Lab Reports Show Hundreds “Convicted in Error” For Drug Offenses
From the article:
Meanwhile, the public defender’s office says it’s still scrambling to handle the influx of defendants trying to clear their records. “Obviously, if it’s a person’s only felony offense, there are very significant collateral consequences,” said Nicolas Hughes, an assistant public defender who’s been tasked with handling the cases. “It could have changed the trajectory of someone’s life.”
For instance, even a misdemeanor marijuana conviction can have life-altering ripple effects. Defendants could have been denied student loans. “There could be job consequences,” Hughes said. “What if someone had been an educator or something like that? Even a whiff of that could end somebody’s career.”
Hughes says part of the problem is there’s no standard protocol for what happens when a negative lab report comes back after someone’s already been convicted.
Convicted without evidence ?
Filed under: General Problems
You have a portion of these people who know they are innocent but cant afford good legal help and have to rely on an overworked public defender system. You have overzealous prosecutors looking to up their conviction numbers to keep getting re elected and overzealous/overworked police depts (take your pick, there are probably more great overworked cops than bad ones). So the overzealous prosecutors pressure for the plea deals and the judges also like those because their calendars are full, hence alot of innocent people plead to things they didnt do and our legal system is one big SNAFU!!
I think the wrong people were sent to jail. It is the cops that falsely accused and had these folks sent to jail that should be in jail. Our legal system is a mess. We have known this for a long time, but it seems that it continues to get worse.