The Long Arc of Injustice

By David K. Shipler

            Earlier this month, a black man named Anthony Ray Hinton, convicted of murder thirty years ago, finally walked free in Alabama, out of death row. The finger of guilt now points to many others: not just the real killer, who may still roam the land, but also hasty police officers, blinkered prosecutors, careless ballistic examiners, politicians who won’t adequately fund criminal defense for the poor, and judges up and down the hierarchy from trial courts to appellate courts. The case is such a cold window on the dangers of the death penalty, which if carried out cuts off all possibility of revision and reversal, that it seems worth posting excerpts here of the detailed examination in my book Rights at Risk:

The law is a labyrinth, best comprehended by the high priesthood of attorneys who fashion and interpret its abstruse language. No unschooled layman, standing nakedly unrepresented before the terrible engine of the criminal justice system, can possibly fathom the hidden dangers of error—or the invisible shields that offer unnoticed protection.

Hinton’s court-appointed lawyer, Sheldon Perhacs, was given too little money to hire a reputable firearms expert to dispute the questionable findings of a police lab, and was still bitter about it decades later. The “expert” he could get for the $500 the court provided, a one-eyed retired engineer who couldn’t operate a comparison microscope, had jurors laughing in ridicule. Perhacs needed $10,000 for a qualified toolmarks examiner from New Orleans, because the case against Hinton for two murders rested entirely on a dubious lab report. It purportedly matched Hinton’s gun with bullets from the bodies, but the results were more ambiguous than prosecutors let on. Perhacs could not mount a persuasive rebuttal without a true expert.

Fifty Years Later: Will You Get a Good Lawyer?

By David K. Shipler

Adapted from Rights atRisk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America

            Will you get good lawyering if you can’t afford it? Maybe, depending on where you’ve been charged. The quality of your legal defense will be determined, like the value of real estate, by three factors: location, location, and location.

            Fifty years today, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Gideon v. Wainwright that indigent defendants are denied their Sixth-Amendment guarantee of “the Assistance of Counsel” unless government provides them with lawyers. In practice, however, the effect of the ruling has been very spotty, creating a patchwork across the country. You’re better off in Washington, D.C., for example, than in parts of Texas and Georgia; anywhere in Alabama; and certain counties of New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. You’re usually more fortunate in federal than in state courts, and in local jurisdictions where indigent defense is funded by states rather than counties.

            Ask Anthony Ray Hinton. He has been sitting on Alabama’s death row since 1986, when his court-appointed lawyer was given only $500 to hire a reputable firearms expert to dispute the questionable findings of a police lab. The “expert” he found on the cheap, a one-eyed retired engineer who couldn’t operate a comparison microscope, had jurors laughing in ridicule.