Blog 16- Speech Amanda Byerman

“You are under arrest for the rape and murder of Teresa Halbach.”  

 These words, in November of 2005, came as an electric shock obliterating Wisconsin man Stephen Avery’s security and imperiling any future he could have dreamed. Mr. Avery, whose story was told in the groundbreaking Netflix documentary “Making a Murderer,” had already served 18 years in prison after being wrongly accused for rape and attempted murder, and was exonerated by new DNA evidence. Less than two years later, in the midst of filing a lawsuit against the Manitowoc County sheriff’s department, Avery had been picked up once again: this time, for the rape and murder of photojournalist Teresa Halbach. 

Consider the power that the state has over each of us.  We enter into a social contract in our society, entrusting the government to protect us and to treat us fairly.  We pay our taxes, we elect our representatives, and in return we trust our government to police our society and, when infractions are observed, to dispassionately adjudicate guilt and innocence with fairness.  Our criminal justice system is that blindfolded lady liberty, holding the scales of justice, weighing the evidence proving our guilt with the evidence exonerating us from the accusations.

“Making a Murderer,” filmed over the 10 year course of Avery’s accusation, conviction, and later imprisonment, sparked outrage across America. The course of the investigation into Mr. Avery traced an incongruous course, from the suspicious circumstances surrounding his accusation and arrest, to the clear prejudgement of the the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department, to the inappropriate questioning and later arrest of Avery’s learning-disabled and vulnerable nephew, Brendan Dassey.  Each of these issues struck a chord with the American public. The national conversation triggered by this documentary, while worthwhile, remains at this point disappointingly limited.  Because while the issues addressed by this documentary involve specific people, in a specific county, about a specific case, they by no means are limited to these circumstances.  These are issues that reach all of us, from those in the corridors of power to those in the backwaters of suburban Lexington.  We are all potential victims, but some in our society are far more likely to be victimized.

Let’s turn now to one of the biggest issues faced by Stephen Avery: his inept and clearly incapable representation in court.  This issue of ineffective counsel is all too widespread in the American justice system today. The sixth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees every defendant a right to counsel, a right to be thoroughly and expertly represented by a capable and well-equipped lawyer, regardless of the defendant’s socio-economic situation. The Innocence Project is a non-profit organization that works to ensure justice for those wrongfully convicted.  The Innocence Project’s groundbreaking 2010 study, overseen by Director of Research Dr. Emily West, examined 250 cases of wrongful conviction where defendants were exonerated with DNA evidence.  Of those 250 cases, more than one in five defendants had ineffective counsel.

One... in five.  We sometimes refer to divergent moments in our lives as a roll of the dice, but according to this research you have a worse chance with your legal representation -- where your life can hang in the balance -- than you have of rolling a die and predicting the result.

It should not be like this.  It cannot be like this if America is to retain its role as a beacon of liberty in the world.  

Now let’s look at who is victimized by these injustices.  It is all too often the case that those least fortunate, those most dependent on assistance, defendants who rely upon public defenders for representation, are more likely to be ineffectively represented through their trials.  Highly successful attorneys can charge hundreds of dollars per hour for their counsel, literally charging more for an hour’s work than most Americans make in a full day.  All too often, those without savings turn to public defenders, who have noble roles but are massively overworked and underpaid in our beleaguered criminal justice system.  We know these issues are real.  The numbers don’t lie.  Public defenders have caseloads of dozens of cases a day, hundreds a week, thousands a year.  But sadly, amid budget tightening, it is often the public defender that is left to cope and to attempt to take on the impossible.

Further,  as stated in the Georgetown Law Review, Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit “advocates careful study of exonerations, of which there have been 1,576 since 1989. And for every one “there may be dozens who are innocent but cannot prove it.” If the error rate is 1 percent, 22,000 innocent people are in prison. If the rate is 5 percent, the number is 110,000. Whatever the number, it almost certainly is disproportionately African-American.” We must take these factors into account every time we critically look at the issues in our justice system. 

Every person on the visual behind me has been failed by our justice system- some of them were wrongfully convicted and later exonerated able to once again feel the joy of the sunlight on their skin as free people, and some were exonerated too late, only after they had already been executed or died of natural causes. This is 28 lives who were changed forever as a result of a miscarriage of justice, including Stephen Avery and his nephew, pictured at the bottom. 

As discouraging as it may seem, we can fix this problem by investing more in our criminal justice system.  Unfortunately, it is those with the least political capital, those with the fewest political connections, those that are least likely to be political donors and politically connected who are least likely to be persuasive in advocating for this investment. 

What we need in this country is to be inspired once again by the majesty of our criminal justice system.  What we need is civic education that teaches schoolchildren how the system works.  What we need is faith that the system works.  What we need is hope.  But that hope is blunted by a wall of cynicism and skepticism that has permeated every part of our nation’s politics.  According to a 2015 study by the Harvard University Institute of Politics, nearly one half of 18 to 29 year olds believe the US justice system is unfair. Even more disturbing is that this sentiment is starkly divided along racial lines. Two-thirds of African American respondents didn’t believe that the American justice system truly is just, and over half of hispanic respondents feel the same.  Even 40% of white people -- typically the most advantaged in our segregated society, have lost faith in the fairness of our system.  We have seen far too many examples of injustice, and we have lost sight that our system is at its best when it’s not clouded by fear, but informed by truth.  We need to inform ourselves, and inform others, to ensure that we retain those core values upon which our country was founded.

We can throw money at this problem and hope to fix it by investing in public defender offices.  We can institute reforms to make it easier to utilize DNA to re-examine cold cases.  We can ensure that police have the training they need to defuse conflicts and reduce recidivism.  But none of these changes can move the dial and solve the underlying issues unless we address a more fundamental problem.  

We must again believe.  We must believe in each other.  We must believe in the 

potential of every individual.  We must believe in the ability to be reformed.  We

 must believe that the fair administration of justice is possible.  Our criminal justice system has a deep-seated disease, and we treating the symptoms.  That disease is cynicism and it eats away at our confidence.  Every person in this room has the ability to help combat that cynicism.  If every one of us leave this room with a renewed commitment to extolling the virtues of true justice and advocating for positive change, we can change the narrative and lay the groundwork for meaningful, and effective, criminal justice reform.