Bakersfield College’s faculty, staff and administrators gathered in the Fireside Room on Oct. 26 for coffee, food and to honor a faculty member: criminal justice professor Peggy DeStefano.
Formerly known as NL Faculty Seminar Series, the colloquium was created a couple of years ago in order to give praise to scholarly accomplishments.
“This event is solely intended to honor our faculty,” said Michael McNellis, chair of the Norman Levan Faculty Colloquium Steering Committee. “We love our students, but we need our space.”
DeStefano’s accomplishment, a lecture called Deconstructing the Path to Wrongful Convictions, has been in the making for six months and was delivered at the colloquium.
After acknowledging the many staff, including Levan, who attended the event, DeStefano demonstrated through PowerPoint and her hands how serious an issue wrongful convictions is, and that it is a problem that needs to be solved.
According to a judge, DeStefano explained, if only one percent of the population were wrongfully convicted, tens of thousands of innocent people would still be spending their days in prison.
For a class project, journalism students were assigned to re-investigate cases. The project resulted in ten exonerations.
Though DNA has come a long way in keeping innocent people out from behind bars, according to DeStefano, DNA is usually only useful in murder, rape or any crime involving the suspect leaving DNA behind. DNA only accounts for a small percentage. “We really are only getting a glimpse,” she said.
According to DeStefano, evidence collecting, witnesses, jailhouse informants, interrogations, and counsel can all be defective and result in wrongful convictions.
“Sometimes evidence collected is never subjected to testing,” said DeStefano. Because there often is media pressure, there is police pressure. Cops often believe that if they don’t find a suspect pool within 48 hours, they may never solve the case, she said.
Fingerprinting can also be a problem.
One case involved a man who approached police about a friend’s murder.
He believed that he could be of assistance; however, he voluntarily submitted a handprint in order to satisfy investigators, which ultimately put him behind bars for a crime he did not commit. He spent many years in prison until his prints were checked again, and it was found to not be a match.
“It really is more of an art than a science,” said DeStefano.
DeStefano talked of many past and recent cases involving wrongful convictions associated with unreliable informants, shaky memories of witnesses, incompetent interrogations, and penniless lawyers.
“There’s never simply just one reason,” DeStefano said.
Though there are many faults to the legal system, according to DeStefano, there are solutions; some of which are being applied in some states.
Among those solutions are “double blind line-ups” (the line-up administrator does not know who the suspect is), complete recording of interrogations, DNA data banking and preservation of evidence.
“Even if the occasional guilty person slips through the noose,” said DeStefano, it is worth it to apply these measures.
Some states provide compensation if a person is wrongfully convicted; however, most lose out on their education and training because they spent so much time behind bars.
According to DeStefano, 12 years is the average amount of time an innocent person is in prison before they are exonerated.
However, according to the concluding film, “A Celebration of Innocence,” the average seemed to be about 20 years. The six-minute film showed person after person wrongfully convicted.
According to DeStefano, “An injustice to one is an injustice to all.”