convicted. At the time of his conviction, Mr. Limone was
33 years old previously his only trouble with the law had come from running a
dice game.
At the time the FBI
were using informants to gather information about mob activity. Information that the FBI had in their files
pointed to suspects which included Joseph Barboza himself as the actual
killer. Since Barboza was an FBI
informant, the agency concealed the list of suspects from the state of Boston. Limone and three of the other four
co-defendants were not on the list the FBI received from its sources.
Mr. Limone spent 33 years,
two months and five days in prison before he was exonerated. Four years of that time were on death
row. Olympia Limone, his wife, made a
living for herself and their four children by sewing. Believing in his innocence, she would visit
him faithfully twice a week.
While in prison,
Limone survived a heart attack his four children grew up, were married, and had
children of their own. The prime of his life passed while he was in prison for
a crime he did not commit.
Barboza, who was a
mob hit man, and an FBI informant, framed Limone. Mr. Barboza cooperated with prosecutors and
framed Limone while the FBI sat back did nothing and watched. They stood
by, knowing of his innocence and the innocence of the other defendants,
but did nothing. They would have
allowed Limone and the others to be executed to protect their source.
Limone was exonerated
as a side event of a major federal trial in Boston
involving Stephen Flemmi and James Bulger, two Boston mob leaders. In proceedings that took place in Boston over a period of
years, the presiding federal judge, Mark L. Wolf, turned up instances of FBI
misconduct so disturbing that he ordered an investigation by the Department of
Justice's Task Force. He further ordered
the establishment of guidelines on how agents should interact with informants,
and what they must tell prosecutors about those relationships.
Testimony uncovered
corruption within the FBI and their relationship with top-echelon informants
that allowed them to literally get away with murder. Barboza was just one of many.
Limone and four other
people were convicted of Deagan's murder.
Two of them died while in prison in or about 1995. Barboza later admitted he had fabricated the
story convicting the five defendants.
The attorney for Mr.
Limone, John Cavicchi, discovered through documents that he was able to obtain
with the cooperation of Judge Wolf, that Barboza was given inducements by the
authorities to testify as he did, and yet the trial judge gave the jury the
impression that Barboza was a non-interested party.
The Justice
Department Task Force, during their investigation of the FBI, released
documents that it had uncovered, which showed that FBI informants had told the
FBI beforehand that Mr. Deagan would be killed and who would kill him. The list did not include Mr. Limone or three
of the other co-defendants.
The FBI knew that
four of the defendants were innocent, yet they did nothing. Why? To protect
their own informants and, they did nothing to prevent the killing of Deagan.
Joseph Salvati, Lewis
Greco, Henry Tameleo and Peter Limone were all cleared by the FBI files. Greco and Tameleo died while in prison.
Mr. Limone was 66
when he was finally exonerated and released from prison he died a short while
afterward. After his release in January
2001 he filed a civil rights lawsuit seeking some 60 million dollars in damages
but died before he could see the recovery.
Where are the
investigative reporters, why haven’t the media taken a more active role in
investigating these events? I suppose it’s not financially prudent in this
corporate air of blending news with entertainment, but certainly this has the
flair to generate shock journalism and sensationalism that is how the media
reports the news today.
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