http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/nyregion/a-claim-of-innocence-is-no-longer-a-roadblock-to-parole.html
- In the past, convicted criminals sentenced to imprisonment who claimed to be innocent and wished to be granted parole faced a dilemma. They had to admit their guilt or be refused parole.
- The rationale for this was apparently that acceptance of one's guilt was considered a necessarily pre-requisite to the process of remorse and rehabilitation.
- I mention in passing that this belief was misconceived. Research has shown that, contrary to popular misconception, prisoners who claimed they were innocent in fact were less not more likely to re-offend during parole than those who admitted their guilt.
- But the main problem with requiring an admission of guilt prior to granting parole is that it violates the rights of those who may indeed be innocent to enjoy the right to parole. This is irrespective of whether the person concerned intends to appeal or take any other steps to clear their name or not.
- Most legal systems accept that there are cases where people are wrongly convicted. This means that convictions can no longer stand as irrefutable proof of guilt. If that is so, then anyone claiming they were wrongly convicted must be permitted to exhaust whatever legal remedies may be available to them to clear their names or to reverse their convictions.
- It is only right then that a convict claiming to be innocent ought to be granted the same rights as one who admits their guilt. It should never be that someone who claims innocence has to choose to abandon these claims and thus prejudice any right of appeal in order to be entitled to parole.
- This is all the more so in jury trials. Elsewhere in this blog I mention why I regard jury trials as bordering on the barbaric. http://siegfriedwalther.blogspot.com/2014/10/does-oscartrial-show-southafrica-must.html
- Apart from the fact that one is judged by members of the public, who are not professionals, the further problem is the absence of a reason written judgement as we have in South African criminal courts.
- Little wonder then, that appeals in the UK & USA do not enquire into whether or not the jury's finding was correct. Instead the grounds of appeal seem to be much narrower, concentrating on procedural grounds or grounds for review.
- In South Africa, at least, the judgment is not a simple GUILTY or NOT GUILTY. It's a reasoned verdict dealing with the witnesses, the evidence, credibility, the weight to be attached to each item of evidence, and the applicable law. This permits a proper appeal which is a re-trial on the typed up record of proceedings of a lower court.
- Unsurprisingly, miscarriages of justice are fairly common in US Courts, and although less so in UK Courts, they occur more often than they ought to.
- In a South Africa, the appeal court has wide powers and, it can essentially overturn the lower court's verdict if the lower court has erred and the verdict can be replaced with a corrected verdict of its own.
- Irrespective of the system however, the news that a claim of innocence is no longer a bar to parole in an increasing number of US States is a common sense development to be welcomed.
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