I'm reading the novel Creole Belle, by one of my favorite mystery writers, James Lee Burke. Ninety-three pages in, a few sentences stopped me cold: "People wonder how justice is so often denied to those who need and deserve it most. It's not a mystery. The reason we watch contrived television dramas about law enforcement is that often the real story is so depressing, nobody would believe it."
Those words took me to The Exonerated, which Poetic Justice Project recently performed. Playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen interviewed more than 40 people who had been sent to death row for crimes they did not commit. They chose six true stories to tell, including:
African American poet Delbert Tibbs, arrested in 1974 in Florida for the rape of a white woman and the murder of her white boyfriend. Mr. Tibbs was 200 miles away when the crimes were committed, but he was found guilty by an all-white jury and sent to death row on the basis of a jailhouse informant's testimony. After the trial the informant admitted to fabricating his testimony, in exchange for leniency in his own case. The Florida Supreme Court reversed Mr. Tibbs' death sentence in 1997. Not until 1982 did the state attorney clear him of all charges, eliminating the possibility of a retrial.
Sunny Jacobs, sent to Florida's death row in 1976, along with her husband Jesse Tafero. The white couple was convicted of murdering two law enforcement officers at a road stop. Their companion, Walter Rhodes, actually committed the crimes, but Rhodes had a criminal record and agreed to testify against Ms. Jacobs and Mr. Tafero in exchange for a reduced sentence — life in prison. After Rhodes recanted, Ms. Jacobs was released in 1992. Jesse Tafero died in 1990 in Florida's electric chair, a botched execution resulting in flames and smoke shooting from Mr. Tafero's head.
Gary Gauger, also white, was convicted in 1993 of the brutal murder of his parents on the Illinois farm they shared. Despite lack of physical evidence, sheriff's deputies decided that Gary Gauger had committed the crimes. They told Mr. Gauger that he'd failed a polygraph test (he had not) and that they had found his clothes with his parents' blood on them. They speculated that he had murdered his parents in an alcoholic blackout and asked him to imagine how he might have committed the crimes. The prosecution used this "vision statement" as a confession at his trial. In 1996, an appellate court freed Mr. Gauger. In 1997, two members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang were indicted for the murders.
We often hear of exonerations based on DNA evidence. According to Northwestern University School of Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions, the other frequent factors in wrongful convictions are erroneous eyewitness testimony, coerced and false confessions, police misconduct, and the use of jail informants or "snitches" who trade information for reduced sentences in their own cases.
