Tag: criminal justice system
If You Want Us To Help Prove Your Innocence, Start With This Checklist

If You Want Us To Help Prove Your Innocence, Start With This Checklist

The year 2022 closed out with many readers reaching out to me with cases that they think deserve more scrutiny. I’m flattered and I would like to help. But, on occasion, the outreach I receive is a little light on foundational documents.

I’m kicking off 2023 with a guide that anyone can use if they’re looking for help on a criminal case from a journalist or trying to help a prisoner reduce their sentence.

This is what you should do before and while seeking any journalist's assistance on a criminal case or post-conviction challenge.

Come correct: Collect all your information before reaching out: docket numbers, copies of court files (never walk out of court with original records; that’s a crime), lawyers’ names and all of their contact information (physical and email addresses as well as office telephone numbers and cell phone numbers).

All correspondence between the defendant/prisoner and lawyers can illuminate what happened. An inmate file would be helpful if the person is incarcerated. A signed release of information allowing attorneys to speak with the reporter should be handed over up front. It can accelerate our research.

Write a timeline: As Tennessee Senator Howard Baker asked former White House Counsel John Dean about Watergate: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Often it’s the order of events that matters in these cases because it either confirms or challenges what people know. This is key. Without a linear depiction of what happened and when, it’s hard to see who knew what and when. Because criminal cases aren’t just about actions but also the accused persons’ state of mind, seeing the events spatially can be essential to any inquiry.

Get transcripts: Transcripts are tricky to take to a reporter because technically they’re not public records; court reporters/monitors own them privately. Their private nature makes them costly. Courts can grant fee waivers for transcripts to applicants who qualify (an incarcerated person, friends and family members with limited means). The clerk in the courthouse where the hearing or trial was held can provide these forms; they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Courts won’t approve these fee waivers for journalists and news outlets. We have to pay for these volumes and it’s an expensive gambit if they don’t reveal much to assist with the investigation.

The effort of applying for the waiver and having master copies of testimony is worth it. Sometimes you might wonder if the judges who write appellate opinions even read the transcripts at all when you see the way the testimony (the content of the transcripts) appears in a court’s opinion. Those inconsistencies provide fertile ground for someone other than a lawyer to find a reversible error.

We did exactly that here at The National Memo in 2022; we found false evidence in the trial transcripts of Melissa Lucio, the only Hispanic woman sentenced to death in Texas. Her execution was paused pending a hearing after her attorneys included our reporting in a petition to the court. Read the Lucio series here.

Keep a copy: Do this for all paperwork you complete, like fee waiver applications you file, rejections to requests for records.

Sometimes agencies don’t cooperate and it may seem impossible to get the documents you need. But that may be part of the story and we’ll need that proof.

Don’t be offended when a journalist doesn't take your word for it: When we ask for confirmation of a part of the story, it’s not because we suspect you of misrepresenting anything. We need confirmation for our editors.

If there’s no other evidence besides your knowledge of a particular situation, then turn that knowledge into evidence. It can be done relatively easily. In that case, use this template to make out an affidavit. An affidavit — sworn, out-of-court testimony — can be used as evidence. It doesn’t prove that the facts within are true, but it does show the witness’ willingness to expose themselves to perjury charges if the contents of the statement are proven false. Often journalists can use these statements in their reporting.

Find a therapist: This isn’t a layperson diagnosis of mental illness. I’m not pointing out flaws in those people seeking justice for friends, family members or even prisoners. It’s quite the opposite.

Wrongful convictions, lengthy incarceration, waiting for a languid bureaucracy to fix mistakes they made in a millisecond are traumatic experiences even for bystanders. Trying to explain the facts and the trauma to a journalist wastes time and asks them to act as an advisor of sorts. We know — and especially I know — how harmful injustice is, not just to the defendant or inmate, but also people close to them.

But explaining to us how stressful all of this doesn't help anyone — we’re supposed to be investigating — but it’s also pointless because we’re not trained to assist in those ways. Finding a professional with whom you can work out your feelings will enhance your ability to secure attention — and therefore assistance for your cause. Find A Therapist is just one source of information on service providers in your area.

Be Patient: Getting new records or finding the best witness can take time. It won’t happen overnight.


Be Realistic: While pressure from the press can break logjams and even expose innocence, it’s not always possible. We’d love to clear some names and spring some bodies from custody but we’re not magicians.


Chandra Bozelko did time in a maximum-security facility in Connecticut. While inside she became the first incarcerated person with a regular byline in a publication outside of the facility. Her “Prison Diaries" column ran in The New Haven Independent, and she later established a blog under the same name that earned several professional awards. Her columns now appear regularly in The National Memo.

In America These Days, You Can Never Be Punished Enough

In America These Days, You Can Never Be Punished Enough

We will call her Jane Doe.

We really have no choice, given that that’s the only identification found in the court document. Jane is 57, a Jamaica-born permanent U.S. resident living in New York City. She is a licensed nurse and a mother. She is also a convicted felon.

In 2000, Jane, trying to raise two young daughters on $15,000 a year and an $80 weekly child-support check, was recruited by her then-boyfriend for an insurance scam. They staged a car accident and tried to collect on a claim.

It didn’t work. Jane was convicted on fraud charges and sentenced to 15 months in prison. She was released in 2004.

That’s when her ordeal began.

Her debt to society paid, Jane set out looking for work. She was rehired by a former employer and worked there two years. Then the state Office of Professional Discipline suspended her license for two years for professional misconduct — not because she had done anything wrong, but because of the old conviction.

In the years since, Jane has found barricades on every avenue of gainful employment. Job interviews and even job offers mysteriously evaporate when employers learn about her record. She tried to get a business license to start her own company, only to be rejected twice because of it.

Last year, Jane tried to have her record expunged. Judge John Gleeson denied the request a few days ago, explaining that Jane doesn’t meet the legal standard. But Gleeson — the same judge who sent her to prison — then did something extraordinary. He appended to his 32-page opinion a “federal certificate of rehabilitation.”

Understand: There is no such thing. The official-looking document carries no legal force. It’s just something Gleeson had made for Jane so she can show prospective employers that a federal judge considers her rehabilitated. He says a woman who was convicted once, a long time ago, of a nonviolent crime from which she saw no profit and for which she has served her time, ought not be punished for it the rest of her life.

“I had no intention,” wrote Gleeson, “to sentence her to the unending hardship she has endured in the job market.”

If you consider this a heartwarming story, you miss the point.

Yes, Gleeson did a good and generous thing. One hopes it has the desired effect. But it is unconscionable that Jane Doe’s situation ever reached this extreme.

The shift of American penal philosophy from rehabilitation to punishment has had many disastrous effects: prison overcrowding, mass disenfranchisement, fatherless homes. But the most self-defeating effect is embodied in denying ex-felons employment once they’ve served their time. If you deny them the ability to do lawful work, what obvious option is left?

Granted, there are sometimes good reasons to deny a given ex-felon a given job; no daycare should hire a newly released child molester, for example. But what Jane Doe is facing is rooted less in common sense caution than in a new American ethos where punishment never ends.

That should be anathema to a nation of second chances. Lawmakers must enact reforms that curb the power of employers to discriminate against former felons — or that incentivize their hiring. Questions about criminal records should not be allowed on job applications; a person should have the chance to make a good impression at the job interview without being automatically ruled out for doing some stupid thing a long time ago.

Jane Doe was lucky to have Gleeson on her side, but she shouldn’t have needed him. She did something stupid, yes, but she was duly punished for it.

Except that in America these days, you can never be punished enough.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

(c) 2016 THE MIAMI HERALD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Photo: Female inmates look out of the Top Chico prison in Monterrey, Mexico, February 11, 2016. REUTERS/Daniel Becerri 

California’s High Court Gives Judges More Leeway In Sentencing Juveniles

California’s High Court Gives Judges More Leeway In Sentencing Juveniles

By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court decided Monday that teenagers may be sentenced to life without parole for some crimes, but judges also are free to hand down lighter sentences of 25 years to life.

Prior to the unanimous ruling, California law had been interpreted as requiring judges to lean toward life without parole for 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds convicted of certain offenses. The decision overturned decades of lower-court rulings.

The court’s action gave two men who were 17 at the time they killed the opportunity to have their sentences reconsidered by trial judges.

The court said the sentences should be reviewed because they were handed down before the court clarified state law and before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that judges must consider a juvenile’s immaturity and capacity for change.

The ruling, written by Justice Goodwin Liu, stemmed from appeals in two separate cases.

In one, Andrew Lawrence Moffett robbed a store and his accomplice killed a police officer in Pittsburg, Calif Moffett was convicted of murder, robbery and driving a stolen vehicle.

Because the victim was a police officer and Moffett used a gun during the crime, he was subject to life without parole.

In the other case, Luis Angel Gutierrez killed his uncle’s wife while living with the family in Simi Valley. He received life without parole because the jury determined he had murdered Josefina Gutierrez while also raping or to attempting to rape her.

“Because Moffett and Gutierrez have been convicted of special circumstance murder, each will receive a life sentence,” wrote Justice Goodwin Liu for the court. “The question is whether each can be deemed, at the time of sentencing, to be irreparably corrupt, beyond redemption, and thus unfit ever to re-enter society.”

Some juvenile offenders became subject to life without parole when voters passed Proposition 115, the 1990 “Crime Victims Justice Reform Act.”

State appeals’ courts ruled that the law required judges to favor imposing life without parole over a life sentence that allowed for release after 25 years.

For two decades, those rulings stood.

But Monday’s decision said the lower courts had erred in the interpretation of the law.

“Proposition 115 was intended to toughen penalties for juveniles convicted of first-degree murder by making them eligible for life without parole upon a finding of one or more special circumstances,” Liu wrote.

But he said neither the wording of the ballot measure nor any of the official analyses resolved whether “the initiative was intended to make life without parole the presumptive sentence.” The court concluded it was not.

Four justices wrote separately to stress that California judges may still sentence older juveniles to life without parole, despite the 2012 Supreme Court ruling. In that ruling, which involved 14-year-olds, the high court said it expected life without parole to become uncommon for juveniles.

Photo: Steakpinball via Flickr

Justice Department Announces Clemency Guidelines For Drug Offenders

Justice Department Announces Clemency Guidelines For Drug Offenders

By Timothy M. Phelps, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced a new initiative Wednesday to encourage nonviolent prisoners who have served at least 10 years to apply for what is expected to be a large-scale grant of clemency in President Obama’s waning years in office.

Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole announced that a new pardons attorney would take over a beefed-up office to handle requests that will be actively solicited throughout the federal prison system from thousands of prisoners who meet six criteria.

“We are launching this clemency initiative in order to quickly and effectively identify appropriate candidates, candidates who have a clean prison record, do not present a threat to public safety, and were sentenced under out-of-date laws that have since been changed and are no longer seen as appropriate,” Cole said in remarks released by the Justice Department.

The Justice Department gave no assessment of the number of people likely to receive clemency.

The move to actively solicit requests for clemency from prisoners is unusual. Prisoners will be provided volunteer lawyers working free of charge.

It is also a departure for Obama, who until now has been reluctant to use his clemency powers granted under the Constitution.

But it is very much in tune with a campaign being waged across the board under the direction of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to scale back the use of mandatory prison sentences and reduce the prison population, particularly African-American drug offenders serving long sentences for nonviolent crimes.

The clemency program announced Wednesday is not limited to drug crimes, but it is particularly aimed at the thousands of crack cocaine users or dealers sentenced under a particularly tough law that was amended by Congress in 2010. Some 7,000 prisoners, by some estimates, would not be incarcerated today if they had been sentenced under the terms of the new law, though not all will meet the criteria announced Wednesday.

To be eligible, prisoners must have no incidents of violence on their records, both in the commission of the original crime and while inside prison. Candidates for clemency also must be free of ties to gangs or large criminal organizations, must not have “a significant criminal history,” and must have demonstrated good conduct in prison.

All must have served 10 years and be able to demonstrate they would have received substantially less time if convicted under current law.

“For our criminal justice system to be effective, it needs to not only be fair; but it also must be perceived as being fair,” Cole said. “Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today’s laws erode people’s confidence in our criminal justice system, and I am confident that this initiative will go far to promote the most fundamental of American ideals — equal justice under law.”

Photo: Cliff1066 via Flickr