San Jose Mercury News Series "Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice"

The subject of this weblog post, "Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice", was the overall title of a five-part series by the San Jose Mercury News from January 22 through January 26. It documented the criminal justice system failures of Santa Clara County (California) prosecutors, defense attorneys, trial judges, and appellate judges over a three year period.

The series segment's titles were:

• Part One: Review of more than 700 appeals finds problems throughout the justice system
• Part Two: Prosecutors over the line
• Part Three: High cost of bad defense
• Part Four: How judges favor the prosecution
• Part Five: Last chance, little help

The Mercury News described its methodology and overall findings this way in Part One:

"The Mercury News began its investigation in late 2002, as concerns emerged about the quality of justice in a series of high-profile cases. To test how the system worked more broadly, the newspaper reviewed the records of five years of criminal jury trial appeals decided by the California 6th District Court of Appeal -- 727 cases in all. In addition, the newspaper uncovered about 200 cases of questionable conduct that were not part of the study period, by reviewing files and interviewing lawyers.

The review established that in 261 of the appellate cases reviewed -- more than one in every three of the total -- the criminal trial had been marred by questionable conduct that worked against the defendant. In only about one in 20 cases did the defendant win meaningful relief -- either a new trial or a significantly reduced sentence -- from higher courts."

Of course, that was in California. This could never happen in north Idaho.

Well, we hope not.