I posted not long ago on the Innocence Project’s use of DNA identification to exonerate an innocent man, and direct prosecutors toward a guilty one. Tragically, Robert Lee Stinson spent twenty-three years in prison for a crime he did not commit, until being exonerated. For all those years, an actual killer, Moses Price, was uncharged for the killing that led to Stinson’s wrongful conviction. (Price now admits through an affidavit that he was the real killer.) See, DNA to Exonerate the Innocent (and Identify the Guilty).
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a more recent story with a similar result: a man wrongly convicted is to be released based on DNA evidence, evidence that implicates someone else, an accused serial killer, of the crime. William Avery spent five years in prison for allegedly killing Maryetta Griffin. Accused serial killer Walter Ellis is a match for the DNA found on that victim, as well as several other victims. See, Man convicted in 1998 killing to be released.
These cases represent failures of justice: for failing to identify the likely (and in one case, the admitted) killer, and worse still for accusing, charging, trying, convicting, and imprisoning two innocent men.
And yet, during the many years when these men were imprisoned, were the respective prosecutors not confident, insistent, sure of themselves? For every claim of certainty, for every declaration of confidence, for every strident remark, something else lay beneath, to be revealed: the truth, that Stinson and Avery were innocent, and that Price was, and Ellis may be, truly guilty of these killings.
We are told that those who serve in government, those high officials who wield power, are public servants. I think the term, truly, is merely self-serving. A man’s skill, insight, judgment, and character are not made better through a taxpayer-funded salary. When, so very often, such a man will imply that they are, he asks you to become a fool, believing him an angel. God has all the messengers He needs; a high public office creates not one more.