By the numbers: nine is the number of men who have been wrongfully convicted of violent crimes in Massachusetts courts and later exonerated by DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project. Their names are Marvin Mitchell, Neil Miller, Eric Sarsfield, Kenneth Waters, Eduardo Velasquez, Dennis Maher, Ulysses Rodriguez Charles, Stephan Cowans, and Anthony Powell.
112 is the total number of years those men served in Massachusetts prisons for crimes that they did not commit. Every second of every one of those 112 years was an injustice perpetrated by the judicial system of this state. Recognizing that obvious fact, Governor Romney signed a bill that provides compensation to people who have been the victims — and yes, they are victims — of wrongful conviction. Last week, a federal judge went further, ruling that one of those men — Eric Sarsfield — should be awarded $13.6 million for the decade he spent in prison.
So let’s be clear about one thing: wrongful convictions do happen, and they do happen in Massachusetts.
Before the 2002 DNA test that Deval Patrick helped to pay for, there were good reasons to think that Ben LaGuer might be another such case. As has been recounted elsewhere, the jury may have been infected by racism, and the only evidence in the case — an eyewitness identification from a photo lineup (ordinarily among the less reliable forms of evidence in any circumstances) — seemed particularly unreliable in this case. Under those circumstances, it is, well, stupid to proclaim that seeking a DNA test to make sure you’ve got the right guy, or otherwise to question the result in the case, constitutes being “soft on crime.” It’s obviously not justice for the wrongly-convicted person who is rotting away in prison. Nor is it justice for the victim of the crime, whose true assailant remains free. Republican Ralph Martin gets that.
So the 2002 DNA test was held. And it did not exonerate LaGuer. And as of that moment, not surprisingly, the LaGuer case became somewhat less of a cause celebre than it had previously been. Questions have been raised about the DNA test, and they will be sorted out by the SJC soon (oral argument is set for December). I’m no DNA expert, so I have no basis to question the opinions of people who know more about DNA testing than I do, and who have expressed doubts about the test. But I count myself among the skeptical. Unless someone can prove that the DNA test was faulty, I can’t see much basis for going any further with this case.
In any event, for purposes of the Governor’s race, the critical point is that Deval Patrick has done nothing in support of LaGuer since the 2002 DNA test. And given the state of the evidence against LaGuer prior to the 2002 test, I find it impossible to fault anyone for being concerned about the conviction. That test was the critical moment — it was the moment LaGuer’s backers had been waiting for, and it finally came. It did not meet their hopes and expectations, and today Ben LaGuer looks a lot guiltier than he looked before that test.
All of that said, it’s certainly fair to fault Deval Patrick and his campaign for the way they’ve handled the LaGuer business. He should have (1) had a much clearer handle on what his role in the case actually was, since it should have been perfectly obvious that it would be raised as a campaign issue; (2) disclosed his role completely during the primary when LaGuer first came up; and (3) issued an unqualified apology for the screw-ups rather than the old “I apologize to anyone who feels that …” cop-out for which Adam Reilly rightly takes him to task — though, to be fair, Patrick’s elaboration (“We screwed up in terms of how we have handled doing the homework before we answered questions about this issue, no question about that. And I take the responsibility for that.”), which Adam didn’t mention, was a lot better.
So what’s the bottom line? Patrick and his campaign screwed up on how they handled this issue. And for no good reason, since if they had been up front about it from day one Patrick easily could have spun it into a good story: “I backed this guy early on because I’m concerned about innocent people being wrongly convicted, as everyone should be, and there were good reasons to think that that might have happened in this case. When DNA testing didn’t exonerate him, I was done.” Why did they screw up? I don’t know. Maybe because — for the first time, I’d say — they flinched. Throughout the primary, the campaign had lots of opportunities to back off of politically inconvenient positions, or to water down Patrick’s sometimes uncompromising views. (For instance, they could have made a much bigger deal out of the fact that there’s already a law that adopts a phased rollback of the income tax, which kind of sinks the position Chris Gabrieli was floating.) But they didn’t, secure in the belief that their approach was right, it was working, and they shouldn’t change course late in the game. They did that through primary day, and it paid off big time.
On LaGuer, I’d say, they didn’t take that approach. Instead, they did the thing that politicians typically do: they let the facts leak out slowly, each time having to explain why their last version wasn’t accurate, and in the process turn what should have been a one-day negative story into a week-long negative story that might actually do some damage. So here’s my unsolicited advice to the Patrick campaign: stick with what works. You guys have proven everyone wrong (including me) so far in this campaign. Just keep doing that.
