The Exoneration Hustle | City Journal
The homicide facts usually look something like the following. Two drug crews in Big City, USA are having a territorial dispute about who controls a certain street corner. Sam Bam Suber sees rival drug crew member Mark Shark Trowbridge dealing drugs on the disputed corner. Bam drives up in a car and shoots Shark, killing him. The murder is witnessed by a drug addict, a sex worker, and another member of Shark s crew. Bam borrowed the car from his cousin and has been seen with a 9 mm handgun by multiple other individuals on the criminal fringe. Because Bam simply drove up, shot Shark, and drove off, police have not recovered the gun, and they don t have DNA or fingerprints. At trial, the drug addict and sex worker identify Bam as the shooter, with both of them facing unrelated criminal charges for drug possession and prostitution. Shark s buddy, facing a ten-year mandatory sentence in an unrelated drug case, also identifies Bam as the shooter. Various witnesses link Bam to the car and the gun. Bam is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. This scenario describes a typical drug-related murder conviction in the United States.
Flash forward 20 years. Bam loses every direct appeal of his conviction. He is now into collateral appeals in federal court, the endless habeas proceedings of a convicted murderer serving life. But suddenly, a progressive prosecutor is elected in Bam s hometown. This prosecutor is a former criminal-defense lawyer who believes that no one should do more than ten years in prison and that all eye-witness identifications are flawed. How does this progressive prosecutor go about exonerating Bam, burnishing her progressive credentials?