Everyone accused of a crime has a right to have the matter tried before a jury with the heightened "beyond a reasonable doubt" evidentiary standard.  Sometimes, however, the jury gets it wrong.

When that happens, you have a constitutional right to appeal.  Most convictions, statistically, are affirmed at the intermediate appellate level.  From there, a convicted felon has a discretionary appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.

The Michigan Supreme Court selects few cases each year; most petitions for a writ of certiorari, especially when they are from prison inmates, are rejected.

Once your state appellate rights are exhausted, you have the right to petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court.  Hopefully, your state court appellate attorney had the wisdom to "federalize" your brief in the intermediate state appellate court because if not, all your constitutional issues are deemed waived.

If the Habeas petition is denied in federal district court, as most are, there is a constitutional right to appeal even further, to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals.

The United States Supreme Court is the end of the road.  A petition for a writ of certeriorari to the SCOTUS is, well, best of luck to you....

Most would agree that the incarceration of wrongly convicted individuals is one of the true horrors of our criminal justice system; a less than perfect system that sends people to prison from time to time who did not commit the crime for which they were convicted.

The State Bar of Michigan's blog recently posted some fresh literature addressing this troubling subject.  We think it's worth a look.

Over the weekend, for example, the Detroit Free Press profiled its first in a series of articles detailing a West Bloomfield family's plight following criminal sexual conduct charges.

In addition to the case profile in the Freep, a more detailed study by the Campaign for Justice and the Michigan ACLU is included in the post, tracking 13 wrongly convicted individuals in Michigan; this piece also impugns Michigan's court-appointed counsel system.

The SBM blog post also includes a link to Reason Magazine's nation-wide study featuring UM Law Professor Sam Gross who concludes that wrongful convictions are far more common than most of us believe.

We are not sure what the solution is to this problem.  Many folks in our free society seem hell-bent on breaking the law in major ways, committing "crimes against the person", to use a classification phrase from Michigan's sentencing guideline manual.  No doubt, prosecutors often have a full plate.

But when the accused is innocent, we all lose some of our individual rights, liberties and freedoms.

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Photo Credit: LA Times

In a hotly contested 5-4 plurality decision that will surely go down as one of the more controversial cases of this decade, SCOTUS affirmed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in ordering the release of more than 45,000 California felons.  The decision will precipitate the largest release of prisoners in American history.

Brown v Plata began it's marathon crawl through the federal court system in 1990, when a case was filed challenging the poor status of mental health treatment in the California prisons.  Then in 2001, a companion case challenging the medical care of prisoners was initiated.

These consolidated cases have everything, from a procedural standpoint.  For example, a "special master" first was appointed by the federal court to make findings about the prison conditions.  The State of California stipulated to violations of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and agreed to remedy the problem by reducing overcrowding in the prisons.  Next, when remedial measures fell short, or did not occur, the court appointed a receiver to oversee the California Department of Corrections.

The cases were even assigned to a special three-judge panel to oversee the CDC's progress; or lack thereof.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority's opinion, finding that prison conditions had gone too far for too long.  The opinion provides a few slices of life in the CDC like sharing a toilet with 55 of your good buddies, or doing your entire four-year bit in a sweaty gymnasium. 

The always-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia opined that the majority's decision was "absurd", noting that SCOTUS routinely overruled 9th Circuit decisions that called for the release of individual prisoners.  Justice Scalia sees grave problems that will come home to roost from the Plata ruling.

In a separate dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the majority's decision conflicts with a federal law which prohibits judges from releasing prisoners.

The one thing SCOTUS gave the State of California was time.  California has busied itself with transferring thousands of state prisoners to county jails across the state.  This will not amelioriate the entire problem, however, and some of California's "happy-go-lucky" [Scalia's characterization] felons will wind up on the streets.

This High Court decision brings into focus the inherent tension between our individual freedoms and enforcement of the laws.  There is a constant tension between the two concepts.  Sometimes, that tension cycles to the breaking point like in California, where too many law breakers are stuffed into concrete boxes that are ready to explode.

In Michigan, although we are far behind California in maxing-out our prison capacity, we have an awful lot of population encased in concrete and barbed wire.  In fact, we have the opposite problem.  Due to budget cuts, we have at least one brand new facility, in Lake County, sitting empty due to lack of funding.

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Did you know that at any given moment, up to 2.3 million citizens are confined in our prisons in the United States?  Unfortunately, we lead the world in the incarceration industry.

This week, the Supreme Court will hear extended oral argument (80-minutes) in the case of Schwarzenegger v Plata.  You may recall that the governor of our largest state, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared in 2006 that acute prison overcrowding had reached a crisis stage, "that gets worse with each passing day."

In California, there are approximately 160,000 men and women behind bars.  The prisons in that state are operating at 195% capacity meaning that two inmates occupy a space designed for one.

If petitioners are successful, a favorable ruling from the SCOTUS could release up to 40,000 inmates in California alone.

So far, the Prison Law Offices in Berkley, a non-profit organization specializing in prisoners' rights cases, sucessfully petitioned for convening a special three-judge District Court panel to assess the prisoners' claim under the Prisoner Litigation Relief Act.  Once convened, the prisoners' lawyers next convinced that panel to find that all conditions for a prisoner release order had been met.

The three-judge panel (not an appellate court, mind you) then ruled that the prison population must be reduced (significantly) over a two-year period.  This order, along with some complex jurisdictional issues, will be argued at SCOTUS this week.

One of the core issues is whether the admittedly overcrowded conditions in the California prisons affect the inmates' constitutional rights.  This approach is distinct from your basic habeas corpus petition and could result in a landmark prisoners' rights case.   

Among several other arguments, California asserts that it is simply not equipped to cut loose tens of thousands of convicted felons into its collapsing economy.  It does appear there is no good solution to this knotty problem.

Our laws become meaningless unless enforced.  Violent offenders must be punished to deter other violent crimes.  At what point, however, do we become a nation behind bars?

Michigan Connection:  Attorney General Mike Cox has joined several other states in filing an amicus brief in favor of rescinding the prisoner release order.

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