A few weeks back the Boston Globe ran this story about the acquittal of a murder suspect and Dan Conley blaming the jurors.
Throughout the story Conley weeps and blames the jurors.
“We don’t choose our witnesses. They don’t come out of central casting,”
“No juror will ever admit that he or she didn’t give the evidence the time or consideration it deserved.”
“This was a case with powerful evidence and there was certainly sufficient evidence to show that this defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The reporter went and interviewed many of the jurors.
Part of the story reads as follows:
“The jurors ranged in age from their early 20s to mid 60s, represented nearly every ethnic group in the city, and included a doctor, an elementary school teacher, two nurses, the owner of an art gallery, the manager of a local museum, and a student. Sitting around a long wood table, they spent about 40 minutes kibitzing before the doctor organized the group and began listing witnesses whose testimony they would consider.
“About a half hour after starting to thresh through the evidence, the jury was dismissed for the day. Less than three hours after resuming the next morning, they voted to acquit.”
A juror explained “We tried as hard as we could, but we just didn’t find the evidence pointing to this individual,” said Mary , 54, an elementary school teacher in Brighton who said she has served on two other juries and asked that her last name not be published. “I don’t know if it was the DA’s office or the police, but someone somewhere didn’t connect all the dots. Whoever’s not connecting the dots needs to start doing it.”
What the reporter does, which Conley does not, is point out all the problems with the case. There are major witness discrepancies on material evidence. The victim did not make an ID until after the suspect was arrested and his photo appeared in newspaper. No photo array or line-up. The id is so prejudicial it is worthless. That is the result of incompetent police and district attorney. Another witness present when the shooting occurred had known the suspect since grade school. Yet he could not identify the shooter. One witness had the suspect wearing a white shirt and a doo rag. Another had him in a black shirt and no doo rag.
The suspect admitted being in the vicinity, but so were many others.
But Dan wants to blame John and Jane Citizen. Dan doesn’t know how to do his job. “So lets blame everyone but me.”
Perhaps if Dan had some prosecutorial skills like his predecessors he wouldn?t have to blame the unwashed jurors. Perhaps if Dan went after small time crooked cops like his predecessors, we would not let petty police corruption and assaults bloom into a police force where the crooked cops are extremely bold in their extra curricular activities. Why? Because they know the DA isn’t going to do anything.
Hey Dan, You Do Not Work for the Police. You Work for the People.
We now have cops taking tests that federal judges rule are ” oppressively cognitively challenging.” We have had folks given green light hiring (essentially without an exam and essentially illiterate) simply because of their ethnicity —–and here I thought that was unconstitutional. Back in the early seventies we almost had a dwarf Boston cop. God only knows what he would have done on the mean streets. The bottom line is that we now have a Boston Police department that barely functions because the new crowd coming up the pipeline are cogintively challnged (to be polite). It’s a shame that the erudite readers of this blog do not have access to or allowed to read the police reports that our unfortunate officers futiley attempt to complete. The problem has reached the point where much of the report is “check off the box” because “fill in the blank” would be too challenging. Then we get to the descriptive narrative. This is where it gets scary. You must remember there are several mind bending hurdles here. They are: Who, What, How, When, and Where. Not a pretty picture. You would be
astounded to see what the police supervisors get to read. It appears that most reports and more egregiously from a particular group of officers are completely incoherent, and written in a possibly alien (as in not of this planet) language and the others are written in a semi coherent form in Mayan or possibly Sanskrit.
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Then the reports and the cases go to the DA’s office. A DA is a man or a woman who just barely passed the bar exam, probably has never held a real job in the DPS, and has a relative who is about to or has kissed a politicians backside. A DA is not the brightest nor the flashiest un the legal Christmas tree—–nor are they the most ethical and honest. So, we have a cognitively impaired police officer, engaging in some bizarre behavior not to be confused with a sequential and reasonned criminal investigation, and submitting the results thereof to the DA’s office to an uninspiring political hack who’s only aspiration is to climb higher on the hack chain. You do this by the accumulation of successful convictions. It makes no matter if the accused is obviously innocent (right Mr. disbarred DA Nifong) or it’s a shaky case, or it’s a cop pay back vendetta or it’s a poor black/hispanic/pick your favorite minority defendant, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time (but who is/was guilty of something probably as egregious as the alleged offense), and the cop needs to make a pinch to get the Capt/Lt/Sgt off his ass or he/she needs the court time, or the wife/husband pissed them off before they left the house and someone else has to pay, or a myriad of perplexing reasons. The DA gets whomever in the dock and prosecutes and CONVICTS the individual. It matters not a whit if there is not a preponderance of the evidence nor reasonable doubt. The defendant must be convicted by any and all means necessary.
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If you people knew what goes on in our courts and how many
innocent (or reasonably so) wind up with a criminal conviction or worse:jail/prison, you wouldn’t leave the house. Conversely because we have squads, platoons, and battalions of inept, uneducated, and uncaring cops and DA’s many, many of the guilty walk out of the courthouses with a big smile, because they beat the rap—-because of gross incompetence.
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It’s a mess. A real bad, dangerous mess. All as the result of the Law of Unintended Consequence.
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BTW—this is not just Suffolk County. This is pervasive—as in local, state and federal. Take a good look at our chief federal prosecutor. A budding Felix Frankfurter.
True, political corruption is always spoken of in the past tense. And the powers that be tell us the bad days when the Bulgers ruled the roost are gone. Can’t happen again (still?).
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But, we criticize the world for the corruption in Africa, France, Russia. We are so much more holy than they.
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Yet anyone who knows more than a few civil servants know of one that has several state jobs. (Wouldn’t be hard to figure out the individuals as records have to be kept.) No one notices that the Feds now are the law enforcement on the state politicians and employees. State police are impotent. Local police are worse. People being shot down in the street? Arrest and prosecute some poor guy protecting himself from a seagull. Isn’t it amazing that they can talk to the press without a hint of shame?
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We don’t have to get airfare to see the show. Just watch the local civil servants.
Go to the front page of the Herald on the net. You can Google any state dept or a persons name for their salary and position.
You’re too young to remember when the Massachusetts government almost collapsed due to the corruption. Or when a governor’s brother contracted for the highways and those highways fell apart.
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This is the way our state has always been. And will always be. It matters not the political party, religion, race, ethnicity of orientation. The state is corrupt just as Rhode Island, New Jersey, Texas…
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It used to be that they couldn’t steal it all. Just leave enough for the next generation. Now I fear they are too shortsighted. They’ll take it all and leave nothing for the next.
You forgot UMASS Boston being built on Boston’s dump.
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I remember when there was no southeast expressway or Rte 128.
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I remember when Boston had only the Sumner Tunnel.
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I remember when The OLD John Hancock was the tallest building in Boston and the Custom Tower was the next tallest and the Hancock advised what the weather would be.
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I remember watching Harry Truman deliver speeches on TV, and the channel 7 teletype machine on the six o’clock news, and the Shawmut Bank and Big Brother Bob Emery.
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Is that old enough?
Just as corrupt as it ever was.
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Don’cha feel like Grampa Simpson sometimes?
That is what DA’s do – they balme everyone else except their own incompetancy!!!
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They whine that they need more and more $ – then they get it and guess what – the crime rate rises and the they blame the jurors, witnesses and other politicians!!