Innocence Project on October 21,

¶ … Innocence Project

On October 21, 2011, Henry James was released from Angola prison after serving nearly 30 years for a rape that DNA evidence was finally able to prove that he had not committed. His release was the result of the work of the Innocence Project, and the Innocence Project New Orleans, who worked with James' attorneys at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. James had consistently proclaimed his innocence since the time of his conviction, and was able to secure the assistance of the Innocence Project. However, his first attempts to get released were unsuccessful because they could not find evidence from his case.

What is remarkable is that Innocence Project attorneys do not seem critical of the criminal justice system or state representatives, despite the fact that the state pursued the convictions and has significant control over exculpatory evidence for indigent defendants. In fact, in James' case, they have openly acknowledged the critical role that the state played in getting James' released. They credited Milton Dureau at the Jefferson Parish Crime Laboratory with the discovery of the evidence and also gave credit to the Sheriff's Office for responding quickly to the case. This is particularly interesting in James' case, because, though DNA technology had not been invented at the time of his conviction, they did have the technology to determine whether a rape was committed by a secretor of a non-secretor. The victim's attacker was a non-secretor, and James was a secretor. The rape kit exam evidence demonstrated that James was excluded as a suspect, but the jury did not hear that evidence. Therefore, James was not only wrongfully convicted, but the prosecutor who attained his conviction was aware that he could not have been the perpetrator at the time of the conviction. Scenarios like that would make it difficult to be However, the Innocence Project attorneys could not do their work without cooperation from state agencies, and their attitude seems to reflect the idea that they are rarely working with the same investigators or prosecutors who worked to attain the first wrongful conviction.

However, while the Innocence Project attorneys may be respectful of the helpful individuals they encounter, they are still very critical of embedded practices that help contribute to erroneous convictions. Eyewitness identification is notoriously unreliable, even when the eyewitness is the victim. However, juries find eye witness testimony to be very compelling; because people think that they would certainly be able to identify the perpetrator of a crime, and then if an eyewitness appears credible, they believe their testimony. To the credit of many eyewitnesses, they are not trying to provide false testimony; they may truly believe that they have identified the correct perpetrator of the crime. However, the system is difficult. Once a witness has identified someone as a perpetrator of the crime, that notion is reinforced in each additional proceeding, so that even witnesses who may question themselves may be too invested in the process to change their minds. One of the problems with eyewitness identification goes to the initial identification procedures, which can lead to misidentification, starting the process of erroneous identification. Louisiana has continued to refuse to enact the best practices which should help prevent or reduce misidentification, and an Innocence Project New Orleans' attorney took the opportunity to chastise the state for that failure.

One of the lingering problems with eyewitness identification, which was a problem in this case, is cross-racial identification. People make uncomfortable jokes about all people of a certain race looking alike, and the ugly truth in those statements gets hidden. Instead, the person making those observations is made to feel like a bigot for making the statements. However, the human skills of observation are not necessarily effective in a traumatic situation. People are looking for major identifiers that will either help them escape from a bad situation or avoid it in the future. In those circumstances, a woman who is being raped by someone from a different ethnic group might honestly be focused only on certain features of her rapist, which stand out to her more because they are different. She may only process his dark skin, dark eyes, wiry hair, and different facial features. While black men can be incredibly diverse-looking, she may focus on those features that tend to differentiate them from white men. This is a risk in any cross-racial identification, where someone may notice differences from their own ethnic group, but fail to look beyond those features that stand out as "other" in his mind, which makes any person in that racial group a possible suspect.

In fact, it is impossible to overplay the role that misidentification has played in so many wrongful convictions. It is difficult for many people to realize that DNA evidence did not play a role in older convictions; the technology simply was not available. Furthermore, when DNA evidence first became available, it was a new technology that was not fully understood by all of the actors in the criminal justice system. In those early times, there were investigators, prosecutors, and fact finders who would believe a credible witness over scientific evidence. Something like this appears to have occurred in James' case. There was a scientific test available that excluded him as a possible suspect, but it was ignored. Furthermore, one must assume either incompetence on the part of James' defense attorney of a failure by the state to provide all exculpatory evidence to the defense, because the jury did not hear that testimony.

It seems like police officers, in addition to victims, are prone to get fixated on a certain perpetrator and just focus on that evidence that would convict that person of the crime, without looking at the totality of the evidence. This was observed by Thomas Golden, a partner at the law firm who represented James. According to Golden, misidentification played a role in 75% of cases that later result in exoneration because of DNA evidence (Innocence Project, 2011). It is possible for the police to influence a victim's perception of potential suspects, so any initial identification, such as lineups, must contain precautions that eliminate the possibility of that type of influence.

An additional factor that makes this case seem so unusual is the fact that this witness knew James prior to being raped. James had helped the victim's husband fix his car the day before the rape. In addition, when the husband got in a car wreck, James went to the victims' home to inform her that he had been in a wreck and had been arrested. It was after that time that another person entered the home and raped the victim. The fact that the victim knew James' was not explored by the police or really during his trial. That would have been critical information, because she did not immediately identify her assailant, but picked him out in a later identification, only after the police identified him as a suspect. All of this information would have been very helpful to a jury trying to determine the accuracy of the victim's identification of James as her assailant.