Report: Open Discovery May Thwart Wrongful Convictions
The amount of evidence that Texans accused of crimes can get from prosecutors varies across the state, leading to inequities in the way justice is meted out, according to a report released Wednesday, which suggests that requiring more transparency could prevent wrongful convictions.
Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates, and Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that advocates for social justice, researched discovery practices in 40 Texas counties. They found that the wide variation in discovery practices among prosecutors makes access to justice dependent upon the jurisdiction in which the defendant is charged. Those findings, said Rebecca Bernhardt, a Texas ...
Comments (3)
Proud Texan
Imagine that?! More transparency and better information leads to better decisions. What a concept. Once again Texas does it differently than most other states....which isn't always a good thing.
Anya Khan
It seems criminal that defendants do not always get the full protection of the Constitution
jamie balagia
How foolish for any citizen to think that a former prosecutor would be the source to establish that a citizens rights are being protected by the actions of the El Paso politician. The only consideration that we should have is whether or not the Constitutions of the United States and of Texas are being honored and followed. The Founding Fathers did not write the Constitutional Rights with the idea that the State would be protected. These Rights are for the citizens prior to and after they have been charged with a criminal act. I represent citizens that time and time again are horrified to find how the criminal justice system crushes their lives. Many of my clients are innocent of the charges against them. But all of my clients deserve the protections of our Constitutions. I am sickened by the ignorance of almost all of the people I discuss these issues with. Do you even know what to do if arrested, booked, charged and magistrates?
Unless we force the government actors to respect us and give us our rights they will take them from us one crumb at a time. I am a former police officer and I used to be shocked at the behavior of some of my colleagues and sometimes at my own behavior once I learned to tolerate the trampling of the Constitutional Rights of those I was sworn to protect. You see that is something that gets lost in the mix - I was sworn to protect the Constitution. The downside of that means I swore to protect the rights of those I was arresting as well as to protect the safety of my community. And if I wavered on protecting the "criminal's" rights then I was abusing all of us by disrespecting the Constitution.
This law as it is being proposed impacts those accused of crimes in a negative manner. The few gains are heavily overshadowed by the losses that will even more hurt persons "accused" of crimes. Think back over the past decade and tell me when the lawmakers have done something to protect our rights as opposed to them being "tough" on crime. I know this for sure, if we the people let the system abuse the least of us - who will stop it from abusing the rest of us.