November 18, 2004

Justice delayed not necessarily justice denied

Last night a fine thing happen: an innocent man walked out of our county jail. A truly, indisputably, factually innocent man. This man was accused of robbery and spent the last four months in jail. Brody, Chris and Gwen of my office believed in him and stood by him, and prodded and pestered the other side to get the forensics done that would prove that the man was telling the truth. He Didn't Do It. Handwriting analysis - not a match. Fingerprint analysis - not a match. That cool FBI analysis that triangulates measurements of the suspect in the surveillance photos and compares them to those of the defendant - not a match, in fact, off by over four inches in height.

So, a toast to the persistence of my co-workers. And a toast to my honorable adversary, who saw the handwriting (and the other test results) and did justice by dropping the charges.

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