Just Doing My Job?

Bitch reader Alice O. Nunez writes me with a question:

I'm unsure what to make of the Amirault case, which has been getting some attention lately due to Martha Coakley's involvement toward the end. There are some obvious reasons to be bothered by the prosecution's handling of the case, and the DA lobbying to overrule the parole board's unanimous vote to release Amirault is particularly disturbing. But I'm a math person, and my only familiarity with how the law is "supposed" to work is from my instincts and, well, stuff I read on blogs. Is it the DA's job to always push on the side of the state (i.e. keep people in prison), even when the trial is over and new evidence says they were wrong? That's kind of fucked up, but I guess I'm more okay with Coakley's actions if they're the norm. Kinda. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts, because if it's not obvious, I'm in over my head here.

(Disclaimer: I'm almost certainly voting for Coakley anyway. I just want to feel better about my vote.)

If you have no idea who Amirault is, some background is here. Remember Capturing the Friedmans? If you haven't seen it, it's a great, fascinating movie. Anyway, the Amirault case was about similar allegations of horrific sexual assault by three members of a family who operated a day care center. This was in the 80s, at the height of the molestation craze, where the "recovered memory" technique (a.k.a. hypnosis) was being used to get kids to tell stories about being molested and assaulted. Many of these cases were later called into question when witnesses recanted, or people started wising up that the investigatory methods were extremely suspect.

Coakley wasn't the person who prosecuted the Amirault case. But she was the DA in 1999 when Gerald Amirault came up for parole. The parole board voted 5-0 to grant him parole, based on the fact that serious doubt had been cast on the integrity of the case against him in the intervening years. It looks like Massachusetts has a governor-can-overrule-the-parole-board law, like other states, including California. I didn't know of the existence of such laws until I was listening to an episode of This American Life last week. If you have time, it's a great episode. One of the best I've heard on TAL in a while, which, admittedly, I don't listen to as regularly as I used to. But as someone invested in criminal justice issues and particularly parole, I found it fascinating.

Radley Balko has a good has a good write-up about Coakley's criminal justice problems at Politico. He writes:

Coakley didn’t prosecute the Amiraults; her former boss Scott Harshbarger did. But the case against the family began to come apart during her tenure as district attorney. Despite a parole board’s 5-0 recommendation to grant Gerald Amirault clemency and mounting doubts about the evidence against him, Coakley publicly and aggressively lobbied then-Gov. Jane Swift to deny Amirault relief. Amirault remained in prison.

So, what's the moral status of advocating that someone who is likely innocent remain in prison? It's a tough question. As far as I known, it's something that's routinely done by prosecutors everywhere. In Illinois, the only place I've practiced, the prosecutors oppose all parole petitions, as far as I know. They oppose the petitions with varying levels of vigor. Their vigor is often directly correlated with how strenuously the victims and families of the victims are opposed to release. I can't find any information about this, but it's my guess given the notoriety of the case and the large number of "victims" that there was strong public opposition to Amirault's release.

I don't have a major problem with prosecutors who lobby for people to serve more time in prison, whether it's at the indictment, sentencing, or parole stage. My main concern is with systems that are overly deferential to prosecutors, that disadvantage defendants, and that make it extremely difficult for convicts to make the case for their own parole. I do think the criminal justice world would be a lot more just if more prosecutors declined to prosecute more often. Particularly in high-profile or embattled cases, where it seems that all evidence points to innocence, but the prosecutors insist on, for example, re-trying a case after a trial has been thrown out years after the fact by a judge. You see this all the time: prosecutors' stubborn insistence that they've got the right guy in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Nevertheless, being a prosecutor who is stalwart when presented with evidence of innocence or prosecutorial misconduct is so common as to be banal. Which is why I think her lobbying for Amirault's continued incarceration isn't, in itself, enough to make her a morally suspect choice for senator.

What I find far more troubling is something mentioned later in the Balko article, which is that Coakley publicly opposed the creation of an innocence commission in Massachusetts. This, I find absolutely deplorable. Advocating for the state in any one case? That's the DA's job. But arguing that systems should not exist to investigate the actions of the state, to hold the criminal justice system accountable? That's a prime example of systems that disadvantage defendants. Innocence projects exist because it's extremely difficult for convicts to argue that they were wrongfully convicted. It costs of lot of money and often requires the use of experts. Experts are expensive. We're talking forensic experts, DNA testing, psychological experts in witness testimony, highly trained investigators.

A lot of the criticism of Coakley's involvement in the Amirault case seems to center on the fact that she was clearly stepping up the pressure on the governor for her own political gain. Being seen as a law-and-order sort is almost uniformly a political advantage, no matter where you hold office. Hardly anyone ever fails to be elected because they were too hard on criminals. Take, for example, Joe Arpaio (extremely popular!) vs. Michael Dukakis (Willie Horton!). But it's not really enough to blame politicians for exploiting this tendency of Americans to thirst for more and more justice-blood. And I'm not particularly moved by allegations that people are behaving in politicized ways. Justice is political, and the more we recognize and appreciate that, the better we can be honest with ourselves as a society and government about how we want to proceed.