PEOPLE FAILED, NOT THE SYSTEM

Last Thursday, two days after a Texas judge took a huge step toward
cleaning up the legal mess in the tiny town of Tulia, another national
story of injustice broke.

And it broke my heart.

Maybe you missed it. A 42-year-old Massachusetts man who spent nearly two
decades in prison for three rapes was freed - thanks to a persistent law
student who discovered new DNA evidence.

I was struck by what the wrongly imprisoned man, Dennis Maher, had to say.
"I expected to die in prison," he told The Associated Press, "and now I'm out."

Mr. Maher, a former Army paratrooper and mechanic, had called his
conviction a travesty, and now we know he was right.

But here's the problem: Three rape victims had identified him as their
attacker and their description of clothing and a military knife used in the
attacks apparently matched items found in his car.

In 2001, the law student who began examining the case found two boxes of
evidence, including clothing from one of the victims, in the basement of a
courthouse. Prosecutors agreed to have the clothing sent to a lab for
testing and the results showed that Mr. Maher didn't commit the rape. Or a
second rape.

And prosecutors also said they now have no reason to believe Mr. Maher was
involved in a third case, which was an attempted rape, although there was
no DNA evidence to look at.

I guess you're wondering where I'm going with this, and what it has to do
with the Tulia case.

Well, in both cases, we see that no matter how great our criminal justice
system is in this country, it is far from perfect.

And it has less to do with the way the system is designed than the people
who are charged with making it work.

Now, I don't know all the details of the Massachusetts case. But I'm
thinking that if a law student who's snooping around can turn up crucial
evidence, then ...

Well, you get the picture.

District Attorney Martha Coakley said there was no indication of sloppy
detective work by the Lowell, Mass., police that investigated the case. But
Mr. Maher blamed the police and his former attorney, who's now deceased.
I'm not saying he's right. Maybe that law student is Sherlock Holmes.

"Obviously, we have profound regrets about this," Ms. Coakley told the AP.
"There is not much you can say to someone who has unfortunately been at the
wrong end of an imperfect system."

In a way, she's right. "Sorry" somehow sounds hollow to someone who has
been sitting in jail for more than 19 years, expecting to die there.

But you can say something else. You can say that you're going to take steps
to strengthen a system that allowed this to occur. More pointedly, you can
say that you're going to vigorously pursue justice, rather than convictions.

Which brings us to the Tulia case. A single drug informant with a
questionable past and no corroborating evidence managed to cause dozens of
arrests. And despite cries of innocence and some public outrage, the system
marched forward, seemingly blind and deaf.

The system finally came to its senses last Tuesday when a judge recommended
that 38 drug convictions be thrown out after prosecutors and defense
attorneys agreed that the informant, a former undercover officer, was not
credible. The cases will be forwarded to the state Court of Criminal Appeals.

That's the good news. The bad news is that 38 of the 46 arrested were
convicted in 1999. Thirteen still are in prison.

If it weren't for a loose band of volunteers - from pro bono lawyers to
social and civil rights groups - snooping around and asking hard questions,
the cracks in another imperfect system may never have been exposed.

To the law student in Boston and the hard-charging legal team in Tulia, I
tip my hat.

For I am reminded of what a legendary civil rights leader once said:
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."