The Houston Chronicle had a great article backin February about the growing number of individuals who served time after
pleading out of a drug case; often these deals were presented with an
expiration date, a kind of ‘take it now, or or it’s going to get worse’ type of
thing.
The
problem is that sometimes, when the lab report on the cases came back (well
after the individual had begun to serve their time), the tests would reveal that
there were never any drugs involved, or that the amount was too small to have
warranted a charge.
You
may remember Carlos Coy mentioning that he was offered a plea deal, only five
years for confessing to the charges revolving around Jill Odom and Jane Doe. In his words, "I told my lawyer, “I’ll take ten years for my son, but I
won’t say I did something that I didn’t do.”
Some
will say that the drug pleas are small cases; that they are meaningless. The
problem is, the attitude that allows this can and will extend into other other
areas. Sgt Ryan Chandler of the HPD is currently being investigated for failing
to investigate the cases he was given; those cases were typically homicides and
the deaths of children.
This
was an ongoing problem, ignored and perhaps covered up by his peers and superiors;
he refused to testify in court about these cases because apparently, he refused
to put in the work. How many citizens were railroaded into plea deals without ever seeing a courtroom because an officer simply didn’t feel like doing the
legwork involved in the case?
How
many of those currently in prison are there because they'd rather serve two years for a crime they didn't commit than ten for the same thing? How many who refused to take the "easy" path ended up spending long
years in prison because of a lack of even a cursory examination of their cases? Who thought that they had nothing to fear from a trial because, "Hey, the police are going to look into this and figure out the truth!"?The respect that so many of us hold
for The Law, The Police, and The Experts is never challenged by the revelation
that these institutions are made up of human beings.
It’s a no-win situation; take a
plea deal and serve a lttle time for a crime you didn’t commit, or demand your
right to a trial and face a justice system system that has shown time and time
again that it doesn’t give a shit for the presumption of innocence.
1 comment:
Speaking from personal experience, myself and many people I know have been convicted on bogus charges. I was charged with trafficking in 1996 and the only evidence they had was my fingers testing positive for cocaine.Due to my reputation, lack of knowledge of the law and fear of prison time I signed a plea deal without thinking twice. That began my drawn out relationship with the system.
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