EDITOR’S NOTE: Listen to the complete story and learn a lot more about the US and China on my Politics and Prejudices podcast, available now on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, IHeartradio and Lessenberryink.com.
**
Wrongly Convicted?
I think most of us believe that if someone is in prison, they are probably a basically bad person and are almost always guilty of what they were charged with.
You are especially likely to believe this if you happen to be white and at least middle-class. Many years ago, I had a friend who was an old public defender from the Bronx. “Tony,” I once asked him, “were any of your clients ever innocent?”
“Not really,” he said. Some of them were innocent of what they were accused of. But none of them were ever really “innocent.”
I thought that was mostly right. The trials I had covered were mostly those of really bad guys. Jim O’Connell, by the way, thought so too. Once, years ago, he happened to be driving by the old State Prison of Southern Michigan in Jackson prison, rolled down the window and yelled, “Losers!” embarrassing his wife.
But then he, himself, ended up behind bars.
I came to this story with an open mind, and with the assumption that, despite his wife’s admirable loyalty, he probably was guilty, at least to some degree.
However, after looking at this case in detail, I think exactly the opposite. I don’t think he ever did anything wrong here. In this society, anyone is accused of sex crimes is automatically presumed guilty, and even in those rare cases where their innocence is established beyond the shadow of a doubt, some taint still tends to cling to them. Once, talking about such a case with an old minister, he shook his head and said “Well, he may not have done that, but I always say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
If you look at the O’Connell case and substitute any other alleged crime and present the same quality of evidence, you get a case that would be thrown out of court. What if some child reported that two years ago, when she was four, she saw “Mr. Jim” stealing a shirt from Brooks Brothers in Somerset Mall?
There are no witnesses. No such shirt can be found in his closet. Brooks Brothers records don’t show anything missing, and the store has attendants who are constantly watching.
Actually, that case wouldn’t be thrown out of court, it wouldn’t even get there. But in this case we had a bubbly child saying bad things had been done to her, and a public now sensitized to the fact that there are indeed child predators in their midst.
There are indeed predators. But we also now know that there are people in Michigan prisons who were indeed innocent – totally innocent. I am haunted by the story of Neal Redick, accused by his girlfriend’s son of having sexually abused him years before. There was no evidence, but Neal, like Jim O’Connell was sentenced to what amounted to life.
That is, until fourteen years later, when the boy who accused him got a guilty conscience and admitted he made it all up because he wanted his mother to lose custody so he could go live with his dad.
I don’t know if the little girl who accused O’Connell will ever have a similar change of heart. I don’t even know if she really knows what the truth is. But I do know that our courts need to remember and enforce our ancient rule that conviction requires proof of guilt beyond any reasonable doubt,
I don’t see that standard as having been met here.
This is Jack Lessenberry. Thanks for listening – and I hope you come back for my next podcast.
