Report: Criminal Justice System Errors Cost Taxpayers Millions In California

Much has been said about the human cost suffered by people convicted of crimes they did not commit. Now a new study reveals the monetary costs of those convictions. Since 1989 the report says California governmental agencies have paid out $135 million in payments or settlements for faulty prosecutions. Here in San Diego the amount is more than $10 million. Researchers also calculated the amount of public money spent on jailing and prosecuting prisoners who were ultimately released by the courts. The study is a joint project UC Berkeley school of Law and the University of Pennsylvania Law school. Earlier today I spoke with Rebecca Silbert co-author of the report. Rebecca welcome to the program. Thank you. What prompted this investigation into the cost of these prosecution errors. What actually started this was our interest in wrongful convictions as everyone understands them. And it's a person who goes through the system but what we realized immediately is that often times there is no agreement about whether someone is in a sense enough to be wrongfully convicted. But as we looked at the cases we realize whether or not someone believes that a person was innocent, it's still a huge error and a cost to position and a cost to the person. If someone is prosecuted, charge, arrested, convicted than that conviction is thrown out of court in they go home, that is an enormous cost to all of us. Whether or not we agree on innocence. We decided to broaden our inquiry to look at all the cases we can find that were exactly that. Where someone was prosecuted arrested convicted and had a thrown out. Without getting involved in the argument about innocence or not. Without getting involved in an argument about whether or not this person had been arrested and -- and was actually guilty of the crime. That's right. Our point is this. If there are errors in the system, if someone is prosecuted in that conviction is thrown out of court, that is something to examine whether or not you think the person is -- it's a problem. If we want our system to be better, we should be thinking about it more systemically and less about which people are deserving of the inquiry about whether there was error or not. So what did you find out about what the government agencies say that they made in payments or settlements across the state in the last 30 years? We did two different things. The first was that we found as many cases as we could where this had happened. Where someone had been convicted of a crime, had spent time in custody and had then had the conviction turned out. Then they went home. A lot of times the quarter versus the conviction and the person take the deal is convicted again. We were looking adjusted those cases where the court to read out and the person went home with no conviction. We found 692 cases, one of the most surprising things is that collectively the people subject to these prosecution and were put in jail for war well over 2000 years. That's 2000 years of days in jail and prison that we all pay for that people had to endure that did not going towards any sustained can conviction. The other thing that we did was add up the cost of both paying for that incarceration, pain for the prosecution, pain for the appeals and pain for the settlements when they were settlements. We adjusted that for any came to $282 million. Advocates for the exonerated and that is how I think in popular culture we have been introduced to this concept over the last few years, they have said that most people freed on wrongful convictions don't get compensation of any kind. Is that true? It is largely true. There are a couple of reasons for that. The main reason for that is that the state victim compensation board up until very recently had unbelievably high standards. We absolutely other states and not only were wasn't incredibly difficult to improve you are entitled to compensation but the compensation that was awarded was smaller than other states. Some of that change last year. We will see if it makes a change in the long-term. The other point to make is that if someone had spent many years in custody, there's an argument to be said that can we really compensate them with cash? If their lives have been written because witnesses lied or prosecutors hid evidence or attorneys did not do their jobs, how much money would it cost any of us to make that better? When people who were included in this survey -- in your report, when they did actually get a settlement or payment from a city or county, what did they usually get that far? Prosecutorial misconduct? Prosecutorial misconduct was destined there's definitely responsible for the amount of cost in her study. Is not necessarily more common than other kinds of errors but it is an extremely costly error and there are two reasons for that. The first is that prosecutorial misconduct cases tend to go on a non-. So we're paying for prison and jail for many years while the system litigates them that misconduct. The other is that the misconduct tends to be directly relatable to the person being convicted. So often it's that the prosecutor withheld evidence and had that evidence been known the person would likely not have been convicted. It does rental resulted settlement. We documented a minimum of $68 million in settlement and a large percentage about from prosecutorial misconduct Rebecca told us a minute ago that you used to formulas. Elected two separate things. One of them was how much taxpayers have paid out to house and prosecute those who were ultimately released by the courts. Details about that again? What costs are included in the calculation? We were attempting to capture every cost we could count which was days in jail, days in prison, having a court-appointed lawyer, pain for the prosecutor, pain for the appeals, paying for the cost of the court in the bailiffs and the trial, all of the things that come with prosecuting someone and trying to imprison them. And then at the end of the day having it reversed. But we didn't include and what we could include that should be noted is the large cost on both the person who goes through the system, that could be a loss of job, destruction of their family, it could be that they could never get a job again and in some cases there is a cost -- if there is a victim. Either the wrong person is convicted or maybe it is or maybe it isn't the right person but the conviction is not sustainable. That's an additional cost as well. Does were not counted. What kind of response to be gone from law-enforcement? The response we got is the one we expected. That it's not very many cases in a state the prosecute hundreds of thousands of people. That is both completely cracked and completely irrelevant. If we want to do better we have to think about our criminal justice system is a system that should have zero errors. Everyone who gets arrested, everyone who has a family the gets arrested -- family member the gets arrested should have the same rights to a functioning fair system as every person who gets on an airplane and expects that that airplane won't crash. We examine airline crashes regardless of the fact that they happen very rarely. We should do the same for criminal justice. We ask the San Diego District Attorney's Office to join us in response to this report and they declined. In the past law-enforcement officials have told us that these costs are part of the price of pursuing justice. They regret that they are not always right but no one is. How do you respond? Is it really fair to expect and actually mistake free law-enforcement system? I think it is absolutely fair to expect that we will all strive for that. I don't -- I think that it is correct that we can never achieve zero errors. I think that is correct in all kinds of situations. But we should all expect it and we all deserve that in response to the question or to the statement that they are doing the best they can, some jurisdictions are in some jurisdictions aren't the example I will point to is eyewitness ID practices. We've known for 10 years what the best practices are for eyewitness identification. Some police departments haven't adopted them. What you -- With the hope results from this report? We hope to continue the dialogue. The state is finally moving towards more construction part conversation about how we can do criminal justice better and mass incarceration is not working and it's too expensive and is in healthy. As part of that part conversation of how we can be better we should be looking at the players in the system, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, law enforcement and trying to determine how everyone can do better so that they are just and less expensive system. I've been speaking with Rebecca Silbert co-author of the report called criminal injustice. Rebecca, thanks a lot.