Lake County State's Attorney Office

[StrangeSox]

This is a nauseating article. Closeted, echo-chamber worlds, a complete disregard for justice over winning, and some of the most bizarre theories I've heard.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine...ribonucleicacid

 

His theory for why there was sperm that did not come from Juan Rivera inside 11-year-old Holly Staker on the day she was murdered is, to his mind, simple and straightforward. She and her twin sister, Heather, were sexually active, Mermel argues, and Holly must have had sex with someone else before Rivera came along and raped (but didn’t ejaculate) and murdered her. There was scant evidence to support this sexual-activity theory, but Mermel dismissed that objection. “Nobody is going to admit to having sex with an 11-year-old girl, even if the statute of limitations has run out,” he told me. “But there was a lot of evidence that came to our office that these two girls were sexually active.”

 

An initial examination found no evidence of sexual assault in the case, and Hobbs never mentioned it in his confession. Two years after his arrest, though, a private laboratory hired by his lawyers discovered that there had been sperm in Laura’s vagina, anus and mouth, and they tested a sample. The defense lawyers immediately announced that DNA analysis showed the DNA did not match Hobbs’s.

 

When Mermel heard about the findings, he dismissed them and suggested that Laura could have got the sperm on her while playing in the woods, where couples might have sex.

 

Thankfully, this SA is resigning.

[StrangeSox]

Oh and Rivera's conviction was overturned by an appellate court recently:

 

In its opinion, the appellate court on Friday said the confession was highly suspect and was not enough for a “rational trier of fact” to conclude that Mr. Rivera was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. For instance, while prosecutors insisted that Mr. Rivera’s confession contained details only the killer would know, the court said that detectives had fed some details to him by asking leading questions and that some other facts had been made public in newspaper articles.

 

“The evidence belies the state’s argument and supports an inference that details of the crime were provided to defendant, intentionally or unintentionally, during the investigative process,” the opinion said. “The evidence further supports an inference that the details that the defendant provided were the result of psychological suggestion or linguistic manipulation.”

 

The court also noted that while the DNA evidence does not exonerate Mr. Rivera, it nonetheless “embedded reasonable doubt deep into the state’s theory.” The judges said evidence in the case discounted the idea that the sperm sample was contaminated. And regarding the state’s suggestion that the sperm came from an unnamed lover of Holly’s, the court said, “The state’s theories distort to an absurd degree the real and undisputed testimony that the sperm was deposited shortly before the victim died.”

[GoSox05]

Michael Mermel is quite the awful person.

 

 

We also need to change the way confessions are handled in this country. There are way too many stories similar to this.

[illinilaw08]

There are a lot of issues with the justice system as it's set up. I was once a prosecutor, so I can speak first hand to some of the issues impacting both the State's Attorney and the Public Defender's Office.

 

(1) State's Attorney as an elected official puts too much of the emphasis on arrests and convictions. In every election, your State's Attorney will appeal to the masses, not by saying "we did it the right way" but by saying they are "tough on crime" and touting the high levels of convictions from their office. In a high profile case like the one cited in the article above, there was public pressure to get an arrest and get a conviction. When jobs are on the line, people are more likely to cut corners.

 

(2) Too much of an emphasis on winning (this cuts both ways). The biggest problem I encountered were the prosecutors that thought every defendant was guilty and the PDs that believed every one of their clients was innocent. In both cases, instead of looking for the right result, the lawyers take a "win at all costs" attitude.

 

(3) Policy controls from top to bottom. If the boss tells you not to dismiss or settle a case, you don't dismiss or settle that case... no matter how bad the case might be. I can provide plenty of pieces of anecdotal evidence where the higher ups sent a line prosecutor to look foolish in front of a judge in the name of "policy."

 

In an ideal world, the PD's office should act as a check on the system. Their job is not to pursue innocence at all costs, but rather to make sure that abuses, like the ones cited above, are punished by a not guilty verdict and to ensure that coerced confessions aren't rewarded.

 

On the other side, the DA office would follow up on any and all potentially exculpatory evidence and evaluate that evidence in light of the strength of their case to reach the RIGHT result, not the preferred result (conviction).

 

Stepping off my soap box now...

[Texsox]

Isn't #2 how it is suppose to work?

[StrangeSox]

Prosecutors should be looking to convict the right person, not just any person.

[farmteam]

Prosecutors should be looking to convict the right person, not just any person.

 

But from a general lawyer perspective (and not just a prosecutor), you always want to be a "zealous advocate" for your client, just within, though sometimes damn close to, moral bounds.