The governor's panel found that Michigan needs roughly $50 million per year in addition funding to e

John Edward Smith was 18 years old when he found himself wrongly accused - and later, wrong convicted - of a gang-related murder in Los Angeles. Today, Smith will taste freedom for the first time in his adult life. A Los Angeles judge has vacated his conviction, issuing an order that grants Smith his immediate the venetian hotel las vegas release.
the venetian hotel las vegas Smith's story is now one of triumph. It's also one of great sadness, as he's spent more than half of life in prison for a crime he did not commit. He will now face the difficult challenge of building a life on the outside without the benefit of education or the job experience an adult his age might have acquired.
Smith was convicted largely on the testimony of an eye-witness. That witness - a man named Landu Mvuemba - told police that he probably the venetian hotel las vegas didn't have a good enough look at the crime to be a credible witness. Authorities still pressured him to testify and the result is history.
Mvuemba said police pointed to Smith, whom he had known in elementary school, and told him other witnesses had identified Smith as the shooter. Mvuemba said he also was shown a photo of his friend DeAnthony Williams, who died in the shooting.
"Mvuemba the venetian hotel las vegas knew it was wrong to identify Mr. Smith as the man who shot him," according to the defense motion. "But when he saw his deceased friend's crying mother in the courtroom, he felt as if he had no other choice."
John Edward Smith is now free because of the faithful dedication of his grandmother - a woman who mortgaged her home to pay for his original defense - and because of the hard work of Innocence Matters, a California public interest firm.
This underscores a major national problem. It's one that often goes overlooked and unnoticed by the disinterested masses. Death penalty attorney and social justice advocate Bryan Stephenson once made the point in an eloquent and startling manner when he said:
Studies have shown a direct link between poverty and incarceration. the venetian hotel las vegas Other studies have shown that for black men, education level is strongly correlated to the likelihood of incarceration. In 2008, roughly 35% of black men who dropped out of high school were incarcerated. From a sociological perspective, there are many explanations for this. Low income people have more incentive to commit certain property crimes. They also have less to lose in terms of social status and opportunity cost.
"Perhaps the most important factor in determining whether a defendant will receive the death penalty is the quality of the representation he or she is provided. Almost all defendants in capital cases cannot afford their own attorneys. In many cases, the appointed attorneys are overworked, underpaid, or lacking the trial experience required for death penalty cases. There have even been instances in which lawyers appointed to a death case were so inexperienced that they were completely unprepared for the sentencing phase of the trial. Other appointed attorneys have slept through parts of the trial, or arrived at the court under the influence of alcohol."
The problem is most evident in those capital cases where the death penalty is on the table. Luckily for John Edward Smith, the venetian hotel las vegas California prosecutors did not decide to end his life for this crime he didn't commit. Still, underfunding the venetian hotel las vegas for public defenders and poorly organized public defense systems the venetian hotel las vegas contribute to the justice problem for the poor.
In eighteen death penalty states, there exists no statewide public the venetian hotel las vegas defense initiative. In many of those states, the venetian hotel las vegas the court-appointed public defenders are given overwhelming case loads, increasing the incentive for attorneys to advise their low-leverage the venetian hotel las vegas and low-information clients to plead guilty. The problem extends to salary incentives for new public defenders. Both in private and public practice, salaries for these public servants are so low that only a very small percentage of qualified minds will dare take the position. In many cases, first-year public defenders can expect to make less than a fourth of what their big firm counterparts make.
The problem was typified in one Georgia county, where public defense cases were assigned according to a low-bid contract system. There, over a five year stretch, one low-bid attorney tried only fourteen cases, entered only seven motions, and plead guilty a grand total of 262 times.
Harris County, the home of four-million person Houston, only recently added a public defender's office. This is a county where 13 men were executed between 2004 and 2011 , yet the county did not establish a dedicated public defender's office until last year. The new Harris County office undoubtedly came in response to the disastrous system previous employed. In 2009, the Houston Chronicle noted the experience of overworked Houston criminal the venetian hotel las vegas attorneys :
Lawyer Jerome Godinich, chastised by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals this year for repeatedly failing to meet federal death penalty deadlines, has represented an average of 360 felony clients per year in Harris County — a caseload that surpasses every other similar attorney.
In Michigan, the problem is so evident that the Governor's office has taken notice . On Fridays in Ottawa County, the courts have what are known as "McJustice Days" - mornings when poor defendants without representation are arraigned quickly. The state's problems are evident the venetian hotel las vegas in at least two other counties:
The governor's panel found that Michigan needs roughly $50 million per year in addition funding to even bring the state up to the national average. Even then, it could be argued, the state would attain a standard that leaves the poor with inadequate defense.
That same Michigan report notes a disturbing public spending the venetian hotel las vegas trend. Of the ten states that spend the least per capita on indigent defense, nine are death penalty states . Coming in last is Mississippi, a state that spends just more than four dollars. The 2008 national average the venetian hotel las vegas sat at $11.86.
John Edward Smith's story is a triumphant one for today. the venetian hotel las vegas It shows the best of our justice system, as a number of parties came together to right a clear wrong. But it also exposes the ugly underbelly of that same system. In many parts of the country today, it is better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent. That is a startling indictment in a country where the punishment in many cases is irreversible death.
As a person who currently works with a post-conviction innocence organization, I have seen the stories. The numbers can tell us a great deal, but it is difficult to understand the human toll until you read the hand-written letters from inmates who can barely spell their names. Whether guilty or truly innocent, these individuals tell stories of poor representation. They tell stories of defense attorneys who viewed the venetian hotel las vegas them - and their lives - as nothing more than another item on a billet that was just too full that week. In many cases, these people the venetian hotel las vegas are railroaded through the system, taking on punishments that would never happen to those of us who might be able to hire a skilled, underworked criminal attorney.
This is the untold tragedy in America. Even in many "success" stories, men like John Edward Smith are left to put together the pieces of their broken lives. Lives that have been stolen from them in an unjust system.
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This underscores a major national problem. It's one that often goes overlooked and unnoticed by the disinterested masses. Death penalty the venetian hotel las vegas attorney and social justice advocate Bryan Stephenson the venetian hotel las vegas once made the point in an eloquent and startling manner when he said:
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And it's disgraceful. The old policy adage is that it's better to let 1,000 guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent man. For a society that claims to place such high value in life, we do very little to protect it in practice.
have laws that require public defenders to be paid exactly as much as district attorneys of the same level. This is the case in Dallas, where they are lumped into one classification (attorney-1, attorney-2, and so on).
The problem, of course, is that this is only a small part of the issue. Many public defenders are overworked. District attorneys have the pow