DA honored for seeking to right wrongful convictions
TICAL TRAIL
By Michael Jonas, September 28, 2008
That the Boston Bar Association would hand out an award to a local lawyer for work righting the injustice of wrongful convictions is hardly a surprise. That the award recipient is not some crusading defense attorney but the region's top prosecutor makes the event a bit more noteworthy.
Six years after taking office, Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley got the recognition he is due when the bar association presented him with its "Distinguished Public Servant Award" earlier this month for his willingness to reopen cases involving questionable convictions. Under Conley's lead, the DA's office has moved to vacate four high-profile convictions and free inmates shown to be wrongly imprisoned.
Prosecutors are supposed to not just blindly pursue convictions but be "ministers of justice," says bar association president Kathy Weinman. "And in the context of wrongful convictions, Dan Conley and the Suffolk DA's office have really demonstrated that important role."
Conley expresses pride in the fact that none of the recent wrongful convictions that have thus far come to light were prosecuted during the time he's been in office. "But I'm not so bold to say it hasn't happen or it will never happen," he says. "It's an imperfect system because it is administered by human beings with all their failings."
But steps can be taken to minimize the impact of those human failings. Because so many wrongful convictions are tied to faulty witness identification, in 2004, Conley's office formed a task force with the Boston Police Department to examine procedures for interviewing witnesses.
The result was the adoption of 25 recommendations to reform witness identification procedures, including guidelines calling for witnesses to view suspects one at a time rather than in a group, whether in-person or in photographs. Research shows that such a change can reduce faulty identifications by tempering the impulse of witnesses to conclude that the perpetrator must be among a set of possible suspects all shown together.
And there may be more reforms to come. Along with recognizing Conley for his leadership in this area, the Boston Bar Association is forming a task force of its own to recommend further reforms that could reduce the risk of convicting innocent people. "It's more important for us to get it right than to close out a case," says Conley. If the task force can come up with further steps to ensure that, "we may well adopt them."
Conley, a former Boston city councilor who was viewed as a traditional law-and-order prosecutor when he took office in 2002, says he's honored by the bar association recognition. But he seems to particularly relish the praise he has received from the noted attorney who co-directs the Innocence Project, the New York-based nonprofit that has elevated the issue of wrongful convictions nationally.
"Who would have known," says Conley, "that Barry Scheck would one day become one of my biggest cheerleaders?"
Michael Jonas can be reached at jonas@globe.com.
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