Mass. Legislature should pass Innocence Commission bill
We just submitted a letter in support of Bill H. 1638, “An Act to establish the Massachusetts innocence commission.”
by Leah Sakala, June 18, 2013
We just submitted a letter to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary in support of Bill H. 1638, “An Act to establish the Massachusetts innocence commission.”
We wrote:
The experience of incarceration has a profound and lasting negative impact on any person’s life. Passing H. 1638 would be an important step to ensure that innocent people are kept out of the Massachusetts justice system. Furthermore, conviction errors not only destroy lives, but they also waste precious tax dollars that should instead be used to invest in the future by keeping communities safe and healthy.
There is no question that the criminal justice system will make mistakes. The question is whether Massachusetts will put in place a system to ensure that we learn from those mistakes and make wrongful convictions less likely in the future.
Want to get involved? The Massachusetts Conference of United Church of Christ Innocence Commission Task Team is doing great organizing to support this important bill.
It is a fact that many dollars are spent on those that have been blindly judged without recourse of the damage that it will later cost society to maintain that person as a productive part of society. It truly is a disgrace that our judicial system can sign away a life wihout realizing the outcome of that life when the person is an innocent victim of another’s premeditated crime(s). Mishandling of facts, careless communication of facts, neglectful case handling, allowing all motion’s to suppress evidence on the defense by the prosecutor’s side rather than exposing the truth on an innocent person’s defense are all a reality.
It isn’t conservative to allow a wrongful conviction knowing that it was wrongful and then just forget about it as the state does, yet it’s conservative to just send an innocent individual to prison regardless of the real facts that will be held back and never exposed. The justice system has failed its people as it has failed itself thus far.
With such passing of bill H. 1638, it will be assured that innocence takes precedence in one’s true liberty.