TOUGHER PENALTIES FOR ABUSES CAN PROTECT THE INNOCENT

The scene in a dusty courthouse parking lot in Texas last month was a climax
to a real-life nightmare that haunts the nation's criminal justice system:
Twelve men and women stood dazed in a sea of well-wishers, freed after
serving as many as four years in prison on bogus drug-selling charges. In
all, 38 people in the town of Tulia were railroaded on the testimony of an
undercover investigator now found to have lied repeatedly on the witness
stand. A special investigation ordered by a Texas appeals court determined
that the district attorney knew the cop was lying - and did nothing about
it.

Prosecutors found guilty

A new study found prosecutors engaged in misconduct in about 2,000 cases
since 1970, some involving innocent people sentenced to death.

Examples of the abuses:

Introducing inadmissible or inflammatory evidence.

Mischaracterizing evidence or facts.

Hiding, destroying or tampering with evidence, case files or court records.

Failing to disclose evidence that might exonerate defendants.

Threatening, badgering or tampering with witnesses.

Making inappropriate comments in front of a jury.

Making improper closing arguments.

Source: "Harmful Error," a June 26 report by the Center for Public Integrity

The miscarriage of justice in Tulia was so outrageous, it might seem an
aberration. Yet similar tales of blatant injustice surface with troubling
frequency across the USA. Newly compiled reports indicate that thousands of
people have been wrongly incarcerated over the years because of rogue cops,
shabby lab work and overzealous prosecutors.

Such abuses of the judicial system are allowed to continue because those who
commit them are rarely punished harshly. So long as that behavior is
tolerated, the number of criminal prosecutions that undermine an
individual's constitutional right to a fair trial will remain unacceptably
high.

Consider recent findings:

. Texas' regional narcotics task forces have been hit with 15 scandals in
the past five years. They include witness tampering, fabricating evidence
and other illegal efforts to score convictions. Cases of renegade cops and
investigators involved in everything from faked burglaries to cover-ups of
police shootings have been uncovered in recent years from California to New
York.

. A June 26 nationwide study by the Center for Public Integrity, an ethics
watchdog, found more than 2,000 cases over the past three decades in which
convictions were overturned or reduced because of abuses by state and local
prosecutors.

. The Innocence Project, which uses DNA testing to try to overturn dubious
convictions, found that 34 of the first 70 defendants it cleared had been
victimized by prosecutorial misconduct.

. Within the past year, crime labs in Florida, Arizona and Texas have been
exposed for issuing false reports on DNA, blood samples and other critical
evidence. Wrongful convictions in rape and murder cases have been overturned
as a result.

Prosecutors say defendants receive fair trials in the vast majority of
criminal cases. Even so, the documented cases involving mistakes or
misconduct are still too common. That's because officials sworn to uphold
the law can succumb too easily to public pressure to solve crimes without
ensuring they have found the actual culprits.

Several modest steps can help guarantee fair trials for all. States, for
example, can set higher performance standards for crime labs, a reform they
have resisted so far because of the added costs for training and equipment.
The immediate ouster of prosecutors who engage in misconduct is a tougher
sanction than what most now face: the next election. And overcoming police
union resistance to harsh punishment is necessary when cops abuse their
powers.

Failure to curb such injustices risks corroding public trust in the legal
system. Those who violate that charge - not the people they wrongly convict
- - deserve tough sentences.