The Supreme Court has been asked to rule where responsibility lies in instances of wrongful convictions.
In the 70's, our justice system was undermined by a substantial amount of jailhouse informants who were promised various deals in exchange for their testimony saying they overheard a jail mate confess to a crime.
As obvious as this may be to the average American, reading into this situation was not something prosecutors were paid to do. Their job was to get a conviction and if that meant going to some sleazeball in the county jail and asking for their cooperation to help put someone else behind bars while offering to lesson their own personal sentences, then so be it.
Worse of all, they didn't even tell the truth when they were asked about making promises. They said that the informant was offered nothing in exchange for his testimony from them, but they failed to say if anyone else in their office had any deals with them.
Restrictions on jailhouse informants were in dire need of immediate changes and they were about to be put in place when the Legislature approved a bill last year. The last line of this article says it all ... "but in October Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. He called the measure "unnecessary" because this "perceived problem . . . arises in very few criminal cases.""
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