Senseless imprisonment
February 27, 2008
Though a marvelous tool, DNA must not give Texans false confidence that the justice system can suddenly render air-tight results. To be sure, DNA exonerations – most notably the 15 out of Dallas County – have made authorities more careful in assembling cases. DNA has made prosecutors more selective in seeking the death penalty.
Written by Editorial, The Dallas Morning News
The Christopher Ochoa case should be required reading for state lawmakers – and for anyone who thinks the criminal justice system is ever good enough.
It wasn't good enough for Mr. Ochoa. It wasn't good enough to avert the cruel irony that he went to prison based on his own false confession.
The portrait of the senseless Ochoa case, as depicted in an article by Dallas Morning News reporter Diane Jennings, illustrates how illusory justice can be.
As if plucked out of thin air, a 22-year-old Mr. Ochoa ended up in an Austin police interrogation room in connection with a brutal rape and murder in 1988.
The hammer used by police, in hours of questioning over two days, was the threat of a death sentence. That produced a convenient plea deal for detectives under pressure to solve the crime.
Pliable and confused, Mr. Ochoa gave a statement incorporating details fed by detectives. In return for a life sentence, he even implicated an acquaintance and helped put him in prison, as well.
Mr. Ochoa's 12 years behind bars is dwarfed as an injustice by the fate of his co-defendant, who left prison brain damaged as a result of an attack by another inmate.
If not for the emergence of DNA technology, both men might still be in a penitentiary today.
Though a marvelous tool, DNA must not give Texans false confidence that the justice system can suddenly render air-tight results. To be sure, DNA exonerations – most notably the 15 out of Dallas County – have made authorities more careful in assembling cases. DNA has made prosecutors more selective in seeking the death penalty.
But DNA is only recovered and useful as evidence in a fraction of cases. Pliable, confused suspects still can be plucked off the streets and pressured by authorities. Not all police use the latest investigation techniques in such areas as suspect lineups.
It's outrageous that Texas House members have blocked legislation that would form a commission to analyze such shameful wrongful convictions and recommend improvements, even state standards.
The jury system has no equal in the search for justice and truth. But there's no excuse for not trying to make it better yet.
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