The DNA exonerations have pulled back the robes of justice to reveal a criminal justice system so dysfunctional that its actions are often more immoral and criminal than those attributed to the persons it prosecutes.
     The finality of DNA evidence has forced the government to free innocent persons and in so doing has exposed the entire criminal justice   system as corrupt and ineffective.

     As the DNA cases have unraveled they have exposed systemic shortcomings so prevalent that they cast doubt not only on murder and rape prosecutions but also on verdicts for all felonies.
    For each person exonerated in the type of crime that leaves DNA evidence there are a huge number of innocent persons convicted of lesser felonies where there is no DNA trail, no review and little or no effective legal representation.
    Even the most conservative projection from the DNA exonerations will show that hundreds of thousands of innocent persons are currently   incarcerated across the nation.
    The failure of the system is made more complete by the fact  that in each case of the conviction of an innocent person a real criminal remains free.
    “Justice” reaches its final low point when, as is often the case, convictions are the result of deliberate self-serving action or deceit by police and prosecutors. (Nationally, 25% of DNA exonerations have involved forced confessions).
   The very American incentive system, the competitive system that makes all kinds of things work in America, here works to subvert the administration of justice by turning the court into a sports arena where one party may be powerfully armed and the other weak and defenseless, where winning is everything and Justice only a pretense.
    All of us since childhood, from teachers and parents, from movies and history books, have   soaked up the myth that loosing such an unequal contest actually determines guilt. In fact, all along, there have been effective incentives to subvert the delivery of real justice.
    Stoked by the news media's incentive to sell its product with the most gut wrenching crime stories, public pressure gives the police incentives to make arrests any way they can.
    Similar pressure plus political ambition give prosecutors incentives to chalk up wins at any cost.
     Justice becomes simply a high stakes sport where winning is the object–not determining guilt or innocence.
    The percentage of America's minority community that is convicted and incarcerated is many times greater than their percentage in the overall population.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice: There are 3,145 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 471 white male inmates per 100,000 white males. 

      Generations past slavery, we continue making people of color victims by providing them with the lowest wages, job opportunities and housing and the worst educational systems.
    This imbalanced prison population has been vastly expanded with mandatory sentencing that makes sentences for possession and dealing in crack, the drug of choice in the minority community, more than five years longer than sentences for powder cocaine, (drug choice of the white middle class).
     Prejudice, convenience and racial profiling make minority youth easy pickings for police under pressure to produce drug arrests. While suburban elite are safe to deal drugs in their basement rec rooms minority kids can be found on any street corner.  Upon arrest they will not have access to lawyers until they are questioned and incarcerated when they may be appointed a public defender.  Once arrested, particularly those who are very young or mentally ill, may be easily scared or coerced, even tortured  into a false confession.
      Unable to make bond, poor or indigent suspects are often held in jail for many months awaiting a hearing so that eventually they will welcome
a plea bargain confession, anything that will gain them release or a shortened sentence. 
     The judge passing sentence will not mention that they are also receiving a life sentence–a felony record that will stay with them the rest of their life and keep them from any kind of decent employment. And, possibly, a death sentence. 
     The judge will not be bring it to their attention that, to be locked up in a prison system with an extremely high incidence of aids, will mean a real chance of being infected through rape, coerced sex, or drug needles (The prevalence of HIV/AIDS is estimated to be 14 times higher among inmates than among the general population).  Clean needles and condoms are not permitted in U.S. prisons.
      As the exonerations continue to unfold, other than torture and forced confessions, typical miscarriages of justice include the deliberate production of false evidence, the withholding or concealing of evidence of innocence and mistaken or coached eyewitness identification and criminal informants willing to lie to get a deal in return for cooperating with the prosecution.

      Another group swelling the prison population is the mentally ill.
Since the widespread closing of mentally health facilities in the '70s, the mentally ill are at large in the communities where their uncontrollable behavior often causes their arrest and conviction.  Once incarcerated they can be expected to find it impossible to adjust to the extreme punitive control of the prison environment. They will act out or disobey rules causing them to be placed in "solitary". There they will be confined 23 hours a day without human contact in a 6 by 11-foot windowless cells until they either become so depressed they commit suicide–or become so psychotic they have to be hospitalized–until they can be recycled again back into prison.

According to the Justice Department the U.S. has over 2.2 million persons locked up in prisons or jails.  With 5% of world’s population we now hold 23% of the world's incarcerated people.

      Innocent or not, those enmeshed in the system will face the loss of financial support for their families forcing them onto the welfare rolls causing further tragedy and swelling the dollar cost to society. Innocent or not, those sentenced will be incarcerated in a savage and gang-run prison with no opportunity to prepare for re-entry when they are released at the end of their term. No matter how minor their offense,they will have a felony record that will make it difficult to find employment.
      The conditions of incarceration could hardly be more perfectly calculated to produce persons unprepared for life in the  open community.
      The good news is the many groups are working hard to free some of the innocents and make changes in the system.  Unfortunately their the piecemeal efforts cannot keep up with the ongoing deterioration of the justice system.
      For every innocent person freed, thousands more will be added to our swollen prison population. The wisdom and imagination needed to straighten out this horror story does exist among leaders in legal, social, and religious thinking.  Now the need is for them to convene for a wholesale review of our current system of criminal law.
       In England in the year 1215 arbitrary imprisonment, taxation and punishment by the King had also become chaotic and dysfunctional. The free barons banded together and forced King John to sign The Magna Carta.  That document, with its shining star of Habeus Corpus, has changed justice around the world and is embedded in The United States' constitution.
      The DNA exoneration’s have thrown the door open wide again. It is time for a vast reform here in the United States, in effect, a Magna Carta Nova.

–Tony Kelly