As I have listened to protesters over the past week, I have heard a resounding message: Law enforcement must be accountable.
As prosecuting attorney for Ƶ County, I know that the message of government accountability doesn’t stop with the police on the street. It extends to prosecutors’ offices, and to the courtroom.
Late last month, the Missouri Supreme Court issued an order overturning a 1996 murder conviction obtained by the prosecuting attorney’s office. The defendant was a man named Larry Callanan. The report accompanying the order detailed serious misconduct committed by a former prosecutor in the office.
The case involved a shooting that no one saw. The evidence was circumstantial, relying heavily on the testimony of a single eyewitness who saw Callanan fleeing the scene. The eyewitness testified on the stand that she saw no other cars or people leaving the area. On the strength of that testimony, a jury convicted Callanan of first-degree murder.
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But as the Supreme Court’s report explains, that was not the whole story. Before trial, the eyewitness confessed to the prosecutor in the case that she may have, in fact, seen a second car fleeing the scene. The prosecutor told her not to “volunteer” this information unless “specifically asked to do so.”
That action contravenes one of the most important principles we have as prosecutors: that information pointing toward a defendant’s possible innocence — exculpatory information — should be turned over to the defendant, not hidden from him or her.
In the Callanan case, however, that’s not what happened. The witness followed the prosecutor’s instructions and told no one about the second car. When asked on cross-examination whether she had seen a second car, she answered, “I don’t think — no.” The prosecutor said nothing.
By staying silent after that answer, the prosecutor compounded his earlier error. Lawyers are not permitted to persuade their own witness to lie on the stand.
As a result, Larry Callanan served almost a quarter-century in prison without having received a fair trial.
From the moment Callanan’s defense lawyers showed me the evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, I have supported his habeas corpus petition to have his conviction overturned. No prosecution where law enforcement officials told a witness to lie should stand in our justice system.
I also took note of Callanan’s record while wrongfully imprisoned, where he volunteered in the hospice ward, lived in the honor dorm, and held trusted positions of employment doing clerical and cleaning work for staff members.
Although my office has no formal role in a habeas corpus petition filed by a defendant like Callanan, I believed it would be wrong to stay silent. So I filed a letter with the court supporting his position and being honest with the court about the wrongdoing committed by our office.
I have enormous sympathy for family members of the victim, who have had to live without him for more than 20 years. But wrongful conviction does not benefit victims either. We want our system to have integrity for victims as much as for defendants.
After Callanan’s conviction was overturned, we filed a petition with the court stating our intention not to pursue further charges against him, and ordering him be released from custody. The Supreme Court did not declare him to be actually innocent, but the court’s report makes clear that the evidence against him — already circumstantial — had collapsed. He was released on Tuesday.
We cannot let this happen again. We must demonstrate the same accountability of ourselves that we demand of others.
Late last year, I created a Conviction and Incident Review Unit to review allegations of wrongful convictions and to independently investigate and prosecute allegations of excessive force and other wrongdoing by law enforcement.
After a nationwide search, we hired a former federal civil-rights prosecutor to run the unit, and a former special agent with the FBI to lead its investigations.
The unit operates fully independently, answering only to me. Since the unit started up six months ago, it has had exclusive prosecutorial authority over all police shootings and other allegations of police misconduct in Ƶ County.
As of February, we have also begun accepting applications from individuals convicted in Ƶ County who are innocent, or whose convictions resulted from deliberate misconduct by law enforcement. That application is available on our website, and I urge anyone who qualifies to fill it out.
Reviewing wrongful convictions is difficult and labor-intensive, and as much as we want quick answers, this is not a quick process. But we are committed to examining our own conduct and our own mistakes, and to creating a just and fair process.
These actions are our way of being accountable, and of holding ourselves and other law enforcement in Ƶ County to standards that its citizens deserve.