Convicted by media, exonerated by prosecutors

A case out of Houston gives Grits modest hope that some of the innocence-related criminal justice reforms implemented in recent years are beginning to pay off, not just by creating procedural changes but changing the culture of how police and prosecutors approach evidence. In a horrific case last month, an 11-year old boy was brutally stabbed to death and police arrested the wrong guy. Eventually, charges were dropped after his alibi was confirmed, reported the Houston Chronicle. So in this case, law enforcement did the right thing. The press, though, not so much.

In a May 18 story, the Chron's Dane Schiller reported that, "the 11-year-old was savagely attacked, without apparent provocation, by a man with a history of mental illness" who they identified as Che Lajuan Calhoun. The paper informed readers Calhoun was homeless, though he was staying with his fiance in Pearland the night of the attack. Schiller reported that he had a "string of arrests ... since 2012, for making terroristic threats, assaults, violating a protective order and resisting arrest." A story the next day said neighbors, when told of these arrests (by the reporter), were "wondering how Calhoun built such a long criminal history so short on punishment." 

Schiller also suggested the man suffered from mental illness, but with only the barest of support for the premise: "a judge appointed an attorney with experience at handling mental health issues and ordered mental health records be released from the county about his mental competency, court records show." However, Calhoun apparently was never declared incompetent and it's impossible to know what was in those records.

Even more damning, there was not the slightest reference in the story even to the possibility that the person arrested might not be the killer until the cops issued another press release.

One is reminded of the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, who insisted on having the sentence pronounced first and the verdict after. Similarly, the press too often, as here, would have us issue convictions first, investigations after. It's an unhelpful dynamic.

That sort of convict-em-first coverage probably contributes as much to wrongful convictions in high-profile cases as errors by police and prosecutors. Many of Texas' DNA exonerees had perfectly good alibis that checked out but which police, prosecutors and ultimately juries ignored in the face of eyewitness evidence. In those cases, like this one, the media had assumed from the get-go that the arrested man was the real killer and widely touted his guilt, even though he'd only been accused and nothing had been proven.

But remarkably, in this case, when evidence was presented that confirmed Calhoun's alibi, he was released. Despite the eyewitness. Despite media having already pronounced his guilt in their coverage, and despite the cops having already claimed credit for getting their man. There are plenty of guys with alibis just as strong who had to wait decades for DNA evidence to clear their names. Maybe it says something about changing law-enforcement culture if eyewitness testimony is no longer considered an absolute gold standard but just another piece of evidence which may be confirmed or denied by others. The episode perhaps bespeaks a greater appreciation of the dangers of tunnel vision and confirmation bias than law enforcement has demonstrated in the past.

When the wrong person is accused of a heinous crime, it's a double tragedy. An innocent person is punished while a guilty one goes free. So getting it right earlier than later in the process is particularly important.

It's a small moment, just one case, but perhaps a cause for optimism. For once, cops and prosecutors passed the test. The press failed theirs.