Denver City Budget Draws Fire from Activists, Some City Council Members over Housing
By Robert Davis
Imagine being accused of a crime you did not commit, being stripped of your freedom and sentenced to 48 years in prison. Not a pretty picture — it sounds more like a living hell.
“Wrongful convictions happen more often than people would like to believe,” said Anne-Marie Moyes, director of the Korey Wise Innocence Project (KWIP), formerly the Colorado Innocence Project. “Some studies suggest that three to seven percent of prisoners in the United States are innocent. In each case of wrongful conviction, an innocent person suffers in prison while the real perpetrator remains free. Often, the real perpetrator goes on to commit other crimes,” said Moyes.
In 1987, Clarence Moses-EL was accused of beating and raping his neighbor in Denver. He was sentenced to 48 years. From the beginning, he maintained his innocence, and from within prison walls, he raised money for DNA testing. The test proved he was innocent, yet he remained behind bars and lost time with his daughter, son, grandchildren, and friends.
“He survived through strength of will and strength of faith. Mr. Moses-EL’s innocence drove him to not let any of the many hardships he faced bring him down,” said Eric Klein, Moses-EL’s attorney.
“The root causes of wrongful convictions are insidious, which makes the problem difficult to tackle in sweeping, meaningful ways,” said Sheila Huss, senior instructor in the Criminal Justice Program in the School of Public Affairs at CU Denver. According to Huss, eyewitness misidentification, misapplication of forensic science, and the testimony of unreliable snitches, as well as false confessions, government misconduct, lawyers’ mistakes, and oversights, can all play a role in wrongful convictions. But there can also be deeper factors involved.
“One example of this is prosecutors, who face a great deal of pressure — pressure to obtain a conviction, professional pressure to meet job advancement requirements, and political pressure to ensure re-election. They also experience the pressure of the justice system. As a result, prosecutors make promises and frequently offer passionate, confident statements ensuring everyone — from the public and media to investigators, the defense attorney, judge and jury — that s/he is pursuing the offender and will bring that person to justice with a conviction,” Huss said.
“When it comes to identifying the causes of wrongful convictions, it also is important to mention that what we know is based on a universe of cases that disproportionately focuses on rapes and sexual assaults and murders. I think if we had a more accurate population of wrongful convictions (which would include more less-serious felonies and misdemeanors), we would see the same casual factors, but perhaps a different distribution, but there is no way of knowing that without being able to analyze a larger and more accurate population of wrongful conviction cases,” she said.
In 2012, another man confessed to the crime Moses-EL was serving time for. Three years later, after that confession, Moses-EL remained behind bars. In 2016, a jury acquitted him. Thomas Williams, program chair of Criminal Justice for the Community College of Denver, says that “wrongful convictions are a travesty. Individuals are subjected to the shame, misery, and harsh conditions in prison.”
“The impact of wrongful convictions is a stain on America. At some point, we, as taxpayers, have to foot the bill. Some will sue and get compensated, but no amount of compensation will restore the dignity lost with being falsely accused and incarcerated,” Williams said.
States like Missouri, New Jersey, and Kansas offer compensation for the wrongfully convicted. Oregon, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina are among the 17 states with no compensation for the wrongfully convicted. In Colorado, there is the Colorado Exoneration Act, which allows for $70,000 per year for each year served. Earlier this year, Moses-EL was awarded close to $2 million for being incarcerated for nearly three decades.
Still, his fight isn’t quite over. The civil suit seeks to hold parties responsible for Moses-EL’s 28 years served.
“The federal civil rights case is a chance for our system to hold someone accountable for the grave injustices that were done to Mr. Moses-EL,” Klein said. “That is different than the state compensation case, which was solely about attempting to compensate an innocent man for the many years of his life that were taken away. We hope that through holding government actors accountable, this kind of perversion of justice might not happen to someone else. The federal civil rights case remains in pre-trial litigation.”
While Colorado is trying to make headway on lessening the wrongful conviction rate, Moyes says more work lies ahead.
“Already, important reforms have been adopted in Colorado that improve the way that law enforcement conducts eyewitness identifications and require that investigators record custodial interrogations in serious felony cases,” said Moyes. “But, there’s a lot more that can be done to improve the integrity of criminal investigations. For example, crime labs could be separated from law enforcement to make them more independent. Police could adopt more progressive interrogation techniques that prohibit lying to suspects and include more safeguards against false confessions. Though we can never fully prevent human error, there’s so much more we can do to reduce the frequency of wrongful convictions.”
As for Moses-EL, he is focused on enjoying the freedom that evaded him for so long.
“The amazing thing about Mr. Moses-EL is that he is always looking to the future. He is always trying to figure out how to make his own life better, as well as the lives of others,” Klein said. Today, Moses-EL is spending time with his children and grandchildren. Klein said Moses-EL is also building a meaningful relationship with his community and with himself after so many years of being wrongfully convicted. ■
KWIP helps to reverse the wrongfully convicted and advocates for criminal justice reform. Part of KWIP was funded by Korey Wise, one of the Central Park Five. To learn more about KWIP assistance, contact:
Korey Wise Innocence Project
Wolf Law Building
404 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309