Twenty-four.
George Bell, 44
Gary Johnson, 46
Rohan Bolt, 59
Released from Green Haven Correctional Facility in March of 2021.
When they went in, they were 19, 22, and 35 years old. They spent 24 years in prison for a crime they didn’t commit.
Twenty-four years. That is my whole life right now minus two years. I cannot fathom. Time… one of the most valuable intangibles out there, and it has been ripped away from these men. Mr. Bolt met his grandchildren for the first time on the day of his release. Think of all the life you miss from your 20’s, your 30’s, your 40’s, your 50’s… Experiences you will never have like discovering your identity, exploring different careers, falling in love, starting families, achieving successes, learning from failures, figuring out life…
While inside, they probably resigned to the fact that they were never getting out. Why am I in here? How could life be so unfair and cruel? This is not how things are supposed to be. It doesn’t make sense and the irrationality of it all drives you to insanity. Imagine going through the trial… thinking, there is no way they are going to convict me of this crime I didn’t commit. There’s no way because I didn’t do it. I know the truth, and the truth will prevail. At first, you probably don’t think the trial is going to get that far. But then you start to get worried when they bring up your confession. Mr. Bell said he was punched and knocked around by a detective when he was being interrogated. It turned out no physical evidence was found that linked these three men to the murder case they were charged for. Their convictions were based off of witness testimony and what we now know to be coerced confessions. They were sentenced even though the prosecution withheld exculpatory information.
So now what, after they have been released? The prosecutors who had withheld exculpatory police reports ‘have been admonished’. Admonished? How are these prosecutors not disbarred at the very least? Apparently the prosecutorial misconduct was not intentional, so nothing is happening besides the admonishment. What?! Excuse me, but you have permanently altered someone’s entire life by your ‘mistake’ and you bear no consequence? If you are responsible for something like that, then I think the least that needs to happen is that you are disbarred from practicing law ever again.
Doctors are still responsible when something goes wrong with a patient, whether intentional or not. Are doctors ever trying to hurt their patients? No, but mistakes still happen and unfortunately people’s lives are at stake and therefore doctors do have to be held liable for this. That makes sense. The stakes are just too high.
Same here. This is someone’s life. You wrongly put someone away for life? By making that mistake, you have no right to prosecute anymore. You have proven that you are not fulfilling your obligation to carry out the law which is supposed to stand for justice. Hey, doctors are slapped with a big malpractice lawsuit as soon as they make a mistake they shouldn’t make that costs someone their life or livelihood, and you better bet they are paying out huge bucks for that, and probably driven by high malpractice insurance costs to never really practice again. Or their license is suspended or revoked. This happens all the time.
Brady Rule: this rule requires that the prosecution give up any exculpatory evidence to the defense. In my opinion, I don’t know how a prosecutor can feel okay with basing a life sentence off of confessions where one defendant can’t even name the correct color of the getaway car. In the cases of Mr. Bell, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Bolt, discrepancies in confessions and witness testimonies abounded. I don’t have much confidence that the prosecutors followed the Brady Rule here. Sure, I’m not investigating the prosecution myself, so I don’t know for sure.
I’ve heard of a few cases (only a few) where prosecutors are punished for intentionally withholding information that result in wrongful convictions. E.g. some prosecutor, Ken Anderson, got a 10-day jail sentence for wrongly convicting Michael Morton, causing him to spend 24 years in prison. But the key word is ‘intentionality’ here. And isn’t it easy enough to just say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know. It wasn’t intentional’? Imagine all those who duck out of all consequences by claiming ‘unintentional’ misconduct.
Prosecutors responsible for wrongful convictions rarely, if ever, face the consequences. But they need to do better at their jobs if their mistakes cause someone to lose 24 years of their life in prison. If they make just one mistake like that, they should not be able to prosecute again.