We elected Connie Pillich as Hamilton County’s prosecutor because she promised to make us safer by ensuring that her office obeys the law while enforcing the law. She promised to require her attorneys to obey ethical rules, deliver unbiased justice, and hold each other and the law enforcement officers they work with accountable to do that.
Prosecutor Connie Pillich is keeping her promises to us.
She announced on June 15 that she has established the Conviction Integrity Unit to ensure that her office uses its formidable power to review credible information that a past conviction may have resulted from a failure to obey those rules.
A CIU has been described as the justice system’s “quality control” department, looking back at convictions to remedy serious errors and to fix justice system weaknesses.
Why integrity protects everyone
Why is the CIU important to all of us now? Courts in the past have repeatedly criticized prosecutors for violating these rules of conduct in Hamilton County. We elected Pillich to end these violations.
Since her election, Pillich says her office has “maintained a commitment to ensuring that only the guilty are punished for crimes. An incorrect verdict not only harms the individual convicted, but it also allows a criminal to remain free in our community to victimize more innocent people.”
I was a prosecutor for 24 years and a defense attorney for 15 years. I know that the prosecutor is the most powerful person in the criminal legal system. I had the power to make investigations and prosecutions thorough, fair, ethical, and without bias. I am a volunteer with the Ohio Innocence Project, and I know that our justice system is a human endeavor; it is not infallible, and it is never too late to correct an injustice and improve the justice system.
Pillich will remedy the weaknesses in the justice system that the CIU finds and give her prosecutors training to equip them to use their formidable power while obeying the rules to give “equal justice under the law” when they investigate, charge and convict. These innovations are needed to end misconduct, whether intentional or not, and make changes to the system of investigation and prosecution that will make us genuinely fair and safe.
Directing a CIU cannot be learned on-the-job. Pillich has hired an attorney with deep experience in Ohio criminal law and the justice system, including how an effective CIU should work to be genuine “quality control, as her CIU director. Donald Caster’s career in a prosecutor’s office, as a law school professor, and as an attorney investigating and litigating serious errors in convictions has prepared him well to be the director. I know Caster’s work. He has the knowledge, experience and fundamental fairness to all to make the CIU what is needed in the Prosecutor’s Office.
Pillich has given the CIU director the independence to review the integrity of Hamilton County convictions that deserve reconsideration to determine whether they were just convictions based on law, facts, and investigative and prosecutorial conduct. Pillich, not the CIU director, will decide whether what the CIU finds justifies her reconsidering a conviction and taking action to correct it.
Building trust through accountability
The Hamilton County Sheriff and the city of Cincinnati Police Department have publicly stated they share Pillich’s mission to ensure equal justice under the law by ensuring that investigators and prosecutors obey the law while they enforce the law.
The sheriff promises, “I shall ensure that I and my employees, in the performance of our duties, will enforce and administer the law . . . so that equal protection of the law is guaranteed to everyone.”
The Cincinnati Police Department promises, “The Cincinnati Police Department will . . . improve the quality of life through the delivery of fair and impartial police services while maintaining an atmosphere of respect for human dignity.”
The promise to us by Hamilton County’s justice system, carved in stone on the Hamilton County Courthouse, is “Equal and Exact Justice to All Men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political” − Thomas Jefferson.
That is what our Prosecutor Connie Pillich and her law enforcement partners work every day to honor. We are more just and safer as a result.
Kathleen Brinkman is an attorney and former prosecutor who lives Downtown.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Pillich’s Conviction Integrity Unit makes justice stronger | Opinion
Reporting by Kathleen Brinkman, Opinion contributor / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Kathleen Brinkman, Opinion contributor | USA TODAY Network
