The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners – and clear evidence of a wrongful conviction problem.
No one can watch the Oscar-winning 1993 film, “The Fugitive,” starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, without rooting for Dr. Richard Kimball. We empathize with this skilled surgeon who lost everything while on the lam from “justice.” Falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of the murder of his wife, he finally won the most grueling of battles. He managed to prove his innocence by unraveling the mystery of the one-armed man who really committed the crime. In essence, he conducted the investigation the police didn’t while at the same time evading the dogged pursuit of Tommy Lee Jones’ Marshall Sam Gerard and his crack team of dogged pursuers.
Who could forget Richard Kimball cornered by Sam Gerard at the precipice of that immense dam outside Chicago? Before jumping a hundred feet into its turbulent falls, Dr. Kimball desperately pleaded, “I didn’t kill my wife!” to which Sam Gerard responded in exasperation, “I don’t care!” In the end, however, it turned out that he did care, though it wasn’t in his job description. The Marshal’s job was to return to prison a man whom a judge and jury had declared to be guilty, though we all knew that he was not. As Marshal Sam Gerard delved deeper into the case, however, he was transformed before our eyes from The Fugitive’s adversary into his advocate.
In flashbacks as Richard Kimball evaded the law, the film recounted the investigation by Chicago police detectives locked into a formula. It became clear to viewers that the detectives formed a foregone conclusion and investigated only Dr. Kimball. They hunted for clues that supported their bias and ignored many that did not. Justice was hampered by their tunnel vision, much like that in the cases I wrote of in “The Eighth Commandment” and “Walking Tall: The Justice Behind the Eighth Commandment.”
Both of those posts describe the cases of men caught up in webs of deceit in the criminal justice system only to be exonerated by irrefutable DNA evidence – often after decades wrongfully imprisoned. It seems that not a month goes by now without a news account of men – it’s been almost entirely men – spending a decade or more in prison for crimes they didn’t commit and had nothing to do with. The great danger for public perception of such accounts is that these news stories are no longer unique. They have become routine, and, as such, ordinary and less news worthy. That is a tragedy.
In September, Robert Wilcoxson, age 32, and Kenneth Kagonyera, 31, both walked as free men out the gates of a Texas prison after serving over a decade behind bars for a crime they had nothing to do with. It turned out that the man who really committed the crime – a man Robert and Kenneth didn’t even know – confessed to it after DNA evidence was finally tested and showed him to be the perpetrator of the crime.
In a brief news article in USA Today (“Judges free two men in innocence review,” Sept. 23, 2011), reporter Jon Ostendorff wrote that Robert Wilcoxson hugged his ten-year-old daughter, born just after he was sent to prison, and said that his immediate plan after more than a decade in prison was simple. He was going home to pray. Kenneth Kagonyera, who was twenty when wrongfully convicted and sent to prison, said he just wanted to “find a job, move on, and put this behind me.”
That’s easier said than done. In today’s economy, what chance for gainful employment does a man have when his resume includes a decade in prison? It’s a taint not wiped clean by exoneration. And for all the social justice blustering of the political left, we can thank the Clinton Crime Bill for gutting education and other training programs for prisoners – guilty and innocent alike – seeking to leave prison with some education and employable skills.
FALSE CONFESSIONS
A problem for this newest exoneration case is that Robert Wilcoxson and Kenneth Kagonyera had also pleaded guilty to the crime for which they were later exonerated. How can such a thing happen? I have come to know the answer to this, but first it needs some context. It’s an important context – to me, at least – since it applies to my charges and imprisonment as well. It’s a context that I described in “The High Cost of Innocence,” and one you would not readily see in any episode of “Law & Order.”
The context is this: the American justice system works in favor of the man who stands before it guilty of the crimes charged. The vast majority of criminal cases end with a “plea deal” and not a conviction following a jury trial. The real Catch-22 is that guilty people can often negotiate for lighter sentences in exchange for sparing the state the time and expense of a trial.
Innocent men, on the other hand, feel compelled to preserve their Constitutional rights to a fair trial and a presumption of innocence. But innocent defendants also expect the justice system to work so they risk a vastly inflated prison sentence if it fails them, as it sometimes does. Under “A Priest’s Story” on These Stone Walls, there is a very interesting article entitled “Father MacRae” published by the Quarterly Journal of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (Fall 2008). If you scroll down to Part II of that document, you will see a companion piece entitled “Why would a person confess to a crime he didn’t commit?” The point of the brief article is that the person rendered most vulnerable in our justice system is the innocent defendant. He is far more likely to trust police, prosecutors, judges and juries to bring about a just conclusion.
But the article also raises another dynamic. It attributes false confessions to the same phenomenon that often results in false accusations of abuse: aggressive interrogation techniques by some people in law enforcement. The article suggests a simple remedy: all interrogations and interviews of witnesses and suspects in a sexual abuse case should be videotaped. In fact, as writer Ryan MacDonald pointed out in a new article, “A Touch of Deja Vu,” the detective who choreographed the case against me videotaped and audio-taped interviews in every case he investigated before and after his case against me, but did not create a single recording of any interview with anyone in my case. It’s a strange aspect of this story for which there has never been an explanation.
It’s a shocking statistic, but according to another article In USA Today (“More states are looking to right wrongful convictions,” July 18, 2011) writer Jon Ostendorff cited that “Twenty-eight percent of exonerations nationally have involved defendants who pleaded guilty.”
TSW readers know that prior to being sentenced to sixty-seven years in prison, I three times declined a plea deal offer that would have released me from prison 15 years ago after serving only one to three years. So I speak from experience. Guilty people in this system are Often rewarded with a lighter sentence for being guilty, while innocent defendants can pay a traumatic price for maintaining their Constitutional right to a trial. One Constitutional expert commenting on my own case described this:
“A guilty person is better off being tried in the U.S. system, but an innocent person is better off in the continental [European] systems with their superior ability to get at the truth of the matter [with] 1. the active involvement of the court in pretrial investigation, and 2. the absence of the plea bargaining system with the pressures it creates for innocent persons to plead guilty rather than submit to the vagaries of trial.”
LET’S MAKE A DEAL!
When accused of a serious crime, the recently exonerated Robert Wilcoxson and Kenneth Kagonyera were two young African-American men facing a criminal justice and prison system in which their own race is grotesquely over-represented. They were 21 and 20 years old, respectively, and their claims of innocence counted for very little. Kenneth had been sitting in a county jail pre-trial for 13 months when he finally caved in. He had been interrogated repeatedly, told he faced life in prison or even a death sentence. “It just kind of wore down on me,” he later told a commission investigating the DNA results that exonerated him.
One need only look at the prosecutorial tactics of District Attorney Mike Nifong that I wrote of in “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” to comprehend how easily a prosecutor can build and carry out a case against innocent men. It doesn’t work this way on “Law & Order,” but in real life the pressure on a prosecutor to get a conviction, and the pressure on an innocent man to “take a deal” can be overwhelming. Again, the Constitutional scholar who cited my own case above described this:
“As studies by leading criminal law scholars have documented, the criminal justice system in the United States is set apart from continental European models in that it is not a system aimed at discovering the truth, but rather a system of “plea bargaining.” The overwhelming majority of criminal convictions in the United States are a result of deals made between prosecutors and defendants. The pressure on an accused person to plead guilty . . . is enormous.”
I faced such pressure before my 1994 trial, and it was from all sides. I can even now hear all the same dire warnings these two recent exonerees from Texas heard, because I was presented with the same warnings – even from my own lawyers:
“I know you didn’t do this, but I’m obligated to tell you that if you don’t take this deal you could go to prison for a long, long time – possibly even the rest of your life. Sometimes people have to admit to things they didn’t do to preserve their freedom.”
A BETRAYAL OF MERCY AND OF TRUTH
The lawyer was a good man, at heart, but like so many underfunded defense lawyers his pre-trial efforts went into striking the best possible deal instead of preparing for a trial. Refusing the state’s deals became even more difficult after my own bishop and diocese – anxious to settle with accusers and their lawyers – issued a devastating press release before jury selection in my trial:
“The Church has been a victim of the actions of Gordon MacRae as well as these individuals . . . It is clear that he will never again function as a priest.”
This is incredibly painful to write about, but the context is necessary. My stubbornness is often seen by others as an obstacle to grace – and it sometimes is. But even after being so condemned by my own Diocese, I would not give in. I knew that the goal of my accusers was money – nothing but money – and I refused to enable their greed by playing along. In a sense, my own Church and Diocese had saddled upon me a pre-trial prejudice could not overcome. The presumption of innocence was demolished by that press release, and a fair trial became impossible. Still, I refused to take the deal.
In the end, the prosecutor – who three times offered to release me from prison after just one to three years if I would plead guilty – stood before my judge citing my bishop’s own statement and demanded that I be sentenced to the maximum possible sentence: sixty-seven years in prison – more than twenty times the maximum the state had been willing to give me in a “quiet deal.”
This is what I mean by context. It’s how the falsely accused become the wrongfully imprisoned. The tide is against the accused, and in the case of an accused priest it just keeps coming, and coming, and coming. It is relentless.
And even after prison commences, it does not stop. Many readers know that after my trial ended, there were other false charges pending. The claims against me had been severed for trial. But, the state prosecutors had won. My attorney resigned in disgust even before my trial ended. I had another trial pending, and another lawyer told me I had a chance to win an appeal of the first but could not survive a second trial and he would not represent me if I insisted on it. The state’s prosecutor came up with a new deal: “no trial and no sentence at all” if I plea to remaining charges and end this.
I was sitting in a county jail awaiting sentencing to prison. I was cut off from everyone. My Diocese would not even accept my collect calls. My own lawyers told me I had no choice. What meager assets I had were exhausted on the first trial. So, post-trial, I entered into what I called – then and now – “a negotiated lie.” It was a lie that was extorted from me, but the lie was not mine alone.
If you’ve read my post, “The High Cost of Innocence,” you know that even then the pressure never ended. Prison itself has any number of sanctions to further punish those who do not admit guilt. I spent five years confined to a cell housing seven other prisoners because I would not admit guilt. The notion that men in prison always claim to be innocent is a myth. There are dire consequences for such a claim.
Writing for the National Catholic Register in March of this year, Joan Frawley Desmond published a superb two-part article entitled “Priests in Limbo.” In it, she wrote of These Stone Walls and cited my case as “perhaps the most publicized case” of a falsely accused priest who maintains his innocence.
I was utterly dismayed, however, to read in her article a defensive statement by a spokesman for my diocese who cited as justification for my imprisonment that “he was convicted by a jury of his peers and pleaded guilty to other charges.” The very backdrop against which this happened was created by the destruction of my rights to a fair trial and presumption of innocence by my own bishop’s press release. When Joan Frawley Desmond raised this fact, the diocesan spokesman had “no comment.”
It is the greatest tragedy of the U.S. Bishops’ Dallas Charter and its “zero tolerance” policy that it has inspired many bishops to cease to be fathers and brothers to their priests, and become prosecutors. The Charter does great harm to the relationship of trust between priests and their bishops. It does great harm to Catholic traditions and beliefs regarding the very nature of priesthood.
Please do not misjudge me as a disgruntled priest now taking on legitimate authority in the Church. Far from it, my own position is why I so admire that of Father Frank Pavone from Priests for Life – which is linked to on These Stone Walls. Father Pavone, faced with a penalty he deems unjust for a perceived offense (a rather vague financial one, not a sexual one) that both he and the Board of Directors of Priests for Life deem to be false and misunderstood, has publicly and clearly asserted both his intent to respect Church authority and his intent to preserve and protect his rights and obligations under Church law.
I bow to Father Pavone’s example of obedient, faithful, and truthful priestly witness. I bow also to his resolve to protect his rights under the higher authority of the law of the Church, for the Charter makes one thing clear now: some bishops will neither protect nor respect those rights. I plan to write much more of this in two weeks. Click Here for Fr Frank Pavone Updates
I bow also to Robert Wilcoxson and Kenneth Kagonyera who spent over a decade doggedly trying to take back a lie that was extorted from them and the freedom that was stolen from them. A lie cannot live forever. Not even a negotiated one.
“Do not be ashamed then of testifying before our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the Gospel in the power of God.” (St. Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy, 1:8).
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James P Guzek says
Hi Fr. MacRae,
Peace be with you. My heart aches for you and for those who are unjustly convicted and imprisoned.
Hispanic youth face much the same problem. Because of gang related issues, even non-gang Latino youth are often coerced into pleading guilty to things they have not done. As you point out, the system is geared to prove people guilty until proven innocent. Stay the course, Father!
Jim
Kathy Maxwell says
Dear Father Gordon,
I once read that following lunch, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was just riding away from his companion, headed back to court. His lunch companion called out, “Go and see justice done!” to him. Mr. Justice Holmes had his driver stop the carriage and he stepped out long enough to inform the other man that his job was not to see “justice” done, but to see that the “law” was carried out properly.
Unfortunately, that is the job for a judge. Otherwise he would simply use his own opinion to decide what should happen. We were founded as a nation of laws, because that is the only way to obtain justice in most cases. Unfortunately, the lawyers, who have a vested interest in making money quickly and easily, have twisted the law, added laws as legislators and figured out how to manipulate the law, so that it has become little more than a farce. Lawsuit settlements and plea bargains may suit the guilty, but they are used as extortion against the innocent.
Priests on trial face something reminiscent of the Jim Crow south; they are treated, as the blacks often were, as if the law doesn’t have to provide them with any protection.
Between the media, generating public hatred and fear with lies and the lawyers, pouring out of law schools in much higher numbers than any country needs, and expecting to become wealthy with relative ease and overreaching regulation by those who would control us, our laws no longer promote justice. When law and justice are severed, it is high time to change the law!
We the people have not lived up to our responsibilities and I pray that we can turn this around.
In the meantime, God bless and keep you Father.
Your friend,
Kathy Maxwell
Fr. Peter Lechner, s.P. says
Fr. Gordon,
Thank you for persevering all these years in your fidelity, hope and genuine love, notwithstanding all that you have had to endure from what looks like unfair accusations brougth against you. Surely it is only the grace of God that has sustained you – and in this you are living and witnessing to the Gospel in extremely difficult circumstances.
Many thanks and prayers,
Fr. Peter Lechner, s.P.
Fr. Peter Lechner, s.P. says
Fr. Gordon,
Thank you for persevering all these years in your fidelity, hope and genuine love, notwithstanding all that you have had to endure from what looks like unfair accusations brougth against you. Surely it is only the grace of God that has sustained you – and in this you are living and witnessing to the Gospel in extremely difficult circumstances.
Many thanks and prayers,
Fr. Peter Lechner, s.P.
Ryan A. MacDonald says
I much appreciated the spirit behind Mary Ellen’s and Veronica’s comments, and all of these comments are most thoughtful. The irony for me is that I happen to know that Father MacRae does celebrate his Catholic faith. What else could have kept him fighting on for over 17 years wrongfully imprisoned and cut off form the rest of the Church? His celebration of faith, in my opinion, is even more central to his life because of what has happened to him, and not in spite of it. And who among us would even be listening to him if he was never in prison? His imprisonment and the sheer injustice of it magnifies his celebration of faith like a lens through which we too can view it and be inspired. This post had great timing. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page today has an extended review of a new book called “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice” by William Stuntz. The review, by Paul Cassell, made many of the same points Father MacRae made here. It is not just our Church leadership that is broken. Our great democracy incarcerates people at a higher rate than Russia, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. Our rate of imprisonment is five times the world average. But we are the democratic leaders of the free world. I would say that system is broken.
M says
Dear Father G,
Your writing makes uncomfortable reading because the reality we are experiencing is painful. If our faith relied on ourselves alone we would all soon abandon it for we are all flawed creatures prone to sin ; it is only when we adhere closely to Jesus that we become what we were meant to be sons and daughters made in God’s image.
These can be disheartening times and that is exactly what the devil is counting on . Yet the more we face the painful truths of the situation we face the greater the light of God’s mercy and grace becomes if we keep our hearts and minds on Jesus through prayer and loving as he asked us to do.
The Church is us. We make up the Church. Parts of the Mystical Body of Christ are greviously wounded. It is the linament of our prayers and individual lives lived out in obedient love which will be the soothing balm to those wounds. We must remain on Calvary and not run away intimidated by the derision and contempt of the world as it mocks our broken and bleeding body.
Father G could have run away and told a lie and pleaded guilty to get early release Instead he has remained on the Hill of Golgotha with His crucified Lord. Like Father G we must stand firm and live out our own individual lives of faith with unwavering trust in the God who never fails us no matter how meagre our own love has been in return
For the mothers troubled by the drift from faith of their children remember the suffering of our Blessed Mother .She must have suffered seeing the timidity and even betrayal of Jesus by those closest to Him. She understands your worry and sadness Turn to her and Saint Monica You will be given to consolation and strength to persevere.
Thank you yet again Father G for your courageous life which helps sustain my effort to live the faith
Sheila says
It seems to me that for a very long time, the Church has been following the world. Yet, in grade school, I learned it was supposed to be the other way around. I have been reading TSW for a couple of months now and I watch Law and Order and other like TV shows and have learned so much. Every once in awhile, a show will have a dirty, underhanded Prosecutor lose his job for lying. Look at the OJ murder case. Why did he win? Because two detectives lied and a third pled the 5th. I watched every bit of that trial and it was full of lies from the so called “good guys.” Father, that is the way they work and that is why they expected you to lie.
Now, in our Church, I have come to the conclusion that we need to clean house. We have corrupt leaders, no doubt. They need to go. I can’t figure out why the Holy Father doesn’t clean house. This is so frustrating. I am so worried about my 44 year old son as he is getting bitter over all of this. We debate it all the time but he is better at debating than I am. He told me last night that he is taking his family to the Mormon’s on Sunday. I cried. It always comes down to the Eucharist. I push the Mass and Eucharist to him. I taught my kids their CCD except for 2 years. I wonder what I did wrong. I didn’t like the liberal CCD books so I used the Gospels, God’s very Word. Two of my children are doing fine but this one who is so good to me during my extended illness, questions everything and so much of it boils down to faith.
We must pray for our Priests. St. Therese said, “Every time you pick a pin up off the floor and while doing so, say,”Jesus, Mary, I love you save souls.” That is enough to save a soul.”….or a Bishop. I hope that everyone who reads this will add it to their daily prayers. Father God, please get the corruption and politics OUT of our Church. Please right the wrongs and may the Angels that got St. Paul out of prison, get Father Gordon out of prison. Amen.
God bless you Father. Your ministry is much bigger than you know. May the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary protect you and you are so loved.
Edward.Fullerton says
Fr Gordon, will remember you in my prayers, IHS.
Veronica says
Mary Ellen said: “I saw today that there is a new series by Father Barron celebrating Catholicism. Right now, I couldn’t care less. I do not feel like celebrating Catholicism prior to some kind of major transforming process. ”
Mary Ellen, I could have written the same thing. The only thing that keeps me going these days is fear for the loss of my soul if I walk away from the One True Church even though lately you’d never know She is by the way Her children conduct themselves. But there is nothing new in that, and it has been so since the beginning. I take responsibility for contributing to the mess we are in.
God give me the grace to repair the damage I have done!
Jeannie says
My comment blended too much of trying to resolve the poor who are accused wrongly and the moral who are accused wrongly.
I do believe that bigotry is a factor, but not necessarily as much to do with race as to do with religion and with class. Socialism touts compassion for the poor, while stepping upon them to advance cronyism and corruption; while it is wildly intolerant of religion because one Christian martyr can incite generations to devotion and tumble corrupt governments. Jealousy of such charisma must be a large factor in the persecution of the virtuous.
Jeannie says
Father, it is hard to take all in all of this. Like so much else in the world these days the imbalance in truth and justice seems so overwhelming. We have so many in positions of responsibility who every day transgress in a way that would, were they not protected by authority and money, land them in trial, evidence transparent and unambiguous.
Then we have those who have chosen the humblest of fields to do good and imposed upon them is this merciless intolerance, somehow due to their voluntarily taking positions without power or authority, primarily to help the many wretched to find peace in this life. There are no bureaucracies at their command and bonds and legislation are not theirs to impose, and yet THEIR influence is cited as somehow deserving of the most severe and swift incurring of prosecution.
It is too easy to borrow from the politicians and glibly cite race as the reason for this, but it is not easy at all to cite why and how we have so derailed our judicial system, other than the obvious rejection of the moral base that founded it.
At least in part you hit it on the head. Plea bargains can be viewed as victories for those in the justice system and the fraternity these days of politicians, lawyers and unionized prison officials makes for an impenetrable obstacle to open justice. The prosecutor is scratching the back of the politician and the politician is busy scratching the back of unionized prison officials. No surprise why the punishment that began with the lawyer ends up unending with prison systems that are allowed to call on ludicrous legislation that empowers the corrupt and entices the wrong people to join the totally unrewarding penal system.
I say unrewarding because there is no doubt that in a world fundamentally bereft of virtue and justice there is a vast amount of crime that needs redress and yet it is divinely ordained that not one soul is to ever be cast off as unredeemable.
In a world that is primarily secular, priests are fighting to maintain the dignity of and respect for the unrepeatable soul of each person. Working within a secular/socialist society, which sees people much as in the communist way, as labor tools with a set period of productivity and the rest of their lives as a drags upon the economy, it is not especially mysterious, though sadly ironic, that the most powerful see the least powerful as such a great threat and impose such hypocritical standards upon them.
These standards that are imposed on our good servants are impossible, yet they are boldly asserted by people whose glass houses are gossamer thin.
Without a belief in God chaos ensues. Yet how very curious that the most helpless are so bludgeoned by these people of influence who sneer at their ‘simplistic’ faith. These hypocrites, who confuse their responsibility with powerful privilege, view citizens as annoyances for the most part, excepting for those bothersome elections periods. Yet their disinterest in God does not extend to disregarding those who still believe.
They may have hardened their hearts but you either serve God or serve Satan and so it is impossible for those who have turned their back on God to leave those loved by God alone. A jealous ‘enemy’ will not permit it. It is ultimately this hubris which brings them down.
But they are not brought down nearly soon enough for many of us. And certainly not soon enough for you sentenced to endure their blind injustice.
Your story humbles Father, and your suffering frustrates and overwhelms me. The only recourse, alongside of never letting up on righting this wrong course, is to pray,pray PRAY to God to address what our rampant secularism has made nearly too much for human resolution alone.
God’s grace follow you in every hour, Father.
Mary Ellen says
Dear Father Macrae,
I became a follower of These Stone Walls during Father Corapi’s dilemma this past summer, while I was searching all over the web to try and figure out the truth of that sad event. At that time, you had referenced Father Corapi’s case, and I began to learn about your case, and your struggles, and since then I have been receiving your writing via email link. I have to say this period as been an awakening for me, and a bumpy one. I was very angry about what happened with Father Corapi; I can’t believe I didn’t have a clue all these years about your case and many others like yours, and my feelings about the administration of our beloved Church are prickly at the very least. Now, Father Pavone! I really do not understand why the public relations and legal aspects of church administration are so ineffective. One would think that the Church would be healthy enough to launch a vigorous commitment to its priests and to protect and communicate the truth. (I did not think I was so naive and unsophisticated.) The lack of unity and cohesiveness is appalling. I find once again that I have to fight my unconscious for my beliefs and not let “the Church” get in the way. I am extremely troubled. I saw today that there is a new series by Father Barron celebrating Catholicism. Right now, I couldn’t care less. I do not feel like celebrating Catholicism prior to some kind of major transforming process. Importantly, thank you for your amazing work!
jamil malik says
I have read a lot about these cases of wrongful conviction and fals e witness, but the one that troubles me the most is yours. You were not on on trial for a crime that actually happened. You were on trial because of who you were and are, because a deeper pocket was willing to be extorted at your expense. When I read that your accusers walked away with $650,000 for accusing you, I knew this was all about money. You were railroaded for money. You were sold out for thirty very large pieces of silver.