You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent

This month we’re looking at all the ways the government hates we the people, making this weeks book You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent by Justin Brooks. So lets do this.

Now, in last weeks book, Three Felonies a Day, we looked at all the white collar shit that can land you in jail. Which is not what the vast majority of us worry about. The average joe, walking down the street, doesn’t wonder if their job as a convenience store clerk is going run them afoul of a US District Attorney who has a hard on for proving themselves and a creative way of reading the statutes.

This week, is about how the average Joe CAN find themselves afoul of their local district attorney, and end up losing years of their lives due to an overzealous justice system that cares less for justice and more for closing cases for their constituents.

This book is broken into 10 chapters, which encompass the fact that basically...if you breath...you could wind up in prison for life.

If you hire the wrong attorney. Not all public defenders are bad and hiring the wrong attorney can have catastrophic consequences for your case. His case in this chapter was from Chicago, where Marilyn Mularo accepted a plea deal on advice of her attorney, who did not even have sense enough to make sure the death penalty was off the table when she accepted her plea...so that she pled guilty to murder and still ended up on death row. Even arguing ineffective counsel, which is...well, really? Who the hell pleads guilty to murder with the expectation of the death penalty? Hell, at least a jury trial would have given Mularo a 50/50 shot of walking out a free woman. Regardless, ineffective counsel argument was not enough to see Mularo free. What did see her free was when the lead police officer found himself on the wrong side of the bars for corruption. That got Mularo’s conviction overturned. Which is absurd. So the problem is clearly high reaching into the judiciary too.

If you are in a relationship and living with that person, and they are murdered, you are the primary suspect. Even if you have a solid alibi, police will hyper focus on you. Even if there’s a more likely suspect, you are their first pick.

The fact that other people in the world look like you. Science estimates that globally, everyone has approximately 6 people that look ALOT like them. There are a hell of a lot more other people that look kind of like you. And if one of those kind of looks like commits a crime, the police could arrest you. Then the victim makes an ID, based on you kind of look like the person who did it. And the jury eats up an eye witness testimony, even though eyewitness testimonies are one of the most failable forms of identification. The human brain is notoriously bad at remembering things. And when you’ve been the victim of a crime, you want justice to be done. So when the police line up a group of people, who kind of assume the police, who are professionals, have done their job and presented you with at least one correct option...well, there are lots of ways the police can direct a witness to the “perp” of choice. Now, DNA testing has come a long way and can help to save innocent people...when it’s even tested. And assuming the facility doing the testing is honest.

That’s one of the other ways you can end up legally fucked, and there have been massive settlements and prisoners released when faulty or flat out fraudulent lab results are discovered. He reports one presentation he attended by Bill Thompson and in the slide deck of inaccurate results was a note from a technician to a detective saying “I’ve done the testing several times, but it keeps coming out wrong. It keeps not matching your suspect.”

Now….hollywood has done massive damage on this front. First with their nice, pat, 45 minute shows where cutting edge science always has the results and if they don’t match, then the technician and detectives go back to the drawing board and try again. Unfortunately, this is not what happens in reality. And all too often, the results are innocence lost to harsh, undeserved sentences. Which is most decidedly against the principles upon which this country’s justice system was founded, given that the gold standard for law text’s remains Sir William Blackstone, who famously said “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” A principle that is clearly NOT emphasized in modern law schools.

You might falsely confess, which is covered in greater depth in next weeks book, but is important because most people think they would NEVER confess to something they had not done. Centuries of criminal trials, going all the way to the witch trials of the dark ages up through modern court systems prove that is absolutely not true. If you’re tired, hungry, and being yelled at by people who seem authoritative….you absolutely might confess.

Alternatively, someone could flat out lie about you. Not just, as is famously talked about, false rape allegations, which are abhorrent on every level. But the most infamous of trial ruses, the jail house snitch, could get up on the stand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about you, then lie their asses off and swear that you confessed only to them. Jail house snitch testimony should be illegal. No joke.

Work around kids? Have a kid whose generally sickly? Have kids of your own? Well, pray every night for their safety. If the kid falls over and bumps their head, you could end up in prison.

Whether you live in the country or the city, are poor, rich (from last weeks book) or a person of color...well, if you breath, just remember. The government hates you, and is fully capable of throwing you in prison, even though you’re completely innocent. The government does not always care about the truth. They care about making their conviction rates look good.

Now, its not all doom and gloom. He highlights some prosecutors who cared enough when a miscarriage of justice was brought to their attention, they did the right thing and requested release for the wronged party. And innocence projects are spreading globally, When I read Amanda Knox’s book Free: My Search for Meaning last June, she returned to Italy to speak at an innocence conference, which was insanely brave of her.

And Brooks talks about the impact innocence projects and the net positive effect they have had on local legislatures, pushing for reforms in how interrogations are conducted, and requiring testing of DNA when it’s present...which again goes back to the honesty of the lab involved. Requiring agencies to record interrogations is also a good step, as this ensures interrogations don’t result in false confessions due to undue influence on behalf of the interrogators. Police body cams have been helpful too, although that’s more to ensure the arrests themselves occur lawfully, not that the person under arrest is actually guilty.

My own personal pet peeve is the private prison industry. If a government has so many laws that it cannot house it’s incarcerated populace and must outsource that job to private industry, perhaps that government has too many laws to properly serve its populace.

And of course there’s the perennial Legal for a Price...meaning, if you have money and can pay the fine, then it’s arguably legal. Versus those who cannot pay the fine, and are then hit with late fees for not paying the fine. There’s a lot of reform that’s needed. And it won’t be easy, because very few people are willing to break out of their comfort zone and see that justice is done. Until injustice is knocking at their door.

This book was quite well done, it’s an easy read, it’s horrifying and heart breaking to see the stolen lives that occurred through the gross miscarriage of justice which is allowed to continue in this land of the free.

Review is up on YouTube and Rumble.