By 
Whenever an innocent person is proven wrongly convicted, which is far more often than any of us would like to admit, we are quick to blame it on some evil authority figure. According to Mark Godsey, a former prosecutor who now runs the Ohio Innocence Project, there is no such sinister antagonist, only humans who behave like humans.
In his new book Blind Injustice, Godsey not only explains how wrongful convictions happen, but also provides some relatively simple and inexpensive ways to greatly reduce these tragic cases. Because he served for many years as a prosecutor in New York, Godsey has been able to empathize with the courts and at the same time sympathize with victims of wrongful incarceration.
Most people hearing about someone like Ricky Jackson, who served nearly forty years in an Ohio prison for a crime he did not commit, regret it for a few seconds without ever thinking that such a parody could one day affect them too. However, more than 2,000 convictions have been overturned by evidence such as DNA testing since 1989.
The reasons for so many tragic judicial errors are primarily psychological and political, according to the book. Prosecutors, along with judges and juries, are human beings and therefore prone to mistakes.
Among those errors, Godsey argues, are blonde denial, blind bias, and blind memory, all of which are often the only alleged evidence a prosecutor uses in his effort to obtain a conviction against the defendant. The book offers several tests, each of which I failed, to point out how unreliable those three concepts can be in determining truth.
Political factors also contribute to many of the false incarcerations, especially since many judges and prosecutors are elected officials. The public naturally wants to feel safe, which is why candidates who have reputations or agendas that don’t get the highest vote totals the most.
Therefore, the more convictions a prosecutor can accumulate, the better their chances of keeping their position. Instead of asking how many innocent people it could have gotten jailed, the society only asks about the number if they were guilty or not.
Godsey, due to his long service as a prosecutor in New York, understands these factors. There is tremendous pressure on legal authorities to bring justice to a less patient public as quickly as possible. Perhaps this is why everyone, not just law students and family members of victims of injustice, should read Blind Injustice.
Godsey models patience in both his content and his writing style throughout this book. The innocent victims that he and various state Innocence Projects have released, of course, have no choice but to be patient, as they spend years behind bars.
On the other hand, prosecutors need to be more patient themselves, and that also leads directly to the public. We must fight the human desire for speedy justice in favor of the protection of the innocent, relying on science rather than humans to determine guilt.