Only The Poor Go To Jail In America – America’s Lawyer

Mike Papantonio: Those of us who have dedicated a life’s work to the legal profession understand all too well that there are truly two different justice systems at work in the United States. There’s the corporation justice system for the wealthy, the CEOs have access to a system that really favors them in every way. Ridiculously small fines for their decisions they make that leave consumers and employees crippled or dead. Then the other justice system that low income Americans live with where even the smallest legal infraction can land them in prison for years.

One of the talking points that you hear coming from right wing news is that the reason these two separate justice systems exist is because the low income people simply commit more crimes and they point to incarceration statistics to back up that claim. But sometimes in the very rare cases, statistics can lie and that’s exactly what’s happening with our criminal justice system. In recent years the number of convicted criminals that were later exonerated for their alleged crimes has skyrocketed. For example, nearly 10 years ago, just a few dozen people were exonerated after serving time in prison but in the last three to four year, more than a 100 people each year were exonerated after being convicted crimes that it turns out they never committed.

One thing that most of these wrongfully convicted people all seem to have in common is that they’re typically low income Americans who lack the means to fund a drawn out legal battle to fight the trumped up charges against them. Prosecutors will use this knowledge to offer plea deals to these defendants resulting in false confessions and convictions. But as science has evolved groups like the Innocence Project have been working to use available evidence and DNA samples to help exonerate these wrongfully convicted individuals, some of whom have already spent decades in prison for crimes that somebody else committed.

Joining me now to discuss this is Mark Godsey, executive director of the Ohio Innocence Project and author of the new book, Blind Injustice.