TheAgitator.com
The Exonerations Continue
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008An Ingham County prosecutor and a detective knew before trial that video evidence showed Claude McCollum was in another building when a Lansing Community College professor was killed, according to a state police report obtained by the Lansing State Journal.
Still, prosecutors went ahead with the case, and McCollum was tried and convicted of murder.
McCollum, whose conviction was thrown out last year, is suing multiple agencies for damages. County prosecutors have always maintained they did not know of a 2005 report that described exonerating video evidence until after the trial began.
Even if true, how is this a defense of the prosecutors’ behavior? Evidence surfaces showing that prosecutors got the wrong guy, but because they’ve already started the trial, they go ahead and convict him anyway?
The sound you heard was my jaw hitting the table, again….
At first I thought this was another Mississippi story, but this happened in Michigan.
One thing is true about the justice system in the USA these days, it is a system alright.
Hopefully the investigators and prosecutors responsible for this fraud perpetrated on the courts will be tried, justly convicted and serve jail time.
Radley,
You really ask such questions after covering the case against Dr. Bernard L. Rottschaefer.
“Evidence surfaces showing that prosecutors got the wrong guy, but because they’ve already started the trial, they go ahead and convict him anyway?”
This should be a crime….
This is the other side of the coin, re: your last post. Sometimes the role of the defense attorney is to keep an innocent man out of prison, and sometimes they fail.
I wonder if this kind of thing happens as often in countries with inquisitorial justice systems?
Does anyone know a prosecutor to whom the question can be asked? Seriously, what’s the motivation?
Even for serious police or prosecutorial misconduct, any adverse consequences or punishment for those directly involved are extremely rare.
However, the taxpayers do get repeatedly seriously financially punished with settlement of the civil suits against the government body by the harmed individuals.
> Hopefully the investigators and prosecutors responsible for this
> fraud perpetrated on the courts will be tried, justly convicted and
> serve jail time.
Why? So you and me can be soaked to keep ‘em in a zoo for the rest of their lives?
“Hopefully…” they will be gunned down in the street, as Justice demands.
Maybe Patterico could comment on this case?
How do these people live with themselves when they KNOW they are sending an innocent person to prison? What do they tell themselves that makes it alright in their minds and allows them to sleep at night? How do they look at themselves in the mirror every morning? How do they even look at their families, their children? The moral bankruptcy of these people is just staggering and very terrifying to me.
To keep the populace under control, it isn’t necessary to put the guilty in prison so long as SOMEONE gets put in prison, guilty or not.
Unfortunately, it’s working. The populace is well and truly cowed. If they weren’t it would be torch and pitchfork time at police HQ and the persecutor’s office.
All,
A prosecutor’s motivation is to get convictions not to enforce the law or seek only guilty people. I realize many will argue against this viewpoint, yet it is accurate.
A prosecutor looks at evidence provided to them and says can I get a conviction, not is this person innocent or guilty.
Now in some cases, prosecutors go a step farther and say, if I can’t get a conviction with what is here now, how could I get a conviction.
These prosecutors are the ones that start to buy perjury, hide evidence, create false evidence, etc.; because in their warped opinion, a conviction serves the greater good.
Take a look at the case of Dr. Bernard L. Rottschaefer which Radley has covered. US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan appears to fall into this second tier of unscrupulous prosecutors.
The county prosecutor (Dunnings) has been a really stand-up guy for years, not prone to over-charging and has made some high-profile dismissals over the years when a lot of other prosecutors would have “left it up to the jury”, so this really seems out of character (I live near Lansing). I am interested in finding out what the prosecuting attorney and the detective were up to.
[...] people. I said “If you think that case is unique, you haven’t been reading enough Radley Balko.“ [...]
It’s not just prosecutors. They go by information they are given by investigating officers, be they beat cops or feds.
NEVER, EVER speak to law enforcement without your attorney and NEVER let them into your home without a warrant.
they are NOT your friends, they are you worst nightmare…because laws that apply to you do NOT apply to them.