by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (June 1st 2011)

Cyclone of Injustice – Joyce Gilchrist

Joyce Gilchrist was once fêted – the go to analyst, but there was a hidden story. Gilchrist swept through Oklahomaʼs criminal justice system – a cyclone of injustice – leaving a trail of devastated lives in her wake. This included victims of miscarriages of justice and the original crimes too as well as the people of Oklahoma whose interests were betrayed by Gilchristʼs failures.

Among the cases that she got horribly wrong was that of Jeffrey Todd Pierce. He was convicted of rape, largely due to evidence manipulated by Gilchrist. Pierce had a strong alibi and no previous convictions. He lost fifteen years of his life for a rape he did not commit. There is no doubt that he is innocent as the real rapist Omer May Jnr. was identified by DNA testing, but May has not and never will be charged with the vicious offence that he committed.

Why? Because the statute of limitations ran out while Pierce was wrongly incarcerated. That is obscene. There should be no statute of limitations on justice, especially when it expired due the criminal justice system persecuting an innocent man. Whether it takes days, years, decades, or even centuries, there should never be a statute of limitations of any kind on the search for justice.

This is not the only vindication case involving Gilchrist. Even now, after her appalling practices were exposed at the cost of her job and others their liberty – possibly lives even – Gilchrist sees herself as the victim, outrageously claiming that she is being punished for alleging sexual discrimination, rather than her practices, which were hopeless at best and more likely corrupt.

Even the vindication of people like Pierce did nothing to chasten Gilchrist, let alone convince her that she was wrong. As with Michael Heath in Britain, the investigation into her practices slammed the lid shut on a scandal of epidemic proportions, especially regarding those who had already been executed.

Gilchrist could not have thrived in the grey areas of disclosure had there been an integrated approach between the forensic sciences and the judicial processes. Oklahoma put funds aside for DNA testing in the wake of the Gilchrist Affair, but the fallout was controlled, meaning a perfect opportunity to deliver important changes to the system that could have prevented repetition was needlessly lost.

The use of Police Laboratories is a case in point. There is no doubt whose side scientists working in those labs were on and were meant to be on. And that creates the conditions where ʻscientistsʼ like Gilchrist can operate, but Gilchrist did not function in a vacuum.[2]

The criminal justice system of Oklahoma is culpable too. Colleagues that opposed her were marginalised and accused of professional jealousy. Meanwhile, prosecutors loved her and senior jurists defended her tooth and nail. She flourished through this dark alliance of injustice.

She wrecked many lives with impunity and the system tolerated it and encouraged it even by failing to heed the warning signs repeatedly. At least eleven sentenced to death in her cases were executed.

Some were freed from Death Row, but the Gilchrist Scandal demonstrates the need for eternal vigilance throughout the forensic science and legal communities. Sadly, there are some experts who not only cannot be relied on to tell the truth, but are also not deterred from shoddy practices even with lives at stake.

Despicable

The death penalty has gone in Britain, but powers of life and death remain. Nothing illustrates this better than cases where there is no doubt about innocence because no crime occurred, or the real perpetrator was caught and convicted, or identified if dead. It does not even require a trial to ruin lives. For example the tragic story of Jaycee Lee Dugard claimed another victim.

Her step-father Carl Probyn witnessed the then 11-year-old girl being kidnapped by two people near her home in Lake Tahoe, California on June 10^th 1991. Nancy Garrido bundled Jaycee into the car that Probyn described, while her husband Phillip, a registered sex offender, drove the car.

School-children witnessed the kidnapping too. Probyn gave chase on a bicycle, but could not keep up with the kidnappers. After an eighteen year ordeal Jaycee was found alive on August 26^th 2009, having been kept captive by the fiendish couple for almost two decades. Her eighteen year disappearance had been resolved, but the girlʼs childhood had been stolen.

Garrido had repeatedly raped her and Nancy was culpable too. Jaycee had two daughters by him, both the result of the rape of a minor. The girls were told that Jaycee was their sister. They know the appalling truth now. The Garridos pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sexually assaulting Dugard on April 28^th 2011.

Investigative opportunities were missed and vital time was wasted, investigating Probyn, whose marriage to Jayceeʼs mother Terry was destroyed by the kidnap and suspicion directed at Probyn, who was not only innocent, but had provided solid investigative leads.

Consequently, Probyn is a victim of this disgraceful case too – nowhere near the same extent as Jaycee and her daughters – but a victim nevertheless. He was never charged, let alone wrongfully convicted or charged, but such accusations are soul-destroying.

There was smoke – hot air actually – but no fire there, although the suspicion still managed to burn Probyn, who lost his marriage and family to it.

The State of California let them all, especially Jaycee, down appallingly. She has been compensated and is trying to rebuild her life, but nothing can ever compensate her for that ordeal, or for the failed opportunities to rescue her.

Garrido was a convicted rapist and subject to probation visits and from police over the eighteen years. He had pleaded guilty to several counts of kidnap and rape and was jailed for 431 years on June 2^nd 2011. His wife got 36 years to life, agreeing to waive appeal rights.

While the overwhelming measure of sympathy and support must go to Jaycee, her mother, daughters, biological father and Probyn are victims too.

Vindicated

Horrid as it undoubtedly was to be wrongly suspected of involvement in such an offence as the kidnap of Jaycee Lee Dugard, it doesnʼt and cannot compare to actual incarceration for crimes committed by others. There are, according to the Innocence Project, over a hundred cases in the USA where the real perpetrator has been identified after a miscarriage of justice.

The American definition is however inadequate in our opinion as it does not include people like Probyn, but we have clearer examples that illustrate the point. There is no doubt about the vindication cases, yet there are no investigations of what went wrong – no attempt to understand how justice miscarried and why.

Not even attempts to establish if forensic science could have prevented it with one exception in Britain. But the USA is not alone. It has happened in Canada; it has occurred in Australia and New Zealand too and even in the Netherlands. Spain has suffered it too. Even China, Hungary, Belarus, Russia and a strange one in South Africa too have experienced them.

Absurd

This does not mention jurisdictions where the supposedly deceased people turned up alive and well later. Mpagi Edward Edmary spent eighteen long years on Death Row in Uganda for a murder he not only did not commit, but for a crime that did not happen. His cousin, Fred Masembe died on Death Row awaiting execution for this non-crime, untreated as he was there to be killed – an innocent man!

Meanwhile, George William Wandyake was alive and well, and even thought to have attended their trial. Why did the Ugandan authorities not demand proof that Wandyake was dead before trying, let alone convicting, innocent men of murder? Where was the compelling medical evidence justifying this prosecution?

It disgraces every concept of justice that this shambolic prosecution was allowed to pollute a court of law. It is also interesting that in all the discussion of human rights abuses in China, not a word is spent on vindication, despite a few cases where cases were solved by confessions secured by beating suspects until they confessed.

Notorious

A notorious double murder of police officers – they were executed – was solved in this manner. The defendant showed his injuries to the judge. He was sentenced to death, but it was suspended later.

Du Peiwu could easily have rotted in a Chinese prison for a crime he did not commit, but for sheer luck. The real perpetrators were arrested on other matters and confessed to the crime that Du had been convicted of.

It was a shocking miscarriage of justice in every way, especially regarding its victim. The man police officers tortured into confessing to a crime he did not commit was no ordinary victim of injustice. Du Peiwu was a fellow police officer, but that didnʼt save him.

Tolerating Injustice

There are other extraordinary cases of vindication in that jurisdiction too. If ever a criminal justice system cried out for an integrated approach between forensic sciences, investigative methods and court procedures, surely it was China.

These injustices were secured through torture, but let us not cast the first stone against China until we address the glaring flaws in our own system. We have tolerated rendition and the abuse of our citizens in the name of the ʻWar on Terrorʼ, while condemning other governments over their records.

By what right can we condemn other governments while tolerating these abuses and others that are ignored, undiagnosed even – abuses that shame and disgrace our society? We permit undeniably innocent people who have been wronged in our name to be treated shamefully.[3]

Let us remember Jaycee Lee Dugard and her family. They were betrayed by their own criminal justice system. No compensation can ever make amends. $20m does not return her stolen life and innocence to her.

It does not justify the failure to protect them – rights they had every right to expect and demand. Compensation does not, or at least should not, cater for their care needs. The psychological damage that has been done to them all needs to be addressed at state expense.

They were failed by the system that had a duty to protect them, so it owes each of them restitution to the lives that were stolen from them. And that duty extends to other innocent victims of injustice, especially the vindicated and that should begin here.

[1] An indication of the importance of an integrated approach can be seen in Equality of Arms, at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=690  for more on this case and others too.

[2] I intend to highlight the effect of Oklahomaʼs cyclone of injustice in a forthcoming book.

[3] I am currently researching a book on these cases and others like them, which I hope will be published next year.

Nothing Special

At first glance there is nothing special about December 16^th 1950, but it proved to be one of the most important dates in the history of British justice. It was the day that the veneer of deterrence was stripped away from capital punishment in Britain once and for all. James Ronald Robertson was not just another prisoner who paid the ultimate price for his crime – he was a special category of person who suffered capital punishment.

Robertson was hanged that morning in Barlinie Prison in Glasgow, but he was unique in the annals of people executed in Britain in the twentieth century. If ever a person should have been deterred from committing murder by the death penalty, it should have been Robertson. He was perhaps the most important guilty person executed in Britain in the twentieth century.

Why? Because James Robertson was the only serving police officer to be hanged in Britain in the twentieth century. So what brought a law enforcement officer to face the long drop at the hands of Albert Pierrepoint and his assistant Steve Wade?

The Road to Infamy

Catherine McCluskey died on July 29^th 1950. She had seemingly been the victim of a callous hit and run driver. Her body was left where she fell in the road. It soon became clear to Constable William Kevan that there was more to this than met the eye at first glance. There were no tyre-marks in the road indicating a screeching halt. There was no glass in the road from a sudden stop and McCluskey’s injuries were not consistent with an accidental hit and run.

It was a deliberate murder, which had been badly staged to look like an accident. The killer had not only hit McCluskey, but reversed over her. It could not have been an accident. The woman was soon identified as McCluskey when a friend reported that she had failed to return home to pick up her baby after reports of the death was published. Kevan was told that McCluskey had been having a relationship with a police officer named Robertson.

Investigations established that Robertson was supposed to be on duty on July 29^th, but between 11.15 and 1.30 that night he absented himself from his beat with Constable Dugald Moffat. The lack of an alibi soon became the least of Robertson’s problems. His car was a stolen vehicle with false number plates: the exhaust was damaged and the under-carriage was stained with blood and human hairs. He had run over McCluskey twice.

Disgrace

Charged with vehicle offences and murder, Robertson denied everything at his trial in November 1950. His defence on the car theft charges defied credibility. He claimed to have found it and driven it. A few days later he found the log elsewhere as well. Quite why a police officer would think this behaviour, even if true, was acceptable seems to have escaped him. They were still crimes.

His explanation of McCluskey’s death defied belief. He had met her that night. They argued and he drove off, abandoning her in the road. He then thought better of it and went back for her accidentally reversing into her. This explanation fails to explain how he managed to accidentally run over her twice. It took the jury just over an hour to decide that Constable James Robertson was a murderer.

The Ultimate Punishment

Robertson’s week long trial ended in Lord Justice Keith having the dubious distinction of sentencing a serving police officer to death. The execution was scheduled to take place on December 4^th, but a stay was granted while Robertson appealed. After the appeal was dismissed a new date was set, less than two weeks after the original date.

There was no reprieve, so Robertson became the only serving police officer to face the gallows in Britain in the last century. He was just 33 years-old when he demonstrated that capital punishment was not even a sufficient deterrent to prevent a police officer abandoning his beat to commit murder.

The allegedly ultimate deterrent had failed to stop a serving police officer unlawfully cutting short the life of a woman he was sworn to protect. Could it ever be taken seriously as a deterrent again after such a monumental failure?