Jabbar Collins 16 Years in Prison Because of Prosecutor Lies
Photo Credit: NY Post
In a previous article I wrote: "My experience has been that most juries are asleep at trials, witnesses mis-identify the perpetrators, police lie to get a conviction, and prosecutors hide evidence to further their careers."
Here is one more proof among hundreds every year that prosecutors gladly send innocent men to prison for decades to further their careers.
Jabbar Collins was released today after spending 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Collins spent years as a jailhouse lawyer gathering the evidence that proved that Assistant District Attorney Michael Vecchione suppressed exculpatory evidence at his 1995 trial. In addition, all the witnesses against Collins have recanted and the evidence was so overwhelming that the prosecutor threatened one drug-addled witness and coerced another to supply false testimony that federal Judge Dora Irizarry not only overturned the murder and robbery convictions but barred prosecutors from ever retrying Collins on those charges.
The judge did say she regretted that she did not have the authority to complete the hearing into prosecutorial misconduct.
Discussion: The average time on Death Row prior to execution is 10.26 years. Fortunately (if we can use that word) for Collins he was sentenced to 34 years to life. Were he put on death row and executed in 10 years we would never have found out of his innocence.
There are many organizations today looking for evidence that would exonerate prisoners on death row. But these investigations only happen for "living" prisoners. Once executed, why should they continue to spend time, money and effort on a dead man?
We were able to discover the truth of this willful mal-prosecution only because we did not put Mr Collins to death 16 years ago. And this is the real reason, even if those who are for the death penalty do not consciously realize it, why they favor the death penalty: because if everyone who was found guilty of murder were executed immediately, then we would never find out that we wrongly convicted an innocent man. God forbid we should discover that we are mere fallible mortal men.
It is when I discuss matters like this with death penalty advocates that I wish I were not an atheist.
If there is a God, He will punish rapists, murderers, or child-molesters and all those who sin against Man. But the greatest punishment will be for those who sin against God, for those who have the arrogance to be like a God. And it would give me satisfaction to know that those who are for the Death Penalty will find themselves on the lowest rung of Hell where they belong.
