Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. (Andy Dufresne- The Shawshank Redemption)

Blackstone's formulation (also known as Blackstone's ratio or the Blackstone ratio) is the principle that:

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer",

...as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.

In light of the Christmas holidays, I want to end the year with a positive story.  This story is compelling because it is one of a great wrongdoing, suffering, hope, and ultimately---redemption.  It is the nightmare that turned into a dream. This is the story that warms the heart this type of year and I want to share it with you.

This is the tale of Michael Morton. He spent 25 years of his life behind bars based on the immoral and illegal actions of an overzealous prosecutor. As a result of many persons who did not give up on him, and believed in his innocence, he is now a free man.

According to the University of Michigan Law School, more than 2000 wrongfully convicted people were exonerated between 1989 and 2012. That’s right, 2000 people! When you think about the implications and horror of being wrongfully convicted and locked up for almost a third of an average lifetime (or even a day for that matter), the nightmare of that scenario is simply unthinkable.

After spending nearly 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife, Michael Morton was released on October 4, 2011, and officially exonerated in December. DNA evidence implicated another man, who has also been tied to a similar Texas murder that occurred two years after the murder of Morton’s wife.

According to sources, after celebrating his birthday at a restaurant with his wife, Christine, and their three-year-old son, on August 12, 1986, Michael Morton and his family returned home. The next morning, Morton left a note on the bathroom vanity expressing disappointment that his wife had declined to make love to him the night before, but ending with the words, “I love you.”

He then left for work at about 5:30 a.m., arriving half an hour later; his co-workers would later testify that he did not act unusually.

Later that morning, Christine’s body was found. She appeared to have been bludgeoned to death in her bed with a weapon made of wood. A wicker basket and suitcase were piled on top of her. The sheets upon which she lay were stained with what was later determined to be semen.

Christine’s mother told police that the Mortons’ three-year-old son, Eric, had been present during the murder. According to Eric, the murderer was not his daddy, but a “monster.”

Eric described the crime scene and murder in great detail, and specifically said that his “Daddy” was “not home” when it happened. 

Upon questioning the Mortons’ neighbors, police were told that a man had repeatedly parked a green van on the street behind the Mortons’ house and walked off into a nearby wooded area. Police records also indicated that Christine Morton’s missing Visa card may have been recovered in a San Antonio jewelry store, and that a San Antonio officer stated that he could identify the woman who had attempted to use the card.

According to Morton’s defense lawyers, none of this evidence was turned over to them at the trial. With a win-at-all-costs mentality, the prosecutor was determined to see Morton go to prison, despite knowing full well that there was evidence that showed him to be innocent. Truth be damned.  It was the  “notch in the gun belt” and conviction that the prosecutor wanted.

When the defense learned that the prosecution did not plan to call the chief investigator in the case, Sgt. Don Wood, to the stand, they suspected that the prosecution might be concealing potential evidence helpful to Morton. After the defense raised this issue with the judge, the prosecution promised the court that all favorable evidence had been given to the defense as required by long established criminal law principals of fairness and openness of evidence related to prosecutions.

The prosecution presented no witnesses or physical evidence that tied Morton to the crime. They hypothesized, in an emotional argument to the jury, that he had beaten Christine to death because she refused to have sex with him on his birthday.  At the time, Morton had no arrests, convictions, or history of violence against anyone, anytime, or anywhere---ever.

On February 17, 1987, Michael Morton was convicted of murder and given a life sentence.

In 2005, the Innocence Project and the law firm of Raley & Bowick in Houston filed a motion requesting additional DNA testing on other items of evidence from the crime scene.  

Not surprisingly, The District Attorney of Williamson County opposed the motion.  The court granted permission to test some of the items in evidence, but not others.

On June 30, 2011, DNA testing on a bandana found at the scene revealed that it contained Christine Morton’s blood and hair. It also contained the DNA of another, unknown male. The unknown male DNA profile was run through the criminal history databank and matched a convicted felon from California, who also had a criminal record in Texas and who lived in Texas at the time of Christine Morton’s murder.

Further investigation by Morton’s lawyers and the Travis County District Attorney revealed that a pubic hair was also found at the scene of the murder of Debra Masters Baker in Travis County Texas. Mrs. Baker was, like Christine Morton, bludgeoned to death in her bed. Her murder occurred two years after Christine’s death, while Michael Morton sat rotting in prison. 

During the course of the DNA litigation, Morton’s attorneys filed a Public Information Act request, and finally obtained the other documents showing Morton’s innocence in the State’s file that had apparently been withheld at trial and never turned over to Morton’s defense lawyers. At the request of Morton’s attorneys, the Texas Supreme Court ordered a Court of Inquiry into possible misconduct by the former Williamson County District Attorney who prosecuted the Morton case, Ken Anderson.  

Michael Morton was released on October 4, 2011, after spending nearly 25 years in prison. He was officially exonerated on December 19, 2011.

Ken Anderson -- Morton's prosecutor who in 2001 became a judge -- pleaded no contest to a court order to show cause for withholding exculpatory evidence. A judgment of contempt from the clerk's office of the 26th Judicial District, Williamson County, Texas, said the court found "Anderson in criminal contempt of court on the matters set out in the show cause order..."

Far different from the fate suffered by Morton, the former prosecutor only had to step down from his position as a judge and agreed to 10 days in jail. He then, in a cruel twist of irony, served only five of those days, because of good behavior behind bars. He also agreed to a $500 fine, 500 hours of community service, and the loss of his law license.  Again, a far cry from the years Morton spent wasting away in a prison cell.

It's "an extremely rare instance, and perhaps the first time, that a prosecutor has been criminally punished for failing to turn over exculpatory evidence,” according to the Innocence Project (a legal clinic affiliated with Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School).

The "historic precedent demonstrates that when a judge orders a prosecutor to look in his file and disclose exculpatory evidence, deliberate failure to do so is punishable by contempt," said Barry Scheck, the project's co-director.

The organization is working with the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and the Innocence Project of Texas to coordinate a review of Anderson's cases. Anderson, meanwhile, in a real show of class, has not publicly acknowledged any personal wrongdoing. In court, he said he couldn't remember details of the case, and that he and his family have been through false accusations over it. 

"I apologize that the system screwed up. I've beaten myself up on what I could have done different and I don't know," he said, acknowledging Morton's "pain."

In prepared remarks outside the courthouse, Anderson repeated that he wanted to "formally apologize for the system's failure to Mr. Morton and every other person who was affected by the verdict."

A statement released by Anderson also said, "This resolution resulted in a finding of contempt only. As stated on the record, this resolution did not involve any plea by Mr. Anderson to any criminal charge."

How interesting that when the shoe is on the other foot, now the disgraced prosecutor seems to have memory trouble and a problem with the “system”? No word lower than disgusting comes to mind at the moment, but I will continue to search for it.

Morton now works on programs to help other innocent people behind bars. He has turned tragedy into triumph.

Earlier this year, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed the Michael Morton Act into law, requiring prosecutors to turn evidence over to defense lawyers in criminal cases, upon the defendant's request, without the need for a court order.

The law will make the state's criminal justice system "fairer and helping prevent wrongful convictions," Perry said.

"Other people often feel far more anger than I do," Morton says. "Vindication is very, very good, but it's something I knew all along. ... It's really nothing new for me."

He had a religious epiphany in jail, and credits his newfound inner peace with the knowledge that God "loves me." I take a somewhat less philosophical view than Mr. Morton, I only hope that Rick Anderson finds it in his cold and rotten heart to acknowledge his terrible actions, seek true forgiveness from his Maker, and reach the higher state of humanity that Morton has achieved through his unfortunate suffering.

He's now close with his son -- and daughter-in-law, and granddaughter, who is named after Christine. "I've never seen a more perfect child," Morton says.

"Life has come full circle," his son Eric says. "...I do love him."

"The conundrums of life, the philosophical paradoxes, the metaphysical problems -- I feel like I get it now," Michael Morton says with a smile. "I understand suffering and unfairness. I can't think of anything better to receive than that. I'm good with this."

All I can say is Michael Morton is a better man than I think I could ever be. To have the capacity to be so terribly and recklessly wronged, punished unfairly, and still have the faith in humanity to forgive, is a story that should make us all take pause to appreciate all that we love and live for, and what truly is at the forefront of our hearts and minds.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

-Leonardo G. Renaud

**The Legal Sensei will be returning next year with more of the stories that teach us, inspire us, and most important of all---give us an opportunity to think.**

CHILD THRILL KILLERS

If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.

~Author unknown

       

According to the Equal Justice Initiative, thousands of children have been sentenced as adults and sent to adult prisons. Nearly 3000 children nationwide have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Children as young as 13 years old have been tried as adults and sentenced to spend the remainder of their lives in prison.

Is this really a moral or ethical problem, or is this simply the natural evolution of punishment caused by the desensitization of our American youth?

When I was a kid, we handled problems much differently from the youth of today. If we had a fight, we met after school behind the gym, some punches may have been thrown, or more often than not, there was a lot of pushing and shoving.  Very little serious harm was ever inflicted. Afterwards, we would all go to school the next day and life went on. We never tried to kill each other with guns or knives. That thought simply did not exist.

We accepted what our teachers and parents said, even if we did so reluctantly and did not agree. If we had problems in school, our parents met with our teachers, and issues were worked out.  We never dreamed of doing harm to our teachers or others. We knew if we did something way out of line that there would be severe consequences to our actions.  Those consequences actually mattered to us.

It appears that consequences do not matter so much anymore.

Something is happening to our children. The understanding of death and the value of life has become skewed.  I really do not know how this happened. Is it all of the violence on television, movies, and video games? Is it the angst caused by the breakdown of the family? Is it a lack of attention, discipline, or an ever increasing sense of entitlement?  Or, is it simply a mix of a lot of factors that have dangerously lowered the threshold of what acts children now find acceptable?  Honestly, will we really ever know?

The issue raised in this post is whether children who commit heinous acts should be charged as adults for their crimes? In the recent past, children were given more leniency regarding the crimes they committed. However, there appears to be a change in this trend because of the highly publicized brutal and senseless murders that we seem to be hearing about on a daily basis.

It may help to start this discussion with a bit of sad history. In 1944 the youngest person in the past 100 years in the United States was executed. He was a 14 year old African-American child. His name was George Stinney. His death came at the hands of overzealous and very likely racist law enforcement officials in South Carolina who charged him with the beating deaths of two children. The evidence against him was minimal and highly conflicting.

He was executed 84 days after the children were found murdered. At 95 pounds, it has been reported that the straps to keep him in the electric chair didn't fit around his small frame, and an electrode was too big for his leg. Executing teens was not uncommon at that time. Florida put a 16-year-old boy to death for rape in 1944, and Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio and Texas executed 17-year-olds that year.

As a symbolic gesture, lawyers for Stinney’s family are seeking a new trial based on a lack of evidence. Most legal experts believe that, in South Carolina, the verdict will never be overturned.

Back to the present.

A 24 year old Massachusetts high school math teacher was sexually assaulted with an object and murdered by a 14 year old student. He also robbed her of her credit cards and an Iphone. He removed her underwear and took it with him after the murder.

The teacher’s name was Colleen Ritzer.

Her alleged killer, Phillip Chism, was being held without bail after he was charged by the Essex County district attorney as an adult during his arraignment at Salem District Court.

Chism pleaded not guilty. His defense attorney argued for the proceedings to be closed and her client to be allowed to stay hidden because of his age. The judge denied the request. 

Sources say that Chism admitted to police that he had followed Ritzer into a women's bathroom at the school, punched her in the face, and slashed her throat open with a box cutter. He butchered her.  Chism then allegedly put his teacher's body in a recycling bin and brought it to the woods near the school. 

On to Nevada.

Sources state that a 12-year-old student armed with a handgun shot and killed a math teacher and critically wounded two classmates before killing himself at his Nevada middle school shortly before classes were due to begin

Witnesses described a chaotic scene at the school in the northwestern Nevada town of Sparks, located just east of Reno, after the gunfire erupted in an outdoor area as students were arriving for the school day.

"A kid started getting mad and he pulled out a gun and shoots my friend, one of my friends at least," a seventh-grade student identified as Andrew told local KOLO-TV. "And then he walked up to a teacher and says back up, the teacher started backing up and he pulled the trigger."

"The teacher was just lying there and he was limp, he didn't know what to do, he was just in a lot of pain," he told KOLO.

"And me and five other friends went to him and said come on we've got to get him to safety. We picked him up, carried him a little bit far and we left him because our vice principal came along and said go, go, go get to safety, get to safety. So we left the teacher there and we went to safety," Andrew said.

The slain teacher was identified by his family as 45-year-old math teacher Michael Landsberry.

On to Florida.

In Florida, 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazill was tried as an adult and found guilty of second-degree murder for killing his English teacher. According to sources, he “got off lucky” for the shocking murder because a life sentence had been requested from the court. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison.

Another Florida jury sentenced 14-year-old Lionel Tate, who allegedly killed a younger girl by smashing her body, to life in prison without parole. He said he was practicing wrestling moves on her.

The above are just a miniscule sample of instances of savage crimes that have been committed by very young children.

What to make of all of the above? Spend a few minutes researching on the Internet and the hair on your back of your neck will stand up.  Brutal, cruel, and vile crimes committed by juveniles appear everywhere. It has been claimed by some sources, that violent crime is actually on the decline.  If this is true, it really does not feel like it with more and more monstrous crimes being reported daily.

I will leave it to you to make your decision regarding whether you think juveniles should be tried as adults and receive sentences comparable to adults. On the one hand, vicious and savage criminals should pay for their crimes. If they happen to be young, that does not justify dishonoring and disregarding the victims who spend their last minutes on this earth dying painfully and violently. Nor, should the eternal heartbreak of their families be disregarded as well.

On the other hand, if you see juvenile criminals as pure products of their environment, lacking the capacity to understand the seriousness of their actions, or simply undeserving of the punishment that an adult would receive for a comparable crime, then your opinion of adequate punishment will obviously be influenced in another direction.

That being said, the execution of a child, such that happened to George Stinney, is unspeakable and inhumane. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this can no longer occur. In Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), the Supreme Court held that the minimum age at the time of crime to be subject to the death penalty is 18, thereby ending execution as a punishment for juvenile offenders.  At the time of the Roper v. Simmons decision, there were 71 juvenile offenders awaiting execution on death row.

My opinion is that if any person, juvenile or adult, purposefully ends someone’s life or injures them with no regard for the sanctity of life, that person should be punished in a manner consistent with their actions. We must not allow life to become a depreciating asset whose value is solely dependent upon the age of a sadistic criminal----- regardless of what known or unknown societal changes are causing certain younger members of our world to become deviant monsters.

-Leonardo G. Renaud

UPDATE: THE VIOLENT SHADOW OF THE CHEATING SPOUSE

And I’m here to remind you

Of the mess you left when you went away

It’s not fair to deny me

Of the cross I bear that you gave to me

You, you, you oughta know

~Alanis Morissett

The following is an update to my previous post concerning women who unleash their rage upon the men who cheat on them. As you may have read in my prior post (“Kicked to the Curb: Blood In Blood Out,” June 28, 2013), one must first be reminded that those who we love the most, can easily turn into the person we hate the most.  The second thing to be reminded of is it is generally not considered a good idea to cheat on a murderous wife. Too bad this second lesson always seems to be learned a little too late.

According to correspondent, Michelle Mondo, Francis Hall battled rumors of her husband's infidelity more than two years ago by posting a message on her Facebook page.

Apparently responding to some sort of rumor concerning her marriage, she wrote the following venomous filled passage:

“There's no black eyes or legal” counsel, she wrote in February 2011. “Wishful thinking on all your (expletive) hearts. Look at your own miserable life before you judge mine. There's a lot of skeletons in your closets.”

Her opinion concerning the apparent strength of her marriage drastically changed this past week.  

Yet again, the deadly love affair ends in death.

Officials deemed a traffic crash that killed her husband Thursday a homicide, due to an alleged love triangle among Frances and her now deceased husband, Bill Hall Jr., both 50, and a woman described by authorities as his “girlfriend” hit the public spotlight.

Frances Hall was married for 32 years to Bill Hall.

She has now been charged with murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in the death of her husband by running his motorcycle off the road. Sources say that, she has also been accused her of ramming her vehicle into an SUV driven by his girlfriend, who lucky for her,  wasn't injured and whose name and age was not released.

Frances posted bond on a combined $225,000 bail but was being fitted with an ankle monitor before release, which was scheduled for this past Saturday morning.Officials say Frances was driving her black Cadillac Escalade less than 2 miles from the family owned “Bill Hall Jr. Trucking Ltd.” headquarters.


After learning of her husband’s sexcapades, an enraged Frances began chasing her husband and his girlfriend, who was driving a black Range Rover owned by Bill Hall. One can only imagine the seething anger of seeing your spouse’s lover driving your husband’s car!

Frances is claimed to have purposefully collided with the Range Rover, forcing it into another lane and then struck her husband's motorcycle, forcing him to lose control and crash. Frances certainly did not stop to help. She continued to chase her husband's girlfriend.

On the surface, the couple seemed happy and content. They owned and operated Bill Hall Jr. Trucking Ltd. since 1989, which by all accounts was a very successful business. The website for the company indicates that it has a fleet of 130 trucks and offices in two Texas cities.

Investigators weren't clear on the status of the Halls' marriage. Public records showed the couple got married, both at the age of 18, in March, 1982. No divorce records were on file, the district clerk's office reports.

Sources say that in the two years since Frances Hall angrily attempted to dispute rumors of an affair in her Facebook page, the couple appeared happy in photos, often seen smiling together.

The happy photographs and smiles were only a thin veil of the turmoil lurking beneath their smiling faces. Recently, she included a new Facebook post — an image that appeared to be a message either to or from her husband.

The message says, “A pretty face gets old ... A nice body will change ... But a good woman will always be a good woman.”

Perhaps the following should have been added, “However, a cheating husband better not ride a motorcycle in front of his wife, while his girlfriend drives his truck.”

~Leonardo G. Renaud