Swift Justice

In response to, primarily conservative, calls for swift justice, there is a guy here in NC released from death row after 16 years, where he twice was hours away from execution. I'll bet he is glad justice wasn't so swift.  Turns out the DA neglected to mention witnesses that placed the guy at another place at the time of the crime.  Plus, our state bureau of investigation had in place rules that allowed them to report preliminary findings to the DAs, but if subsequent testing proved negative, they routinely didn't pass this info along.  The guy who was convicted was put away because a witness - who it turns out is now probably the killer - received a plea bargain to testify against the him.  Blood evidence was introduced which sealed the deal, until it turned out that the tests were false and subsequent tests determined that it wasn't the dead woman's blood on his clothes. 

The upshot is that this guy spent 16 years of his life behind bars, came very close to being executed, all for something he didn't do.  In addition, 100s of cases that involved our state's crime lab are now being reviewed because of this quaint practice of only providing the prosecution with evidence that supports conviction, while suppressing any negative results on that evidence.

The question I ask is - based on the numerous cases of people being released from death row due to DNA testing or the uncovering of prosecutorial misconduct - how many innocent people, who are executed in the name of swift justice, are acceptable collateral losses.  The Supreme Court has issued a "Get Out of Jail Free" card to prosecutors, because Harry Connick, Sr. (yes he's Jr.'s father) convicted a man through gross prosecutorial misconduct. Even though there were multiple acts of negligence and even distortion (a pattern that had been in place for decades), Scalia, Thomas and the rest of the conservatives decided that those little goofs, even though they almost cost a man his life, were mere peccadilloes and that the man had no recourse to sue Mr. Connick.  Now prosecutors know that they face no punishment for misconduct, so how likely is it that they will pursue a conviction using unethical methods if they know that even if their misconduct is uncovered the only one who suffers are the innocent who are jailed.

Swift justice does not equate to real justice, unless the purpose is to increase executions with the understanding that it is acceptable that there will be some innocents who are killed in the process.  If you can live with that fact, then may justice be swift for you and yours.