Legal Myths Saga…Police are objective in their investigations.

“In many ways, this is the bedrock assumption of our criminal justice process. Police investigators have vast discretion about what leads to pursue, which witnesses to interview, what forensic tests to conduct and countless other aspects of the investigation. Police also have a unique opportunity to manufacture or destroy evidence, influence witnesses, extract confessions and otherwise direct the investigation so as to stack the deck against people they believe should be convicted. And not just small-town police in Podunk or Timbuktu. Just the other day, “the Justice Department and FBI formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all [of the 268] trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.” Do they offer a class at Quantico called “Fudging Your Results To Get A Conviction” or “Lying On The Stand 101”? How can you trust the professionalism and objectivity of police anywhere after an admission like that?

There are countless documented cases where innocent people have spent decades behind bars because the police manipulated or concealed evidence, but two examples will suffice: In 2013, Debra Milke was released after 23 years on Arizona’s death row based entirely on a supposed oral confession she had made to one Detective Saldate who was much later shown to be a serial liar. And then there is the case of Ricky Jackson, who spent 39 years behind bars based entirely on the eyewitness identification of a 12-year-old boy who saw the crime from a distance and failed to pick Jackson out of a lineup. At that point, “the officers began to feed him information: the number of assailants, the weapon used, the make and model of the getaway car.” 39 years!

For some victims of police misconduct, exoneration comes too late: Mark Collin Sodersten died in prison while maintaining his innocence. After his death, a California appellate court determined that Sodersten had been denied a fair trial because police had failed to turn over exculpatory witness tapes. It posthumously set aside the conviction, which no doubt reduced Sodersten’s time in purgatory.” (Hon. Alex Kozinski)