By Robert Imrie, The Associated Press
Madison, Wisc. (AP) -- Investigators and prosecutors must avoid fixating on one suspect or risk convicting innocent people and eroding public confidence in law enforcement, former Attorney General Janet Reno said Thursday.
“There is a way to improve the system to greatly reduce the number of wrongful convictions,” Reno told a panel of lawmakers, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and law enforcement officials.
Reno testified before the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s task force investigating how Steven Avery of Two Rivers was wrongfully convicted of raping a woman on a Lake Michigan beach. He spent 18 years in prison before DNA testing proved he didn’t commit the crime.
In about the past decade, 143 people in the United States have been exonerated of serious crimes for which they were wrongly convicted, Reno said. She called that figure the tip of the iceberg.
“We not only want to protect the innocent -- that is the overriding issue, because no one wants to sit in jail for even a day in wrongful situation -- but we want to make sure we’ve got the bad guy who’s out on the streets ... and get them into prison,” Reno said. “We want to make sure we do it right the first time.”
During Reno’s testimony, Avery listened intently from the back row of the Capitol hearing room.
“She did a very good job,” he said afterward. “They need a different system.”
Avery was freed from prison last year. He was convicted in 1985 after a woman mistakenly identified him as the man who attacked her that summer. Recent DNA testing identified another man in prison for a 1995 sexual assault as her attacker.
Previously, the woman told the task force that officials in the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office didn’t want to investigate another suspect when doubts were raised about Avery’s guilt after his arrest.
The task force intends to make recommendations, including possible legislation, on how to improve the way police use eyewitnesses to identify possible suspects of crimes.
Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin, chairman of the panel, said he expected to schedule at least three more hearings before any final recommendations are presented.
Reno refused to pass judgment on Avery’s plight Thursday, saying she does not comment on specific cases.
She told the task force that detectives, supervisors and district attorneys should develop checklists -- what she called a “charging protocol” -- to follow during every investigation. The checklists should include lists of all possible leads, suspects, inconsistencies and details of confessions.
“It has to be as simple as possible but exhaustive,” Reno said. “Good supervisors can make a profound difference.”
Investigators should address the status of the suspect, such as whether a suspect has a mental illness or a child, Reno said. Their status could affect the reliability of their statements, she said.
Reno also implored prosecutors to confer with defense attorneys more and follow up on leads they might offer. More cooperation among adversaries in the legal system may uncover mistakes before they happened, she said.
“No prosecutor wants to convict an innocent person. Most prosecutors are not win-at-all-costs,” Reno said.
In other testimony Thursday, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Michael Scott said mistaken suspect identification by a witness is the biggest factor in wrongful convictions.
He said it’s easy for detectives to fixate on one theory and one suspect, and they need reminders to avoid letting witness statements weigh too heavily in the decision to arrest someone.
He said detective partners need to constantly critique and challenge each other’s theories, and investigators should be debriefed at the close of every case to evaluate what happened in the investigation.
Detectives face enormous pressure to solve cases, but they should also be judged on how their cases fare in court, Scott said.
Thomas Sullivan, a Chicago attorney who served on former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s capital punishment commission, said investigators should videotape all suspect statements to reduce questions about their procedures and keep confessions from being thrown out of court.
“It’s the equivalent of instant replay in a football game,” Sullivan said.
Gundrum questioned whether the state should mandate such a move because it would be expensive and might discourage suspects from confessing if they know they’re being taped.