Wrongful Conviction Panel Is MIA

When Connecticut’s Advisory Commission on Wrongful Convictions was established by the legislature in 2003, it gave promise that the causes of wrongful convictions in this state would be examined and that best practices would be recommended for avoiding the conviction of innocent people in the future. Connecticut proudly boasted at the time that it was one of only four states to have established such a commission, even as some legislators and law enforcement officials continued to express the naïve belief that there could, in fact, be very few instances of wrongful conviction in the state.

Since the commission was established there have been three DNA exonerations — James Tillman, Miguel Roman and Kenneth Ireland, who served a combined total of 56 years for crimes that they did not commit, including kidnapping, murder and sexual assault. One of the statutory powers of the commission is to review “any case involving a wrongful conviction and recommend reforms to lessen the likelihood of a similar wrongful conviction occurring in the future.” The commission’s own mission statement says that “the Commission’s central mission is to promote the appropriate measures to prevent the conviction of innocent persons.”

To date, the Advisory Commission on Wrongful Convictions has yet to conduct an in-depth review of any of these cases. Nor has it examined any of the major causes of wrongful conviction or made any recommendations for the reform of practices and procedures necessary to insure that similar miscarriages of justice do not occur. In fact, since its inception in 2003, the commission has not issued a single report.

Although the commission met an average of twice a year from 2003 to 2006, it has met only once since November 2006 and then only to decide that it would not make a recommendation to the legislature to compensate individuals who were wrongly convicted and incarcerated, despite a mandate to do so under Special Act 07-8.

The statutory commission chair and the official responsible for convening meetings is the chief court administrator. The Judicial Branch’s own web site states that the Commission “shall meet at least once quarterly”. Nevertheless, the Commission has met only once in almost three years!

Similar commissions in other states have done significant work. The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice held hearings and conducted studies over a period of several years of all of the major causes of wrongful conviction. That commission issued individual reports and a final report with recommendations for reform in all of the significant areas that contribute to wrongful convictions, including eyewitness identification, false confessions, informant testimony, scientific evidence, and responsibilities of prosecutors and defense attorneys.

The Illinois Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment issued a report with 85 recommendations for safeguards against further wrongful convictions, including evidence preservation, recording of custodial interrogations and reform of eyewitness identification procedures. In 2003, the Illinois legislature adopted all 85 of these reforms. The North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission issued recommendations for reform of eyewitness identification procedures in 2003, and the Wisconsin commission recommended a Criminal Justice Reform Package, which was signed into law in 2005.

The conviction of any innocent person is arguably the greatest injustice that can possibly occur in the courts of this or any other state and represents a major failure of our system of justice. As such, it is disturbing that those responsible for administering justice in our state have not given the highest priority to addressing the causes of wrongful convictions. While the rectification of a few past injustices is a wonderful thing, there is no excuse for not doing everything possible to guard against a repeat of such injustices in future cases.

It is incumbent upon the chief court administrator to fulfill her statutory responsibilities as chair of the Advisory Commission on Wrongful Convictions by convening meetings of the commission on a regularly scheduled basis and advancing the goals and objectives that are set forth in the statute.

It is also the responsibility of all of the members of the commission — including the chief state’s attorney, the chief public defender, the victim advocate, representatives of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association and the Connecticut Bar Association – to insist upon this and to zealously and vigorously fulfill their role of evaluating the causes of such injustices and pursuing those reforms that are necessary to correct a highly imperfect system. We urge them to waste no further time in undertaking this vital responsibility. •

Commentaries appearing above are produced by the Editorial Board of the Connecticut Law Tribune. The opinions are voted on and passed by at least one third of the members of the board. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of every member of the board, nor of the newspaper.