Everyday Injustice

Everyday Injustice speaks to Brendon Woods, the chief Public Defender in Alameda County, the only Black Chief Public Defender in the state of California. He discusses mass incarceration, criminal justice reform, policing and race.

Last July, DA Jaime Esparaza announced he would not seek election after serving 28 years. In 2016, Yvonne Rosales, running as a reformer a reformer narrowly lost to Esparaza.

Rosales who began her career as an Assistant District Attorney before going into private practice. She is pushing for reforms in the criminal justice system and discussed issues like police accountability, mass incarceration and wrongful convictions during her interview with Everyday Injustice.

The primary runoff starts on June 29 and Election Day is July 14.

Since May 25 and the death of George Floyd at the hands of officers in Minnesota, protesters have taken to the streets and the nation has been debating policing and the legacy of racism.

Everyday Injustice speaks to Calvin Handy, a retired police chief from UC Davis with decades of experience in law enforcement who discusses the problems with policing today and ways to correct these problems into the future.

Franky Carrillo was one of the cases featured on Netflix’s series, “The Innocence Files,” the story begins in 1991 when Donald Sarpy was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting as he was standing in the driveway of his home in Lynwood, California. There were six witnesses to the murder, but none of them got a good look at the shooter due to the dark conditions.

Nevertheless, pressured by a sheriff’s deputy, then 16 year old Franky Carrillo was identified and convicted of murder.

All six witnesses testified at Carrillo’s first trial, which ended in a mistrial when the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. By the second trial, a key witness, Scott Turner recanted his testimony, but despite no physical evidence linking Carrillo to the crime, the jury convicted him and sentenced him to life in prison.

Ellen Eggers, a deputy state public defender, met Carrillo in prison and took on his case. Eggers ultimately connected Carrillo to the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) and the law firm of Morrison & Foerster, which handled his case pro bono.

On March 14, 2011, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Paul Bacigalupo vacated Carrillo’s conviction based on the eyewitness recantations and two other men having confessed to the shooting.

Lisa Rea from Restorative Justice International and David Greenwald from the Davis Vanguard speak to Franky Carrillo about his case, what he has been able to accomplish since his release, and the impact of wrongful convictions and the need for restorative justice.

Restorative Justice International (RJI) and the Davis Vanguard have been partnering to launch the Wrongful Conviction Project (WCP). The project shines a light on wrongful convictions while urging the application of restorative justice to seek systemic reform of our justice system(s).

The project produces joint podcasts on wrongful convictions, work on prosecutorial reform and support public policy changes needed to right the wrong of wrongful convictions.

On May 19, Walter Barton became the first person executed in the US in over two months, convicted of killing an 81 year old acquaintance nearly three decades ago.

But the Innocence Project and others believed him wrongfully convicted. The Midwest Innocence Project believed that the evidence was unreliable.

Barton was convicted based on the testimony of an unreliable jailhouse informant and the use of bloodstain pattern analysis — a forensic method whose validity scientists have questioned.

The only piece of physical evidence used to connect Barton to the murder was a spot of blood found on his shirt, which Barton has always said got on his shirt while he was pulling the victim’s granddaughter off her body — a fact the victim’s granddaughter confirmed to investigators. New expert analysis has revealed that the spot is consistent with Barton’s account of events, and that the blood was not a result of spatter from the crime.

Significantly, the victim was stabbed 50 times, and the real perpetrator of the crime would have been covered with blood, which Barton was not.

Everyday Injustice speaks to Walter Barton's wife Bebra Barton and longtime friend, Paula Skillicorn.

Melissa Mark-Viverito, born in Puerto Rico, has been a councilmember in New York City representing areas of the Bronx for several terms and she is running to replace longtime incumbent Jose Serrano.

She is running on a platform that includes criminal justice reform and talked extensively about efforts to close down Rikers Island, the notorious jail in New York, bail reform and stop and frisk.

Mimi Rocah is a former Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, serving from February 2001 until October 2017.

She is running for DA in Westchester County, NY. She is running on a platform of reform looking to impose though ethical standards and transparency to the office she believes is lacking in both.

She is also looking at issues such as decarceration, bail reform, and other key issues of the progressive reform movement.

Matt Toporowski is running for DA in Albany, NY. A current defense attorney and former prosecutor, he is challenging the incumbent DA in the Democratic primary, scheduled for June 23.

Albany County DA David Soares headed the state's DA Association last year and has led a pushback against some of the enacted reforms by the state legislature - filing a lawsuit against a prosecutorial misconduct commission, the nation’s first independent commission to investigate prosecutorial conduct.

Soares also pushed for the state to pull back on bail reform. When he announced his reelection campaign this year, he cited these reforms as "threats to public safety."

Matt Toporowski by contrast says he wants to use the influence of the DA's office to champion progressive change in the criminal justice system.

In the interview with Everyday Injustice, he talks about ways to reduce mass incarceration, release people during the COVID-19 pandemic, and about the thrust of his Compassionate Prosecution goals.

To learn about his progressive platform, visit MattforAlbany.com.

Kim Gardner was elected chief prosecutor in St. Louis in 2016. Since then she has been taking on the system - the first black circuit attorney in St. Louis, in January she filed a federal civil rights lawsuit that accuses the city, the city's police union and others of a coordinated and racist conspiracy aimed at forcing her out of office.

The lawsuit among other things alleges the city's police union "has gone out of its way to support white officers accused of perpetrating acts of violence and excessive force against African American citizens."

An independent watchdog has compiled thousands of comments made by police officers on their public Facebook pages and has determined that "a number of St. Louis officers had posted racist and offensive content on social media over a period of years."

In addition Kim Gardner, whose office looked into the conviction of Lamar Johnson, came the conclusion that he was wrongly convicted and deserves a new trial, but she is being fought by the state Attorney General.

The state legislature has pushed to take away power from Kim Gardner, with legislation that would allow the attorney general's office to have the authority to prosecute some crimes that St. Louis area prosecutors decide not to pursue.

Listen as Kim Gardner talks about her battles with the state as she tries to reform criminal justice in St. Louis.

Bexar County Criminal District Attorney Joe Gonzales took office in January of 2019 on a pledge to reform the office, restore public confidence, and make the office more accountable to the voters.

Since being elected he has pushed for reforms in the criminal justice system and looking at ways to reduce the jail population - before and since the COVID crisis.

In the fall of 2019, he sent a letter to Governor Abbott, noting new evidence and numerous witnesses that recently have come forward in the Rodney Reed case and urged him to delay the death penalty.

"I do not know if Rodney Reed is guilty or innocent, but the harm done by executing a potentially innocent man is immeasurable," Gonzales wrote. "There is no harm in taking our time to ensure we get it right."