Justice is a decision | Ronald Sullivan | TEDxMidAtlantic

[Music] [Music] [Applause] imagine that you take a 19-hour very long drive to Disney World with two kids in the backseat and 15 minutes into this 19 hour trip the immutable laws of nature dictates that you get the question are we there yet so you answer this question a hundred more times easily in the negative but you finally arrive you have a wonderful wonderful wonderful trip you drive 19 long hours back home and when you get there the police are waiting on you they accuse you of committing a crime that occurred while you were away in Florida you tell anybody and everybody who will listen I didn't do it I couldn't have done it I was hanging out with Mickey and Minnie and my kids but no one believes you ultimately you're arrested you're tried you're convicted and you're sentenced and you spend 25 years in jail until someone comes along and proves has the evidence to prove that you actually were in Florida when this crime was committed so I'm a harvard law professor and the last several years I have worked on winning the release of innocent people who've been wrongfully convicted people like Jonathan Fleming who spent 24 years eight months in jail for a murder that was committed in Brooklyn New York while he was in Disney World with his kids how do we know this because when he was arrested among his proper in his back pocket was a receipt time-stamped receipt that showed that he was in Disney World that receipt was put in the police file a copy of it was put in the prosecutors file and they never gave it to his public defender in fact nobody even knew it was there it just sat there for 20-some odd years my team looked through the file and we found it did the rest of the investigation and figured out someone else committed the crime mr. Fleming was in Disney World and he is now released let me give you a little bit of context so about three years ago I got a call from the Brooklyn district attorney he asked whether I'd be interested in designing a program called a conviction review unit so I said yes conviction review unit is essentially a unit in a prosecutor's office where prosecutors look at their past cases to determine whether or not they made mistakes over the course of the first year we found about 13 wrongful convictions people haven't been in jail for decades and we released all of them it was the most in New York history the program is still going on and they're up to 21 releases now 21 people who spent significant time behind bars so let me tell you just about a couple other of the men and women that I interacted with in the course of this program so one name is Roger Logan mr. Logan had been in jail 17 years and wrote me a letter it was a simple letter it basically said professor Sullivan I'm innocent I had been framed can you look at my case at first blush the case seemed like it was open and shut but my research that showed that single witness identification cases are prone to error doesn't mean he was innocent just means we ought to look a little bit closer at those cases so we did and the facts were relatively simple the eyewitness said she heard a shot and she ran to next building and and turned around and looked him there was mr. Logan and he was tried and convicted and in jail for 17 semi years but it was a single witness case so we took a look at it I sent some people to the scene and there was an inconsistency and it's I don't know how let me to put it politely who same boat couldn't have run from where she said she was to the other spot right so so we knew that wasn't true right so still didn't mean that he didn't do it but we knew something was something was maybe fishy about this witness so look through the file piece of paper in the file had a number on it the number indicated that this witness had a record we went back through 20 years of non digitized papers to figure out what this record was about and it turned out they turned out that eyewitness was in jail when she said she saw what she saw man spent 17 years behind bars the last one is a case about two two boys Willy Stuckey David McCallum they were arrested at 15 and their conviction was vacated 29 years later now this was a case once again first blush it looked open and shut they had confessed but my research showed that juvenile confessions without a parent present are prone to error the DNA case has proved this several times so we took a close look looked at the confession and it turned out there was something in the confession that those boys could not have known only people who knew it were police and prosecutors we knew what really happened someone told them to say this we don't exactly know who which person did but any rate the confession was coerced we determined we then went back and did forensics and did a fulsome investigation and found that two other much older different heights different hairstyle to other people committed the crime not these two boys actually went to court that day when for the what's called vacatur hearing right where the conviction is thrown out I went to court I wanted to see mr. McCallum walk out of there so what the court and the judge says something that judges say all the time but this took on a really special meaning he looked up after the arguments and said mr. McCallum said five beautiful words you are free to go can you imagine after just about 30 years you are free to go and he walked out of that courtroom unfortunately its co-defendant mr. Stuckey didn't get the benefit of that you see mr. Stuckey died in prison at 34 years old and his mother sat at counsel table in his place I'll never forget this the rest of my life she just rocked at the table saying I knew my baby didn't do this I knew my baby didn't do this and her baby didn't do this to other guys did it if there's anything that we've learned anything that I've learned with this conviction integrity work is that justice doesn't happen people make justice happen justice is not a thing that just you know descends from above and makes everything right if it did mr. Stuckey wouldn't have died in prison justice is something that people of good will make happen justice is a decision justice is a decision we make justice happen you know that the scary thing is in each of these three cases I described it would have only taken just an extra minute an extra minute for someone to look through the file and find this receipt just just one more to look through the file find the receipt give it to the public defender it would have taken someone just a minute to look at the video confession to say that cannot be just a minute and perhaps mr. Stuckey would be alive today it reminds me of one of my favorite poems and it's a point that Benjamin Elijah Mays would always recite and he called it God's minute and it goes something like this I have only just a minute only 60 seconds in it forced upon me can't refuse it didn't seek it didn't choose it but it's up to me to use it I must suffer if I lose it give a count if I abuse it just a tiny little minute but eternity is in it if I were to charge each and every one of us I would want to say something like every day every day take just one extra minute and do some justice you don't have to I mean some people spend their careers in their lives like public defenders doing justice every day but in your professional lives whatever you do take time out to just do some justice make a colleague feel better if you hear something that's sexist don't laugh speak up if someone is down lift them up one extra minute each day and it be a great great place now I want to show you something now above me is a picture of David McCallum this is the day he was released from prison after 30 years he got to hug and nice he had never been able to touch before and I asked him then I said what's the first thing you want to do and he said I just want to walk on a sidewalk without anybody telling me where to go wasn't bitter I just wanted to walk on a sidewalk I spoke to mr. McCallum about two weeks ago I went to New York and it was on the two-year anniversary of his release and we talked we laughed we hugged we cried and he's doing quite well and one of the things he said when we met with him is that he now has dedicated his life and his career to ensuring that nobody else is locked up unjustly justice my friends is a decision thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 32,464

Rating: 4.9442897 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Crime, Criminal justice, Freedom, Human Rights, Law, Social Justice

Id: 1fNt95vAQNY

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 10 2017