Pubdate: Thu, 08 Aug 2002
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2002 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author:  Todd Bensman

FALSE DRUG CONVICTIONS MAY LINGER

DA's Office Says It Has No Time To Review Old Cases For Injustice

Thomas Wayne Williams was sitting in prison for the rest of his life early 
in 2000, alone in his belief that two Dallas police officers had framed him 
on drug charges because he couldn't pay them $5,000 in a street shakedown.

Then, in April of that year, the same Dallas County district attorney's 
office that put him in prison won convictions for the two police officers - 
Quentis Roper and Daniel Maples - on charges that they ripped off more than 
$125,000 from drug dealers and undocumented immigrants, often falsifying 
reports in the process.

Mr. Williams and at least two others imprisoned on long sentences on the 
strength of the officers' testimony later won commutations from the 
governor. Another 20 people had cases dismissed, many because their 
testimony against the two officers was needed.

Also Online  Fake drugs, real people: The evolution of a scandal. A News 8 
timeline featuring in-depth information, facts and figures.

The district attorney's office didn't seek out all who had been convicted, 
citing a lack of staff and saying it was up to the prisoners to act on 
their own cases.

Two former prosecutors, Clark Birdsall and Heath Harris, said other 
prisoners might still be in jail because the district attorney's office 
didn't investigate whether other cases made by the officers should have 
been thrown out.

"I don't think we got them all," said Mr. Birdsall, now an attorney in 
private practice. "There could be people down in the pen who aren't aware 
of the Maples trial or the Roper trial, and so we never heard from them."

Mr. Harris, another former prosecutor who worked on the corruption cases, 
said it was feared there would be an onslaught of prisoners seeking 
exoneration after the trials of the two officers.

"A big fear was once this hit the news that people would start making false 
allegations that money had been taken from them and they were set up," said 
Mr. Harris, who also now works as a private attorney.

First Assistant District Attorney Mike Carnes, in a recent interview, said 
District Attorney Bill Hill's policy is to not seek out possible wrongful 
convictions even when cases from the same questionable origins have been 
thrown out - a policy some legal experts say is flawed.

Such cases will get such consideration only if an inmate or an attorney 
brings them forward, Mr. Carnes said.

"It's up to the individual defendant," he said. "We can't do it for them. 
It's incumbent on them to come up with evidence that they were wrongly 
accused."

He said the policy extends to a series of Dallas police drug cases that 
were filed with the help of three confidential informants who have pleaded 
guilty to planting fake evidence on dozens of people.

Mr. Hill's office has dismissed about 80 so-called fake drugs cases, some 
of which were pending when they were discovered with laboratory analyses 
and which would have relied on discredited informants to be prosecuted. 
Other cases thrown out were those in which defense attorneys pushed for lab 
tests and dismissal on other grounds.

Mr. Carnes said his office would not seek out any other cases in which the 
confidential informants or police officers were involved beyond those cases 
that were pending or brought to his attention.

"Believe me, we are shorthanded," he said. "We do not have the time to do 
much other than what is required each day in court."

Some legal experts said the policy violates a fundamental ethical tenet - 
that prosecutors are obligated to do all they can to seek justice and look 
for injustices if there is reasonable cause to suspect any exist.

Bruce Green, Stein professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, 
has written extensively about prosecutor ethics. He said there is no legal 
canon that requires district attorneys to seek out wrongful convictions 
when alerted to their probability.

But expecting defense attorneys to return to their old cases is 
unacceptable because they might have retired, moved or died, Mr. Green and 
other analysts said.

"Here you have police officers where it's known they wrongly jailed 
people," he said. "To not examine that is not carrying out your obligation 
as a prosecutor, which is to seek justice. It's convicting guilty people 
but not convicting innocent people."

Mr. Hill's office did seek the dismissal of cases against at least 20 
people arrested by Mr. Maples and Mr. Roper. Court records show that many 
of those were cleared because prosecutors needed testimony against the 
officers.

Mr. Birdsall and Mr. Harris said that during the prosecutions of Mr. Roper 
and Mr. Maples two years ago, prosecutors were authorized to dismiss only 
cases in which the two discredited officers could not be allowed to 
testify. They also said they were told to get long prison sentences thrown 
out for two prisoners, but only because they needed the two men as 
prosecution witnesses.

Anthony Lynn Curlin, convicted of dealing drugs and sentenced to 30 years 
in 1997, was set free during the April 2000 trial of Mr. Roper on grounds 
that the officer's testimony at his trial was tainted. John Harp, who was 
serving 15 years on a drug charge, was freed on similar grounds.

Professor Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal ethics at New York University, 
said a district attorney with evidence of even one tainted case is 
obligated to mount a full investigation of all other cases from the same 
origin.

"Just addressing the cases that were pending, ... where the chances of 
getting a conviction is slimmest, is an arbitrary category," he said. "If 
his office has won a false conviction, it's his job to discover it and 
correct it."

Mr. Williams' case was already closed when Mr. Hill's office was dismissing 
pending cases, and prosecutors were unaware that he existed until, using 
news clippings, he persuaded a skeptical appellate attorney to take up his 
cause, the attorney and Mr. Birdsall said.

A twice-convicted felon, Mr. Williams was convicted in 1999 on drug charges 
and wound up with a life sentence under the state's "three strikes" law 
because of testimony by the two officers. He won release after educating 
himself in the prison law library and lobbying ceaselessly soon after the 
two officers were convicted. Mr. Roper was sentenced to 17 years in prison; 
Mr. Maples got two years.

Mr. Birdsall, who recommended that Mr. Williams' sentence be thrown out, 
said Mr. Williams' case would not have been reviewed if he had not brought 
it forward.

"I used to lie on my bottom bunk and look up and wonder how in the world, 
at age 40, can I live all that time like this, knowing that these two guys 
done got clean away with it," Mr. Williams said. "It was my word against 
theirs, and they were police."

Mr. Williams, who was freed in June 2000, is suing the two former officers 
and the city in federal court, seeking damages for wrongful arrest. He says 
he has stayed out of trouble, is engaged and has found honest work.

But he said the close brush with a life sentence in prison still has him 
rattled, and he shies away from people in uniforms.

"I'm just trying to be recognized as a citizen," he said.
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