He’s sentenced to death row (“I remember the judge telling the courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body”), he lives behind bars for 18 years for crimes he didn’t commit, the prosecutors are found to have covered up the crucial evidence that would have exonerated him, he sues the prosecutors, he wins, and then in a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court rules against him.

“Because of that,” he writes, “prosecutors are free to do the same thing to someone else today.”

Here’s the story from his point of view.

Christopher Frizzelle was The Stranger's print editor, and first joined the staff in 2003. He was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2016, and edited the story by Eli Sanders that won a 2012 Pulitzer...

21 replies on “Required Reading in Today’s NYT: The Exonerated Death Row Inmate”

  2. Right there, the case against capital punishment. It’s bad enough when those cases happen due to an honest error, it’s appalling that, in this case, an innocent man spent 18 years in prison on purpose.

  3. Christopher,
    Yeah, pretty poignant & shocking. I recommend “In the Place of Justice” by Wilford Rideau, a fine book on the Louisana State Prison system.

  9. When you leave your citizens no legitimate option, some will take it lying down, but some will turn to vigilantism. This ruling makes prosecutors and the rule of law less safe, not more.

  10. The criminal justice system in the U.S. doesn’t care one bit about convicting the real criminal. They care about one thing only: Closing cases. If they can close a case by convicting an innocent person, they’re totally fine with that.

    Also, Canuck @2, actually, the only reason he was exonerated is because he WAS on death row. If he’d been given life, he wouldn’t have any legal representation and he’d still be in prison today.

  11. Well that sucks, Urgutha. There is something very wrong with that system. Although there have been similar cases here where people were found to be innocent after serving 20+ years of a life sentence, and we don’t have the death penalty. It’s awful that they didn’t make an example of the prosecutors, although I suppose I’m dreaming to think that would even make a difference.

  14. The conservative wing of the Supreme Court has a sickening double standard when it comes to crime. If the crime is committed by a guy in cargo pants and a knit cap, they’ll throw the book at him; if the crime is committed by a guy in a suit who holds a prestigious title, why, how can we possibly hold such a man liable for anything? He’s a prosecutor, not a criminal! Since he’s a prosecutor, the fact that he committed a crime doesn’t mean he’s a criminal, since a prosecutor is not a criminal. See how that works?

    And the fact that the harm done by these criminals in suits on the public payroll is staring them in the face, in the form of a victim whose life was ruined and was damn near killed, whose family was berefted of its husband and father even though the prosecutor KNEW HE WAS INNOCENT and had PROOF HE WAS INNOCENT, they STILL have so little humanity and empathy in them that they cannot see past the suit and call a criminal a criminal.

    The solution is to use the legislative process to make a new law. Make it a CRIME to suppress exonerating evidence, not just a “civil rights violation.” And spell out in the law code that anyone who seeks the death penalty after suppressing exonerating evidence may be charged with attempted murder. It’s the only way we’ll have justice, until such time as these criminals in judge’s robes are dead and replaced with actual humans.

  15. @4 You are correct, those are the 5 appointees who voted in favor of the opinion. Below is the PDF outlining the case from the supreme court’s website.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10p…

    I would like to note that all of the five are appointments by Republican presidents. All of the four dissenting justices were appointed by Democratic Presidents.

    Ronald Reagan – Kennedy
    Ronald Reagan – Scalia
    George H.W. Bush – Thomas
    George W. Bush – Roberts
    George W. Bush – Alito

    This is so outrageous, nothing can be said other than fuck the fucking fundies…

    fuck

  17. Wait — are you libbarull pussies telling me you object to the execution of these sonsa bitches just because they’re NOT GUILTY? Coddlers. Execute them anyways. Everyone from the lower classes lives or dies at the whim of a Supreme Court justice based solely on how well he’s enjoying his cigar at the moment. As it should be.

  19. A blogger at Slate had this to say about Thomas, which I found quite apt and sad/scary:

    “Don’t look to Clarence Thomas for enlightened thinking or reasoning. Clarence Thomas’ jurisprudence is curiously fuedal, akin more to the 15th century than the 21st, with a strict Darwinism as its guiding principle. His has never been a jurisprudence that protects rights and mobilizes the law as a defense against tyranny or injustice. In Thomas’ universe, the weak are prey to the strong, cruelty is random and suffered without redress, the law is not a mechanism for settling grievances but an imposition of order and constraint. I think he suffers from a severe case of irritated bowel syndrome but enjoys the suffering.”

    Personally, to me he seems like a clear-cut sociopath.

  21. @19- Indeed. He reminds me of the Magistrate from Marquis de Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom”, how took pleasure in sentencing defendants to death whom he knew were innocent.

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