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Review of The Innocent Files

This Netflix documentary series takes an in-depth look at nine different wrongful convictions. The common theme in all of these wrongful convictions is Prosecutorial misconduct and eyewitness misidentifications.

If you are a juror and someone you deem as credible gets on the stand and points at a defendant and says with 100% certainty that he or she is responsible for the crime, it’s hard not to vote to convict. You may even be willing to overlook exculpatory evidence. Police and prosecutors certainly do.

Wrongful convictions happen for a host of reasons: false confessions, prosecutorial misconduct, poor defense lawyers, unethical detectives, faulty eyewitness testimony, questionable expert testimony. At the end of these breaks in the criminal justice system, there is a poor soul whose life is forever changed. The most frustrating part of it is that in the majority of cases, the unethical detective or prosecutor is seldomly held responsible. They go on with their careers. They get promotions. They retire. No one is held accountable for the lives destroyed.

Alfred Dewayne Brown

Each of the nine episodes tells a story of heartbreak and outrage. The story of Alfred Dewayne Brown in episode eight made me the angriest. The tactics used by Prosecutor Dan Rizzo were despicable. When faced with exculpatory evidence, what does Dan Rizzo do? He buries it. When Dan Rizzo needs an additional witness to strengthen his case, what does he do? He puts an innocent woman behind bars until that woman, Alfred’s girlfriend, changes her story, sealing Alfred’s fate.

The good news for each of the wrongfully convicted in this series is that they all eventually gain their freedom. Most receive compensation for their false imprisonment. Your faith is restored not by the release of the wrongfully convicted but by the reporters, lawyers, and individuals who put in the time and effort to uncover the truth.

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Review of How to Fix a Drug Scandal

Rating *****

Sonja Farak

This four-part Netflix docuseries tells the story of two crime lab technicians who, for different reasons, indirectly caused the dismissal of some 35,000 drug-related criminal cases in Massachusets. Some of the other topics covered include prosecutorial misconduct, sentencing disparity, and judicial incompetence.

The two lab technicians at the center of this story are Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan. They worked at different labs. Both made poor decisions that tainted their work in the lab, resulting in their test results being unreliable. In Annie Dookhan’s case, she falsified test results to increase her output. In Sonja Farak’s case, she conducted a majority of her tests under the influence of the very drugs she was testing.

The real heroes are the defense lawyers who went above and beyond in their search for the truth. Lawyers Jared Olanoff, Matt Segal, and Luke Ryan show what good lawyers can accomplish when given the resources, which in this case were provided by the ACLU.

Of the thousands of drug cases that were affected by the drug lab scandal, the one that stood out for me was the case of Ronaldo Penate. Police arrested Ronaldo for buying a $20 bag of heroin from an undercover officer. His attorney was Luke Ryan. Luke tried to get the case thrown out because the person who did the drug testing in Ronaldo’s case was Sonja Farak, who at the time was under indictment for possible tampering of evidence. It should have been a no brainer. But the prosecuting attorney didn’t throw the case out. And when Ronaldo turned down a plea deal that would have resulted in a three-year prison sentence, Luke had to go to trial without having Farak’s misdeeds presented to the jury. Ronaldo lost and received a seven-year prison sentence. Yet when Sonja ultimately pleaded guilty to her drug use, she received an eighteen-month sentence. Where is the fairness in those sentences?

The only issue I had with the series was the way the filmmakers and the lawyers painted those thirty-five thousand drug cases as wrongful convictions. It may be true that the majority of those cases depended on unreliable drug tests, but I’m also willing to bet that there were likely zero cases where an innocent person received a conviction due to a tainted drug test. A person released from jail or prison because of a technicality doesn’t suddenly become innocent. Sonja couldn’t have gotten high if the drugs weren’t real.

The series relies on reenactments, especially for Sonja Farak’s testimony. The actress who portrayed Sonja, Shannon O’Neill, deserves credit for her portrayal.

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Crazy in Texas Part II

There’s nothing like a crisis to highlight the ill-prepared and the incompetent. Texas has always been a state that puts business interests over its citizens. I wrote about this in my post Crazy in Texas. Now we have our top leaders stumbling over each other in a race to the bottom.

I’ll start with our Attorney General Ken Paxton. He and his cronies have done everything they can to strip away healthcare from Texas residents. They didn’t expand Medicaid under the ACA. They led the charge to get rid of the personal mandate of the ACA then filed suit to get rid of the ACA because the act relied on the personal mandate. They’ve filed lawsuits to strip planned parenthood of funding. Now Mr. Paxton is using the coronavirus to help promote his anti-abortion stance.

“I find it extremely distressing … that we are trying to respond to a purely political fight that [Gov. Greg Abbott] started. Patients who need abortions are on a time-sensitive deadline,” Massingill said.

Providers have already had to turn away patients, Massingill added, and delays of even a few weeks could render some abortions impossible if the patients’ pregnancies extend past legal deadlines.

Whole Women’s Health operates two Texas abortion clinics, in Fort Worth and in Austin. Amy Hagstrom Miller, the group’s president and CEO, said clinical staff had to cancel more than 150 appointments after the Governor’s order, something she said creates “a health crisis on top of a health crisis.”

Ken Paxton’s next step was to claim that gun shops were essential businesses.

Then there is our Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. This guy is so business-friendly that he wants everyone to go back to work, saying that older people like him can “take care of ourselves.” 

Leading the cast of dimwitted Republicans is our Governor, Gregg Abbot. He is so careful not to upset his campaign donors that he has yet to put in place a statewide stae-at-home order. In a recent NBC News article comparing actions by Democratic Governor’s responses to the coronavirus compared to Republican Governor’s, they highlighted several Republican Governors who are putting their citizens at risk. 

Dominguez ranked Reeves, DeSantis and two other Republican governors at the bottom for failing to be proactive in the face of the crisis, for doing a poor job of executing the state’s response, and for being “too concerned about making sure that their messaging aligns with the President’s actions and recommendations on curtailing the virus.”

“Social distancing has not been a priority,” Dominguez said. “They have done a poor job on transparency.”

They are Kay Ivey of Alabama, and Greg Abbott in Texas.

Abbott has been criticized for not issuing a statewide stay-at-home order, although it was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s suggestion that senior citizens would be willing to die for the U.S. to “get back to work” that made headlines.

“With the nation’s second-largest population, the highest uninsured rate in the country, and a legislature that doesn’t meet at all in even years, Texas is a state in which the governor’s role during a time of crisis is indispensable,” Hildebrand said. “Yet Abbott has ‘been’ behind the curve in nearly every protective measure – declaring a state of emergency, activating the National Guard, ramping up testing capacity, closing bars and restaurants.”

Additionally, Hildebrand said, Abbott “has shifted much of the emergency response to local municipalities.”

Neither I nor anyone else should be concerned about their health simply because we live in a Republican controlled state.

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Review of Tiger King

Review of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness
Rating *****

Joe Exotic

Joe Exotic wanted to be famous. The self-absorbed owner of the private zoo Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park had grandiose dreams. One day the whole world would know his name. He ran for president. After getting nowhere in that effort, he ran for Governor of Oklahoma. He managed to convince nearly 20% of Oklahomans to vote for him. Today, Joe Exotic has finally achieved his dream. Except he isn’t in a position to enjoy it. Instead, he sits in an Oklahoma prison serving a twenty-two-year prison sentence for his involvement in a murder-for-hire-plot. How he got there is the subject of the seven-episode Netflix docuseries.

Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joe Maldonado-Passage, is guilty of the crime of selling tiger cubs. Whether or not he is guilty of a murder-for-hire plot is another question. My personal opinion is that he was setup.

To say that this docuseries has an abundance of colorful characters is an understatement. It takes a unique personality to raise exotic animals. A full-grown tiger is not a pet. It’s also not cheap. The cost to raise one of these animals can range from $3,000 to $10,000 a year. Joe cut down his costs by using donated expired meat from Walmart. At his peak, Joe had 227 tigers. Joe generated money through donations and visitors to his animal park. He also made money selling tiger cubs to individuals and other animal parks, even though it’s illegal to do so. Joe also took the animals on the road where he would display them at malls. He would let people get selfies with tigers and then sell them the photographs.

Carole Baskin

The owner of another animal park, Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue in Florida, made it her mission to shut Joe down. She called malls to let them know that what Joe was doing was illegal. She reported Joe to animal abuse organizations. The fines and loss of income led to a longstanding feud between Joe and Carole.

The animosity Joe had toward Carole Baskin manifested itself into alarming social media posts, videos, and outright threats of physical violence. Those social media posts hurt Joe later at his trial. Authorities took Joe’s verbal threats seriously after talking to informants with questionable motives. To get a conviction, however, there had to be more than just verbal threats. There had to be a payment to a hitman. At this point, I believe entrapment was involved. The hitman wasn’t credible. He testified under oath that he was in Florida, where Carole lived. Yet there is no evidence of that. The evidence indicates that he never went to Florida. The supposed cash payment is equally murky. Joe testified that he gave Allen, the supposed hitman, $3,000 at the direction of Jeff Lowe, one of the informants. Jeff had his reasons for cooperating with authorities. Taking over Joe’s animal park was one strong motivator. Avoiding criminal charges was another.

Lost in all the chaos are the animals. There’s no question that all of the players in this bizarre world had good intentions at the start. As things started to collapse around Joe, greed and self-preservation took over. There’s one scene toward the end involving two chimpanzees. The two chimps lived in adjacent cages for ten years. Joe eventually sold the two chimps to another facility, one with larger enclosures that allowed the chimps more freedom. When the two chimps encountered each other, they hugged. It’s a powerful scene. The fact that Joe is now the one in a cage is not lost on the viewer.

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Review of the Netflix Docuseries The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez

Rating *****

An eight-year-old boy dies from suspicious circumstances. Who is responsible? The mother and her boyfriend? Social workers, who failed to do the proper follow-ups? Police officers, who did a cursory investigation when alerted to possible child abuse? Those are some of the questions dealt with in this excellent six-episode docuseries.

As you come to find out in the last episode, what happened to Gabriel is not an isolated incident. But don’t let that discourage you from taking a deep dive into this particular case. There’s a lot to learn from Gabriel’s short life.

The title of the series refers to the criminal trials that came as a result of Gabriel’s death. At first, I was frustrated with the way the filmmakers jumped forward and backward while covering the trials. The reason for this becomes evident in the last episode. Along the way, we meet the people who cared for Gabriel in his first seven years.

Gabriel’s mother didn’t want the pregnancy nor the child. The father, who was incarcerated, was unable to care for Gabriel. Relatives offered to care for the baby. A gay uncle and his partner took care of Gabriel the first few years. Homophobia among family members and the deportation of the Uncle’s partner put an end to that loving relationship. The grandmother took over and also provided a safe environment.

Gabriel’s spent the last year of his life under the care of his mother, Pearl, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre. I’ve had stress in my life, but I can’t imagine the amount of stress Gabriel endured that last year. There were beatings, verbal abuse, physical abuse, cigarette burns, and even shots in the face from a BB gun. Different people saw the bruises and cigarette burns, and the missing teeth. These people reported what they saw. But somehow, no one took the necessary steps to investigate the claims more thoroughly. Gabriel fell through the cracks.

In my opinion, Gabriel’s mother was the one person most responsible for his death. Isauro caused the injuries that led to Gabriel’s death, but I don’t believe he would have done what he did without the participation of the mother. So, what was the incident that triggered the final beating? Gabriel was playing with his sister, an act Pearl and Isauro saw as reinforcing his gay tendencies.

At least with this docuseries, Gabriel has left a mark in this world. Don’t miss this one. See it on Netflix.

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Review of Ameican Prison

Review of American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer Rating ****

This book is full of stories of injustice, but there was one story that stood out for me. It came at the very end of the book. It involved an inmate who had been shot by police. After a brief stay in a hospital, officers placed him in a cell and left him there unattended. During the night, the man pleaded for help. No one came to his aid. They found him deceased the next morning. A prison employee whose job was to investigate such incidents gathered statements from other inmates, which implicated the prison for the man’s death. The warden of the prison told the investigator to discard the inmate statements. No one was held accountable. That lack of humanity permeates throughout this behind the scenes account of a for-profit prison.

Author Shane Bauer, who himself spent two years in an Iranian prison, wanted to write a story about private prisons. Rather than set up interviews with staff and PR people, he decided to get a job as a corrections officer. In doing so, he was able to write about prison life as seen from the viewpoint of an underpaid, overworked prison guard.

The story of the author’s four-month employment at a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) prison takes up half the book. The other half contains a history of incarceration and the creation of the for-profit prison concept. The author alternates the two stories from chapter to chapter. I found the history chapters to be the more interesting of the two. The chapters detailing life inside a prison only reinforced my negative opinion of that aspect of the criminal justice system. As one inmate told the author, “you’re doing half my time with me.” I felt like I was doing time as well.

The author covers a lot of ground, touching on a wide variety of subjects, including cash bail, the 13th amendment, recidivism, punishment vs. rehabilitation, prison violence, overcrowding, low pay of prison staff, lack of medical and psychological treatment for inmates, and mass incarceration. It all adds up to one more piece of the broken criminal justice system.