Everyday Injustice

In 1981, Jodie Sinclair was a journalist visiting the Angola Prison to do a story on the newly reinstated death penalty. She met Billy Sinclair, who had been sentenced to death for his role in a robbery gone wrong, had his sentence reduced to life and eventually earning parole in 2006.

She fell in love and married him in the early 80s, beginning a 25 year fight for his freedom. Joining her on the podcast was Billy Sinclair, they talked about the book, the conditions at Angola, his role as a journalist and whistleblower, and the death penalty and prison reform.

Jacquelyn Esser is running for DA in Honululu, Hawaii. She was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona and moved to Hawaiʻi in 2000 to attend the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She graduated in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in Business Management and earned a law degree at the University of Hawai‘i William S. Richardson School of Law.

She became a public defender and now is a candidate for prosecutor - one of six in the race.

She said, “I am running for Prosecutor because I have seen firsthand how our criminal justice system is failing the people of Hawaiʻi and wasting taxpayer dollars. I am the first deputy public defender to run for Honolulu Prosecutor. I know how broken our criminal justice system is and I know how to fix it.”

She discusses the unique issues facing Hawaii, but also the systemic problems.

She says: “We need to focus on prosecuting corruption and violent crimes, while diverting low-level offenders into treatment. We need to reduce our jail and prison population through bail reform and community-based treatment, give our children the resources they need to succeed, and bring the highest ethical standards to the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.”

Pamela Price ran for DA in Alameda County, home of Oakland in California but was unsuccessful in 2018 in knocking off incumbent Nancy O'Mally.

Price, a civil rights attorney, ran on a platform that vowed to enact a series of criminal justice reforms if she defeated the incumbent who is a traditional tough on crime prosecutor.

In the podcast she talks about the problems of police accountability that are ongoing in Oakland and Alameda under the current DA. Those problems continued this year when the police accountability commision fired the police chief. And the failure to enact criminal justice reform in Alameda County.

Arlington Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti was elected overwhelmingly in November after stunning incumbent prosecutor Theo Stamos by a 52-48 margin.

She ran a progressive campaign centered on criminal justice reform during a contentious and expensive primary.

Her focus on reform has turned her into a target for reactionary criticis.

As the Washington Post wrote recently: "Ms. Dehghani-Tafti is part of a new generation of prosecutors who have criticized tough-on-crime policies and have advanced an agenda for a smarter, more equitable, more compassionate judicial approach. That agenda may upset the status quo..."

Recently her efforts to deliver on her promise "have run into opposition from judges who have taken highly unusual — and some say inappropriate — steps to undermine her discretion as the jurisdiction's top elected prosecutor."

She told Everyday Injustice that one her main principles: "I don't want to make people felons if we don't have to."

Anand Jon Alexander was a rising star in the fashion industry in 2007 when he was arrested and ultimately convicted of one count of rape and many counts of lesser sexual offenses. Although there were no injuries on anyone and he had no history of violence, he was sentenced to 59 years to life in prison.

He has spent over 13 years in prison and barely survived a racial hate crime stabbing in 2019. He is suing the State of California for an undisclosed amount.

Joining Everyday Injustice is attorney Tim Milner, who has been working on the Commutation case.

Attorney Tim Milner explained that he has been a lawyer for 40 years and usually tends to shy away from scandalous sex cases, but this was an exceptional case. “This man is innocent,” he said. “He also had one of the worst trials that I’ve seen.” He noted that he has done at least 80 trials and “this guy did not get a fair shake."

Also joining is Amy Povah, from the CAN-DO foundation.

Amy Povah herself served nine years in prison before President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence—a 24-year sentence for conspiracy charges in a high profile MDMA (Ecstasy) case dating back to 1989. She now serves as an advocate for mostly federal clemency cases.

She was involved in the three most recent commutations by President Trump.

“What concerns me about Anand,” she said, is that “clemency is about mercy. So many people receive clemency who are not innocent… The sentence he received is so disproportionate to a normal case with the same allegations. He was convicted on very thin evidence.”

One of the incarcerated people on Anand Jon's yard also joins the show to discuss conditions at Donavan under the specter of COVID-19.

In February, Senator Scott Wiener introduced new criminal justice reform legislation, Senate Bill 938. This bill would amend the standards used for evaluating expert testimony and forensics in court pre- and post-conviction. Faulty forensic and scientific evidence, provided by expert witnesses, are the second most common reason that individuals are wrongfully convicted for crimes they did not commit.

Today, courts have discretion over which expert testimonies are admissible. Studies show that courts accept most forensic science and expert testimony without sufficient scrutiny, leaving significant room for imprecision and human error. This error leads to the high rate of false convictions. Expert testimony that fails to rely on sound logic should not be considered expert testimony at all.

SB 938 additionally strengthens the grounds on which individuals wrongfully convicted of a crime based on unreliable expert testimony can seek post-conviction relief. This provision will help exonerate innocent people across California.

“Wrongful convictions cause concentric circles of harm: to the wrongfully convicted and their communities, to the crime victims who were told a false story and face re-traumatization, to the jurors who unwittingly participated in the injustice, and to the integrity of the system as a whole. I applaud Senator Wiener’s efforts to safeguard against wrongful convictions by keeping unreliable science out of the courtroom,” said San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

SB 938 is sponsored by the California Innocence Project, the Loyola Project for the Innocent, and the Northern California Innocence Project.

Eric Gonzalez was appointed the DA of Kings County (Brooklyn), New York in 2016 after Ken Thompson, his predecessor died. In 2017, he won his own term.

We talked extensively about the COVID-19 threat to Brooklyn and also the conditions at Rikers Island, the notorious jail he referred to in the interview as a "hell hole." He was very critical of the failure to get people who did not need to be incarcerated and high risk individuals off the island.

In addition, we talked about more traditional reform efforts - such as bail reform which NY turned back. We also talked about their work on behalf of the wrongly convicted through the well respected Convictions Integrity Unit.

Ronnie Long has served nearly 44 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was arrested in 1976 on trespass charges, charged and later convicted of rape, sentenced to 80 years and has been in prison for more than 40 years despite evidence of an unfair trial and that he was wrongly convicted.

We talk with Jamie Lau with the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic.

Ronnie Long had his case reviewed this year by a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, who rejected his request for a new trial. However, following a dissent by Judge Thacker, the entire court will hear his claims at some point.

Mr. Lau discusses the case - the poor identification technique, the racially charged atmosphere of North Carolina in 1976, the all-white jury, the evidence that the prosecution withheld until 2015 and much more.

In 1989 she was a young mother who lost her kids in a tragic fire. Except the investigators at the time, using archaic methods, determined that it wasn't a tragic fire, it was arson and therefore murder and on the basis of this evidence, Ms. Parks was sentenced to life in prison.

But we have learned a lot about arson since then - and we now know that things that used to be taken as telltale signs of arson are now flawed science and were likely if not certainly accidental.

However, the system is not not able to correct those problems - even as experts know that the science is bad.

I learned about this case through a book called "Burned" by Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist Edward Humes. Tragically the judicial system could not or would not exonerate Ms. Parks, but on Friday Governor Newsom commuted her sentence which will allow her to attempt parole.

Joining Everyday Injustice to talk about the Joann Parks case is California Innocence Project Attorney Raquel Cohen.

Sim Gill - born in India, is the first Indian-American prosecutor in the US and one of only two elected Democrats in the entire state of Utah. He first was elected in November 2010.

He has enacted a series of reforms - and has battled the Utah Attorney General in trying to get conviction integrity statewide in Utah.

He has also pushed through a Criminal Justice Reform effort, the first in the nation, which would allow for the reduction of convictions for more than 12,000 people.

He has been a strong supporter of bail reform and filed an amicus curiae brief in a Fifth Circuit case, urging the court to affirm defendants’ right to counsel at initial bail hearings.

He also requires his prosecutors to visit jails where they send folks, so they can see the conditions and consequences of their policies.

Everyday Injustice spoke to Sim Gill, who discussed these and other things his office has done over his first decade in office.