Criminal defense lawyers can whisper, speak, shout about the flaws of a system that can convict the innocent, but you won’t care. You believe in what you are doing. You trust the experienced police officer who looks you straight in the eye and tells you he knows, knows, that the defendant is guilty. You hear the victim, who has most certainly suffered pain and anguish, beg you to make the person pay for what he did to her. She studied his face. She knows who did it. She would certainly never lie about it. She will never forget that face.
James A. Fry was an assistant in the Dallas County District Attorney’s office. He prosecuted Charles Chatman for aggravated rape in 1981. Even if I don’t have the authority to tell you this story, he does.
James A. Fry was an assistant in the Dallas County District Attorney’s office. He prosecuted Charles Chatman for aggravated rape in 1981. Even if I don’t have the authority to tell you this story, he does.
I was certain I had the right man. His case was one of my first important felony cases as a Dallas County assistant district attorney. Chatman was convicted in a court of law by a jury of his peers. They, like me, were convinced of his guilt.Nearly 27 years later, DNA proved me – and the criminal justice system – wrong. Chatman was freed from prison in January after DNA testing proved him innocent. He spent nearly three decades behind bars for a crime he did not commit – a stark reminder that our justice system is not immune from error. No reasonable person can question this simple truth.
So many of the elements that have long been sacred in the prosecution of a human being appear in Fry’s story. The belief. The evidence. The certainty. The win. The satisfaction that comes from justice being done. It took 27 years before it all fell apart.
Chatman’s story is tragically not unique. The staggering number of exonerations attest to just how easily the innocent can be convicted. Nationally, 225 people have been released from prison after DNA testing proved their innocence. Seventeen of them had been sentenced to death. Twenty DNA exonerations were from Dallas County alone, the most of any U.S. jurisdiction. The vast majority of those exonerated in Dallas County would still be in prison but for the fact Dallas preserved its DNA evidence.
How many cases involve the Dr. Watson’s baby, DNA? Very few. Very few indeed. Yet the elements that comprised a good conviction in 1981 remain the very elements that comprise a good conviction today. But there won’t be any DNA to sort out decades later. The conviction will be immutable. It will be forever. You won’t have a story to tell 27 years later about how, despite the absolute certainty that the outcome was just, you were wrong. You can sleep well at night knowing that no miracle of science will ever prove that you convicted an innocent man. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
James Fry has no regrets about being a prosecutor. Indeed, we need prosecutors. There is crime. There are bad people. There are victims whose lives and bodies are horribly hurt by crime. But within this need is also a need for concern that two wrongs don’t happen: The wrong done the victim and the wrong done the second victim, the innocent person convicted.
James Fry has no regrets about being a prosecutor. Indeed, we need prosecutors. There is crime. There are bad people. There are victims whose lives and bodies are horribly hurt by crime. But within this need is also a need for concern that two wrongs don’t happen: The wrong done the victim and the wrong done the second victim, the innocent person convicted.
I am no bleeding heart. I have been a Republican for over 30 years. I started my career as a supporter of removing violent people from society for as long as possible, and I still believe that to be appropriate.It’s axiomatic to say the system isn’t perfect. For some, the mere incantation of these words relieves all sense of responsibility for the flaws of the system. But we are the system. The system is people, prosecutors, defense lawyers, cops, judges, each of whom has a role to play. Each of us has a role to play in doing everything we can to make sure that a crime doesn’t have a second victim.
But I also believe that the government should be held to the strictest burden before it deprives a citizen of his freedom. It is not too much to ask that we not convict and execute innocent people in our quest to enforce the law. Let’s get this system fixed.
Don’t be so smug. Don’t be so certain that you know everything. Don’t be so absolute that you can’t harbor doubt. You aren’t that good. None of us are that good.
Don’t believe me? That’s fine. Then believe James A. Fry. He’s been there. Read Fry’s story in the Dallas Morning News and ask yourself, are you so much smarter than Fry that you could never be wrong?
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