It’s bad enough when a completely factually innocent man has to spend 10 years of his life in prison for something he had nothing to do with — that’s got to shock the conscience of most anyone. But these tragedies hurt on so many other dimensions. When Neil Miller was wrongfully convicted of a rape he didn’t commit, the real rapist, Larry Taylor, went on to commit two other rapes. These two women pay their own price for the sloppy police work that led to Miller’s travesty. And now it turns out that a new cost is being assessed in these increasingly common stories: the public pays out of its tax dollars.

After Miller was wrongfully arrested he sued the city of Boston over the outrageous practices they employed to coerce an identification out of a victim who initially was shown his picture and did NOT identify him as the rapist. Police persisted, suggesting that it was in fact Miller, whereupon she was shown another lineup. This time she identified TWO individuals; first, Miller, and then another man. The police then told her to “it’s best to go with your first impression”, effectively steering her to the man they had hoped she would identify all along.

Miller’s long nightmare came to an end when lawyers for The Innocence Project (175 exonerations to date) proved his innocence and secured his release. Thursday, the city of Boston announced it had settled Miller’s lawsuit for $3.2 million and issued a statement saying:

“[I]mproved procedures and scientific advances have reduced the opportunity for wrongful convictions like Miller’s, and the police department is continuing to evaluate its handling of evidence.”

And oh yeah, how did they eventually catch Larry Taylor, the real rapist? DNA at the scene. Duh.

As these wrongful prosecution stories become more and more common (see, e.g., this story), all of these costs will continue to mount and it will be clear that they far outweigh the costs of employing better procedures and available technologies. The lessons are there to be learned if authorities will just listen. I would have thought it enough that an innocent man was jailed, or that additional innocent victims were left helpless against the real criminals allowed to go free. But now the hurt is gonna hit our pocketbooks too. Maybe that will wake up a few folks.

Read the full story here.

RP

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 11th, 2006 at 9:32 am and is filed under News, DNA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.