The 'Ick' Test

Newsweek had an article about the Charles Dean
Hood case and suggested that it didn't meet the
"ick' test. The New York Times also discussed it
in an article at that can be found http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/us/23bar.html.

Hood was tried and convicted in Texas of murder,
and sentenced to death. Without commenting on the
validity of the case itself, the fact that the judge
and the prosecutor had slept together, despite being
married to other partners, throws such a taint over
the entire process that it should be thrown out and
the entire process started from scratch. The case is
well over 20 years old.

There's a certain arrogance about judges and their
misconduct that runs rampant in this country. Even
the US Supreme Court isn't above such arrogance as
they refused to consider the Hood case. Some 21 former
judges and prosecutors filed briefs, along with some
30 experts in legal ethics, all supporting a retrial.
But the Supreme Court didn't want to get involved
despite Hood's previous close calls with the
executioner.

I was still living in Illinois when a review by the
governor's office of all the death penalty inmates on
death row demonstrated clearly that each had been
wrongfully convicted. DNA evidence played a large role
in a number of cases. There were, at that time, 13
individuals on death row. The next day, death row was
empty, and all 13 had been released to the street
because it was clear that they were innocent. It wasn't
that the conviction was questionable, it was a case
of wrongful conviction in every case. When Blagojevich
took office in Illinois one of his announced priorities
was to fix the broken judicial system such that Illinois
could reinstate the death penalty. He took office in
2003. During the six year period during which he was
governor he was unable to achieve that goal.

The problem, of course, is that when a legal system
gets too efficient it also becomes too easily
corruptible, whether the judge is sleeping with the
prosecutor or not. And at the same time the system,
as a whole, becomes arrogant, unwilling to admit
that errors in judgment can, and do, happen at every
stage of the process.

If we were only dealing with these issues in capital
cases the correction might be easier, but the simple
fact is that we have the same system at work in all
cases, even down to a case as simple and straight
forward as a dog bite, the topic of a multi-part
series of articles that will be appearing here soon.

The only reason that Michigan has not had a drastic
review and revision to the judicial system is that
Michigan has banned capital punishment since 1846 which
itself is a good thing considering how screwed up our
legal system is, but the net result is that corruption
grew quietly and out of the mind and sight of the
majority of our citizens.

It is time. It is past time for a thorough overhaul.

Bill Vajk