Innocent Men

A few weeks ago I finished reading John Grisham's "The Innocent Man", a non-fiction novel about two men wrongfully convicted of murder in Oklahoma. The men were exonerated by DNA and released after spending 12 years in prison (one of the men was on death row). The book details misconduct by the prosecutor and law enforcement agents. The prosecutor who put those men in prison still has his job, even though there are two other men, in prison thanks to him, who also appear to be innocent. DNA evidence is not available to those men, so they will likely never be able to prove their innocence.

I was thinking about this Oklahoma prosecutor this morning while I was watching the news. They were talking about the hearings being held to decide if the prosecutor who brought charges against the Duke lacrosse players will be disciplined by the bar. I don't know all of the details of this "scandal", but no matter what he did, no matter how many reputations were harmed, nobody was sent to prison. In that instance, the system worked - the innocent went home. So how does that guy get disciplined and this reckless, if not corrupt, prosecutor in Oklahoma doesn't have a scratch on him? How does he escape scrutiny? Is the Oklahoma Bar so ignorant that they don't know these stories? Or do they simply not care?

Of course, the prosecutor in Oklahoma says that he did nothing wrong. Basically he blames the cops - saying that from what he knew these guys were guilty. That's bullshit, but it's what he says. The Innocence Project has exonerated over 200 people in this country. Several were on death row. These 200 are only a fraction of the wrongfully convicted. There are hundreds more who haven't been helped, or cannot be helped. And in all of these cases, I don't know of a single attorney or law enforcement officer who has had to answer for their "mistakes." So while I don't think this guy in NC is a saint or anything...I wonder if there aren't bigger fish to fry?