University of Utah Law Professor's New Book Advocates Criminal Justice Reform
From the Salt Lake Tribune:
. . .[Daniel S.] Medwed has blazed a unique trail in the field of criminal defense law. He’s a board member of directors for the Innocence Network and the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center. In 2008, the 43-year-old native of Cambridge, Mass., helped draft and pass a factual innocence bill for the state of Utah, which created a procedure for prisoners to prove their innocence even without DNA evidence. The law also allowed compensation for wrongfully-convicted inmates who subsequently proved their innocence.
Medwed’s new book, Prosecution Complex, published by New York University Press, works from the maxim of 18th-century English judge and jurist William Blackstone that, “It’s better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.” Medwed’s intent is to show where the nation’s criminal justice system has gone wrong, and how we can get it right, his exploration set against the contemporary backdrop in which United States prisons hold more people than were housed in Stalin’s gulags. . . .
Pre-trial mistakes might have the greatest ripple effects. If you charge someone with a crime, even though the evidence is very weak, that sets the case in motion. If a prosecutor does not turn over all exculpatory evidence, it creates a situation where the defendant may be enticed by a plea-bargain. . . .
Prosecutors, the overwhelming majority of them, want to do justice. They come into the profession wanting to do the right thing. But there are so many pressures — cultural, institutional, and political and psychological — that come into bear in prosecution.
Take for example, political pressures. Prosecutors have limited budgets. They’re financially strapped, like all government offices. One way to justify a higher budget is to show that your success with high conviction rates. It’s much harder to show, and more nuanced to demonstrate, that you’re successful when you decline to charge a case. It’s harder to show you’re being tough on crime. Conviction rates become the coin of the realm. The American system of places a premium on winning. . . .
Read more here. Thoughts?