Other forms of law enforcement brutality that’s increasingly coming to light is the railroading of innocent individuals, who oftentimes serve decades behind bars due to false convictions. While physical brutality might leave a person with a broken or battered body (or in some cases even dead) the brutality of the lies by law enforcement that takes away a person’s liberty can be just as deadly to the soul.
Try for a moment to comprehend what it would be like to be an innocent person serving a long sentence for a crime you did not commit. It’s truly a testament to strength the of the human mind, heart and spirit that more people falsely imprisoned people are not driven stark-raving mad — ending up in padded cells playing an unending game of handball with their own shit — after being framed for crimes they didn’t commit.
In yet another case where the justice system got it wrong (simply as a matter of expediency) the prosecutor was roundly execrated. “Carmen Marino maliciously inserted himself into a criminal proceeding,” wrote Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo in an opinion that freed three men, Derrick Wheatt, Eugene Johnson and Laurese Glover, from prison and granted them new trials in their 1996 murder convictions. Judge Russo further said that Marino suppressed evidence from the defendants and concealed public records in their cases, “violating each of the defendants’ individual rights to a fair trial.”
Judge Russo, no bleeding heart softie by any means, is one of the few jurists willing to call them like she sees them, even if that means criticizing prosecutors. Most judges, both locally and across the country, are far too timid when it comes to protecting the Constitution; they stick their wetted fingers into the political wind to see which way it’s blowing before taking a stand for justice and fair play. Not Judge Russo.
However, it took the Ohio Innocence Project at the University of Cincinnati to bring new evidence to light via the filing of a freedom of information request filed last year. The new evidence includes testimony of two eyewitnesses that refutes the assertions of the prosecution, as well as testimony from the victim’s brother that also conflicted with the prosecution’s account.
Additionally, a letter sent three years after the case by then-first assistant prosecutor Marino was also uncovered. The letter instructed East Cleveland Police to turn over reports regarding the case to the prosecutor’s office instead of making them public. In that way he could bury the evidence that might point to the innocence of the trio simply because he didn’t want his case blown out of the water.
However, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty’s office is disputing the accusation that some of this evidence was not made available at the time of trial and is requesting a new bond hearing in an attempt to put the men back behind bars. But his efforts seem to be more about protecting an old colleague than they are about seeking justice.
Like everyone else in Cuyahoga County legal circles, Prosecutor McGinty knows that we went through a brutal period in American jurisprudence from the mid-70s to the late ’90s where police and prosecutors used any means — fair or foul — in a white-hot rush to gain convictions … presumptions or sometimes-actual … facts of innocence be damned.
The result of that headlong rush to post high conviction rates at the expense of fairness was so damaging here in Cuyahoga County that the criminal defense bar named the group of brutal young prosecutors that Marino and McGinty were a part of under the legendary bigot John T. Corrigan, The Hitler Youth. As a group they ran roughshod over the Constitution and lifted the robes of Lady Justice and brutally assaulted her from behind … sans any K-Y Jelly.
Last year Prosecutor McGinty announced with much fanfare that he was establishing a “conviction integrity unit” to reexamine old cases and insure that justice wasn’t somehow perverted to win a conviction. Prosecutors’ offices around the country are making similar efforts, which is a very good sign.
The cases of these three men currently fighting to keep their freedom would be a good place to start, if indeed McGinty is sincere about taking an unbiased second look. Of course it would mean calling into question the tactics of his old pal Marino, something he might be loath to do, since in prosecution circles the now retired assistant prosecutor is thought to virtually have walked on water back in the day.
Indeed, a good place for the “conviction integrity unit” to begin its work is by examining every criminal case Carmen Marino ever touched; the problem with that approach for McGinty is, that he cannot be sure what will slither out from under those rocks if they are disturbed — but, with that withstanding, Lady Justice deserves no less.
[Photo: Emmanuel Huybrechts]
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.