Herrera v. Collins

[Peter]

Courtesy of Cornell Law School (1993)

[Emsworth]

Sound.

There is nothing in the Constitution that states that an individual cannot be punished unless he is "actually guilty." The only constitutional rule is that there must be "due process of law" before the state deprives an individual of life, liberty, or property. As long as the appropriate procedures are followed, the federal judges are powerless to intervene, even if they subjectively believe that the jury reached the wrong decision.

[Sam Spade]

What Emsworth said.

[Peter]

It is a curious system of Justice that allows a guilty man to go free because of procedural errors in his trial, but that fails to free an innocent man simply because the evidence that would exonerate him was not known at the time of the trial.

Let me start by saying that like every Justice on that Court, I do not think that the evidence that the Herrera puts forward would solicit the need for a more searching review of his initial trial.

The Supreme Court has protected capital defendants who had bad lawyers, who are mentally retarded, who were minors, factors that have no bearing on whether they actually commited the offence. Yet for reasons passing understanding, the Court fails to protect those may be able to prove their innocence.

Certainly we can assume that Herrera had procedural "due process" - presumably he got a fair jury trial, with a competent lawyer and that all t's were crossed and all i's dotted. Even then, no criminal statute in the land envisions denying liberty from those who are actually innocent.

To borrow from William Blackstone, whose Commentaries Emsworth is so fond of quoting, it is essentially fundamental to our system of justice that "better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer". A maxim since the founding of the Republic, it can no doubt survive the substantive due process test of being "deeply rooted in the Nation's history" and is certainly "implicit in ordered liberty".

You might accuse me of activism in trying to set innocent people free, but I have never met a more worthy cause of activism.

[Emsworth]

It is undoubtedly unfair to imprison a man for a crime that he did not commit. However, unfairness and unconstitutionality are very different things.

It should be observed that there is not a single clause in the Constitution that states that an individual may not be punished for a crime if he is "actually innocent." I would ask, what exactly is the meaning of the phrase "actually innocent"? The courts are not omniscient; they cannot know whether each defendant is "actually guilty," or "actually innocent." Innocent men will be imprisoned from time to time. This is highly unjust, but no provision of the Constitution has been violated.

An equally important point is that the courts are not responsible for redressing every single injustice. The executive branch normally possesses the power to pardon--and if the executive branch does not act, then the legislature may do so.

[Peter]

Obviously the Courts cannot know absolutely whether a defendant is guilty or not - there would be no need for juries if that were the case. When the evidence presented does not change, I see no reason for another Court to revisit the decision of a jury and that decision should be defered to. However, when the evidence changes, e.g. new evidence comes to light or forensic testing allows for more to be gleaned from the existing evidence, then the jury has not made its decision in light of all the facts.

I do not seek an "actually guilty" condition for punishment, I seek a "guilty beyound reasonable doubt" condition, which lo and behold is the same one used by the Justice system. If new evidence can influence whether there is reasonable doubt, a Court should consider it.