With the recent deaths of four women in the Michigan Department of Corrections, I thought it would be of interest for people to remember two other cases from several years ago that exposed the hypocrisy of Michigan’s criminal justice system, especially when it comes to medical care: Jack Kevorkian, who was convicted of facilitating assisted suicides, and Maurice Carter, whom many advocates believe was wrongfully convicted of assault with intent to commit murder.
Carter ultimately contracted hepatitis while in prison yet was purportedly not informed of it until he had collapsed in his cell, and this delay potentially denied him timely medical treatment to the point that his illness became terminal.
Some have argued that Carter’s treatment was due to the fact that he refused to admit his guilt, which is another paradox of the legal system, because in order to be released, innocent people often feel compelled to falsely admit to crimes they didn’t commit.
When one prosecutor was later asked why she, as a human being, couldn’t support Carter’s release sooner, she replied, “I didn’t come here as a human being.” A judge in his case, when advised about the severity of Carter’s illness, remarked, “I just don’t want him dying in my courtroom.”
Yet, contrast the state’s lack of adequate medical treatment for Carter with its pontifications about the “sanctity of life” in the Kevorkian case, including arguments that the value of human life should not be diminished based upon a person’s poor health.
In other words, individuals assisting people who knowingly and willingly choose to end their lives due to poor health are disrespecting the sanctity of human life, but the legal system minimizing the life of a man who had no choice in his medical care is perfectly acceptable.
Although Michigan’s then-governor finally released Carter on medical grounds, he died just a few months later. And to this day, he has never been formally pardoned.
People often ask me why I abandoned the practice of law, and I rarely have the same response twice. But a few weeks ago, I watched a movie where a former lawyer was asked the same question. While I don’t recall the exact words, her answer was that, while she loved the law, she got tired of how unfair the system was, and that this unfairness seemed to arise far too often.
Yes, sometimes victims of wrongful convictions and imprisonments do receive compensation from the state. But rarely, if ever, are the people responsible for these convictions ever held accountable, even when they’ve often committed the worst types of misconduct to obtain them.
While the legal system will frequently go to extraordinary lengths to keep innocent people in prison, from fighting against DNA testing that could exonerate a person to dismissing exculpatory evidence that was not available at trial, it can smile and put an “X” in the win column when a guilty person, like Jeffrey Epstein, gets a slap-on-the-wrist plea deal, while many of his cronies get off scot-free.
An unwritten secret of the legal system is that justice is subordinate to finality, which is why sustaining a wrongful conviction is incessantly paramount to admitting one occurred.
But admitting a mistake, especially when life and freedom are at issue, shouldn’t be perceived as shameful, but courageous. Even though the state cannot restore life to Maurice Carter, it can, at the very least, have the decency to pardon him. After all, if courts demand that individuals respect the sanctity of living human beings, then they should set the example and do so as well, not just with their words, but with their deeds.
David R. Hoffman is a retired civil rights and constitutional law attorney.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Inmate deaths highlight Michigan’s hypocrisy of system | Opinion
Reporting by David R. Hoffman, Holland Sentinel / The Holland Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By David R. Hoffman, Holland Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
