Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304023804575566201554448476.html

by jkuria • 16 years ago

184 62 16 years ago

online.wsj.com

chapel2• 16 years ago

This is a great story of someone fighting against oppressive forces to gain his freedom. I really hope he wins his lawsuit against them, this being one of those cases where he really deserves something for the time lost. As an aside, I can see this being made into a movie already.

rms• 16 years ago

Warms my cold leftist heart.

Locke16893• 16 years ago

This really highlights the unreliability of eyewitness testimony (well, and corruption in the DA's office and police department, but that's another story).

Perhaps one upside to the coming ubiquity of cameras is an increased availability in actual evidence for crimes.

joe_the_user6• 16 years ago

Well,

While unbiased eye-witness testimony might be well unreliable, the story mostly shows DA and corruption.

He got out of jail by showing the people who testified against him were quite biased indeed - They were "motivated" to act by police and DA threats and the DA had systematically lied concerning this process...

It's also rather heart-rending to read how he had to engage in fraud to discover the truth and naturally this fraud was then held against his appeal....

shrikant2• 16 years ago

[Interestingly] The judge Robert Holdman who shot down his appeal because of this fraud, has a (IMHO) history of being overly harsh.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZrFEGVE... (search for 'Holdman' on that page)

WalterBright• 16 years ago

I hope he does become an attorney.

gallerytungsten3• 16 years ago

Me too.

So many attorneys, so few good ones.

Detrus2• 16 years ago

What are the typical consequences to the corrupt prosecutor and police department in a case like this?

chapel2• 16 years ago

Unless they blatantly broke the law in some provable way, probably nothing. Though as with the guy in this case, he can sue the State/City for wrongful imprisonment and other issues.

DanI-S• 16 years ago

So the guilty party suffers nothing, and the taxpayer foots the bill...

Detrus2• 16 years ago

So this guy proving his innocence by exposing corruption does not prove their corruption? There must be some fun technicalities there.

rlpb• 16 years ago

> Unless they blatantly broke the law in some provable way, probably nothing.

It seems to me that they should apply the same burden of proof. If a murderer can be convicted on eyewitness evidence, why should the same eyewitness evidence not be sufficient to demonstrate prosecutor corruption?

On the other hand I can understand why they have immunity (although this doesn't affect guilt).

rhizome• 16 years ago

Prosecutors have absolute immunity for their actions in office, and they also decide whether or not to charge the police on the rare chance that a case makes it past the police's own "internal investigation." In the grand scheme of things, the DA is dependent on the police and it's not common for a prosecutor to survive a loss of confidence by them.

anigbrowl3• 16 years ago

The risk is low for the police department and virtually zero for a corrupt prosecutor or judge - in most cases they enjoy legal immunity because of the nature of their job. It's an imperfect system, but it's worth bearing in mind that taking away prosecutorial immunity would also lead to calls for defense attorneys to be punished if their clients were found guilty.

The principle that an attorney can and should pursue every possible legal option on behalf of a defendant, no matter how heinous the crime or how seemingly obvious their guilt, is more recent than many people realize. It was not really established before 1840. I was very surprised to find this, an only learned thanks to a book recommendation from HN member (and attorney) grellas.

wallflower• 16 years ago

I just heard Barry Gibbs tell his story on TheMoth's podcast.

> Framed by a corrupt cop, a man spends 19 unjust years in prison. Barry Gibbs was falsely accused of murder, and in 2006, after 19 years in prison, was exonerated with the help of The Innocence Project. New York City recently gave him the largest personal settlement in its history, 9.9 million dollars. The NYPD detective, Louis Eppolito, is now serving life in prison.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Barry_Gibbs.php

iwwr• 16 years ago

Mike Nifong, the prosecutor in the Duke Lacrosse case was eventually disbarred and faces multi-million dollar lawsuits (which he will lose almost certainly). Although I think that is more the exception. Prosecutors face almost no downside to corruption.

jonknee• 16 years ago

And that's just because there was so much media attention (which was arguably because the accused were rich white guys).

Symmetry2• 16 years ago

But on the other hand, Martha Coakley just narrowly lost a senate election, so while there is some rare downside risk to prosecutorial misconduct, there's the potential upside of being elected to high office for being "tough on crime".

MichaelApproved• 16 years ago

This is an inspiring story and every time I hear about something like this I wonder how much money each year of my life would be worth behind bars. Years of not knowing when/if I'd ever be released.

This man is suing for 60 million and will probably get a settlement for less but still large sum. If he were to get $10 million, would that be enough for 10 years behind bars?

donaldc• 16 years ago

This man is suing for 60 million and will probably get a settlement for less but still large sum. If he were to get $10 million, would that be enough for 10 years behind bars?

No. At least, not if it were me.

But then again, if it were me, no amount of money would make me feel that justice was done. I'd want to see the prosecutor and anyone else involved in the frauds that got me convicted do some time themselves.

edge17• 16 years ago

I don't know what the price of time is, but from my own experience I can say that it's quite high.

This comment reminded me of the Chekhov short story The Bet - http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bet.shtml

If you reversed the statement, would you take $10m for 10 years of imprisonment? I definitely wouldn't. Life's for living.

tibbon• 16 years ago

Why does 'the system' seem to make this process so painfully slow and seemingly reject requests for information/appeals arbitrarily? It seems much of the 15 years here was spent playing paperwork games with the legal system.

anigbrowl3• 16 years ago

I don't know about the state of NY, but the entire federal court system only takes up about 2.5% of the federal budget - when you think about it, it's the least expensive branch of government by far. The flip side, though, is that there are far more cases to be heard at any given time than there are courts and personnel to hear them, and complex technical rules which have to be complied with. It seems very inefficient and arbitrary, but generally all of those rules were created in response to so some failing in the previous version. Every so often the 'legacy code' becomes unmanageable and a relevant part of the law is redrafted or similarly overhauled.

For example, California switched over to a completely new set of jury instructions known as CALCRIM for criminal trials a few years ago, designed to eliminate a lot of unnecessary confusion and legalistic cruft which had accrued to the previous version, known as CALJIC. But even drafting those from scratch takes years. My reference copy of CALCRIM is about 2500 pages over 3 volumes. And that's just criminal - there's a lot more for civil trials. A LOT more.

Think of it like encountering Unix as a complete newbie. You know what computers are for and what they can do, but but actually learning unix at the command line is pretty complicated, no?

gersh• 16 years ago

Are there too few judges? Is expanding the judiciary an option? Are too many lawyers incompetent?

gallerytungsten3• 16 years ago

"The system" slows the process because there is systemic corruption. Just as cops don't want to be photographed, prosecutors don't want their convictions overturned. So they don't play fair, and do everything they can to avoid true justice.

Locke16893• 16 years ago

Citation?

badmash69• 16 years ago

Hey HN, I mean no disrespect to any of the parties in this story -- but hey isn't this forum about HACKER NEWS ?

The only inspirational stores I wanna read about HERE are about fellow hackers' finding Seed/ VC funding and their successful exits. Or about cool programs and code. Items pertaining to Technology , Free Markets and Capitalism.

For all other life-affirming and inspirational stuff , I could always go to reddit.

anigbrowl3• 16 years ago

Get used to it. Law has a good deal in common with programming, many hackers have a strong interest in and commitment to civil liberties, and this is a story about a man who overcame obstacles most entrepreneurs can barely imagine - by teaching himself how to hack the legal system. It's not just inspiring, but instructive.

jkuria• 16 years ago

Yep, beside the obvious triumph of justice against near-insurmountable odds, it made me realize some of the setbacks I've faced as an entrepreneur are complete child's play compared to what this guy went through! I got off my ass, hit the treadmill for half an hour, cleaned up my space and have been working since!

mcantor• 16 years ago

From the HN guidelines at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I had no idea that you could lawyer your own way out of prison like that, and upon reading the title I was most assuredly curious.

Symmetry2• 16 years ago

The notion that you ought to be willing to become an expert in any field if your need is great enough is entirely in line with the ethos of Hacker News.

schwit• 16 years ago

The DA and cops are in it for convictions not justice.

Anyone in the police or DA's office who had a hand in railroading him should get 10 years in jail.

jjcm• 16 years ago

This would make for a wonderful plot for a book/movie. I'd watch/read a much longer version of this article.

rdl2• 16 years ago

This is one of many reasons I oppose capital punishment. It is odd that conservatives, who claim government is often the problem, not the solution, would entrust the state with the power of life and death.

gnaritas2• 16 years ago

Not really, as the conservative opinion has little to do with logic or consistency; it's all about maintaining the status quo. They simply dislike change, many seem to wish progress stopped around 1890 or so.

philwelch5• 16 years ago

That's a literal definition of "conservative", but there's plenty of instances of "conservatives" (in the US) trying to change things--conservatives were the most enthusiastic proponents of the War on Drugs, which changed the US legal system dramatically, as well as the War on Terrorism, which involved a whole mess of other "innovations". In many cases, conservatives are the ones wanting to change things and civil libertarians (i.e. liberals) were trying to maintain the status quo.

philwelch5• 16 years ago

Everyone sentenced to death is tried and convicted before a jury. I see no contradiction between trusting juries and distrusting unelected federal bureaucrats.

joe_the_user6• 16 years ago

I think the article shows strong a connection between untrustworthy officials and unreliable jury trials.

In the case, officials effectively coerced at least three different people into testifying against the defendant and then lied about their behavior.

Jurors aren't psychic. They have to assume that prosecutors aren't lying and coercing witnesses. So unreliable officials will give you unreliable jury trials.

And making an irrevocable decision based on such an unreliable trial system clearly has some problems even every single juror is the most honest, upstanding citizen you can find.

ditojim• 16 years ago

movie please.

mobileed• 16 years ago

I feel anyone who abstruct justice by withholding evidence should automatically go to jail. This guy was railroaded on so many levels, the DA should go sit in jail for same amount of time this innocent person did.

c4urself• 16 years ago

from this story and others i read on HN: there is something really wrong with the justice system in america.

danahn• 16 years ago

The headline is disappointing given the contents of the article

Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

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