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Petition Calls for Creation of Florida Innocence Review Board

12/15/2009 - Suskauer Law Blog - Link to This Entry

The effort to create an innocence board in Florida is commendable.  Too often legislators increase the amount of crimes as well as punishment in an effort to "do justice". Unfortunately focus and money is never spent on actually making sure justice is carried out properly. Public defender offices and court appointed lawyers for indigent citizens are drastically underfunded. The fallout is ignored. What is the fallout?  Innocent citizens convicted of crimes they did not commit. Nobody really cares about this unless they or someone they love gets in trouble and ultimately convicted of a crime actually committed by somebody else.;
 
Our criminal justice system, while the best in the world, is still flawed.  This plays out in many different ways.  For instance, there have been hundreds of falsely convicted citizens who went to prison who were ultimately exonerated with the advent of increased use of DNA evidence.  How did these folks get convicted in the first place?  Think about it.  How did all these juries get it wrong in the first place?  One reason is that often times the defense is crippled by an inexperienced underpaid attorney with limited resources.   Prosecutor and police are at an enormous advantage in that scenario.  Often times mistakes are made where police employ suggestive or illegal techniques in the identification process where a witness is asked to make an identification of a potential suspect. 
 
The public at large is typically unaware how illegal suggestive techniques may spoil and taint the actual identification resulting in the WRONG person getting arrested and charged.  It is up to the seasoned and well prepared defense attorney to scrutinize and discredit the prosecutor's case to properly defend his or her client.  For instance, in Nov. 2009 the Suskauer Law Firm obtained a not guilty verdict despite a burglary victim’s in court insistence that the defendant was indeed the actual burglar that he saw stealing from inside the victim's house. When this eyewitness identification was scrutinized by the defense in court, the prosecutor's case fell apart.  The jury was informed that the police actually told the victim that they had the suspect and they'd like the victim to come and ID him.  When brought to that location, the victim was only shown one individual rather than a group of similar looking individuals.  The process was forever ruined since the police suggested the identity of the individual BEFORE the ID was made. Additionally, the defense was able to establish that the victim recalled that the burglar had a tattoo below his ear.  The defendant had no such tattoo.  Despite that, the victim was "sure" he was staring at the guy that broke into his house.  Fortunately, the jury acquitted the defendant.   Not every defendant is as fortunate.  That is why an innocence board to help ensure that falsely convicted citizens are exonerated is so important.  Keep in mind that if a person is falsely convicted of victimizing somebody then the actual crime created a second victim, the falsely accused.  That is not justice. 

For more information regarding this topic, please visit: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/florida/story/1378371.html. 

If a client or acquaintance has been wrongly charged with a crime, have them call Suskauer Law Firm at 561.687.7866 or contact us via web. We treat our clients with respect, aggressively investigate the details of the arrest, educate our clients on their options and help them obtain the best legal outcome.