PENNSYLVANIA Cases highlight the flaws in criminal justice system

Innocent people sometimes confess crimes they haven't committed, an expert said.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- No one who witnessed Barry J. Laughman's release last week from Adams County Prison after serving 16 years for a rape and murder he may not have committed is likely to forget how he walked unescorted past metal gates into the arms of tearful family members.
Freed after a new round of DNA tests that suggest he may not be the culprit, Laughman's release on bail is the most recent in a remarkable series of events that has highlighted shortcomings of the criminal-justice system and prompted state reforms from Illinois to New Jersey.
No one knows how many innocent people are behind bars, but with a national jail and prison population now topping 2 million, the potential exists for thousands and thousands of cases.
"The public just does not appreciate how often innocent people are convicted," said Laughman's defense lawyer, David J. Foster. "The string of exonerations, through DNA evidence, may enlighten the public as to that."
DNA legislation
The Pennsylvania Legislature passed a bill last year outlining rules under which state-prison inmates have access to new DNA tests. They first must show it would specifically address identification of the culprit and how it could clear them.
Reform advocates are quick to point out that substantial numbers of felony convictions don't involve DNA evidence, and there is no reason to think they are any less likely to result in unjust guilty verdicts. Patterns from cases in which DNA has overturned convictions show how false confessions, flimsy eyewitness identification and improper or even corrupt crime-lab evidence are often to blame.
Laughman was convicted largely because of a state trooper's description of his confession -- powerful evidence for jurors inclined to doubt that anyone would admit a murder they did not commit. But it does happen, particularly when young, scared or unsophisticated suspects are subjected to intimidating police interrogations.
"Some of these techniques that are good at eliciting confessions from guilty people can also get them from innocent people, unless you monitor very carefully how they're done," said Barry C. Scheck, an attorney with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic specializing in post-conviction DNA appeals.
Scheck advocates videotaping police interrogations, a method he says will let judges and juries see for themselves how the confession was elicited. He thinks it also would offer legal protection to unfounded claims against police agencies and that the tapes would make for a valuable training tool.
Reviews of work
Questionable work by police laboratories, another factor in Laughman's case, have prompted re-examinations of crime lab work in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Washington, Montana and Texas.
And studies have shown erroneous eyewitness identification can be cut significantly by employing sequential lineups that do not permit witnesses to compare suspects. That approach apparently does not reduce the number of valid identifications generated.
Ray M. Krone knows firsthand what life is like as an innocent inmate unable to disprove a murder conviction. The York County man spent 10 years in jail in Arizona on the strength of expert testimony that his dentition matched a bite mark on the victim before DNA evidence identified another man, now awaiting trial, as the suspect.
"This is about public safety," said Krone, now an anti-death-penalty activist. "While that innocent person was in prison, where was the guilty person?"