In effort to stop wrongful criminal convictions, Contra Costa DA launches new unit to review them

It’s the stuff of nightmares: being wrongfully convicted of a crime and locked away in prison for decades, desperate for another chance at freedom. But it has happened before, for a number of reasons — faulty forensic science, false confessions, bad lawyering or misconduct by police or other officials — according to defense lawyers across the country.

A new initiative by Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton would try to prevent that. It’s called a “conviction integrity unit”, one of more than 30 across the country that have developed in prosecutors’ offices in recent years to review cases where someone may have been convicted of a crime they did not commit.

The unit will receive cases for review in a variety of ways. There is a form available from the district attorney’s office and online that allows a person or their attorney to file a request for the unit to review their case for new information or evidence that might help determine if they’re actually innocent, or an issue of wrongdoing that may have affected the case. The unit will make it a priority to review applications from people in custody, according to the form, but anyone with a conviction in Contra Costa County can seek review, regardless of if they are currently locked up, if they believe their case was compromised.

The unit will also self-initiate a review of some cases, Becton said in an interview this week. That would include if they got a tip that a case was mishandled in some way or if information comes up that may signal something was wrong in the conviction.

The unit has already started reviewing cases after instances of police misconduct were disclosed under the recent SB 1421 law, like Walnut Creek Officer Curtis Borman, who was found to have falsified reports 31 times in 2015 and 2016, yet kept his job.

“If we get information that a certain person in law enforcement is falsifying reports, that triggers something for us to ask, wow, do we have any convictions that this person was involved with?” Becton said. “Then, we need to go back and review.”

Another officer already under review by the unit is former Richmond police Sgt. Mike Wang, a high-ranking drug investigator who was fired after allegations surfaced that he took bribes from coke and meth dealers affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel, outed a confidential informant who was nonfatally shot, warned drug dealers about a DEA tracking device on their car, and told a cartel enforcer to flee the country because he had a pending murder warrant, among other things. Wang’s alleged misconduct could potentially affect hundreds of criminal convictions.

It’s different from an appeals process in which defendants ask judges in a court process to review an error in the court’s application of the law, she said.

“Here, we are looking at a systematic way to see if there was any wrongdoing by any individual in the process,” she said.

It’s not the first time county prosecutors have done conviction review work, but it is the first standalone conviction review unit for Contra Costa that will formalize a process for investigating wrongful conviction claims. Deputy district attorney Brian Feinberg will supervise the unit full time, and it will be staffed by investigators and overseen by Assistant District Attorney Venus D. Johnson.

Becton said it was important to her to dedicate resources to the unit and prioritize the review of convictions.

“With this new unit, the public can be assured we have resources now at our disposal to investigate prior convictions and seek justice for the wrongly convicted,” she said. “We have a duty as prosecutors to uphold the law and administer fair justice for all.”

The creation of the unit has drawn support from groups like the Northern California Innocence Project as well as Fair and Just Prosecution, an organization that works with prosecutors to promote reform in the criminal legal system based on equity and fairness.

“Having a process for review of convictions through a CIU is a recognized best practice around the nation,” wrote Fair and Just Prosecution’s Miriam Aroni Krinsky, in a letter of support. “Establishing these protocols in Contra Costa County will protect the integrity of the criminal justice process and promote public safety by bolstering trust and confidence in local law enforcement and the justice system as a whole.”

Of 139 exonerations of convicted people made in 2017, 42 exonerations were made through conviction integrity units across the country, according to a 2018 report by the National Registry of Exonerations. According to that report, there were 33 CIUs in 2017 — a small fraction of the more than 2,000 prosecutors’ offices across the country, but a number that has grown substantially in the last decade.

A briefing paper from Fair and Just Prosecution found that conviction integrity units “with an expansive scope of review and transparent practices have found the impacts to be tremendously beneficial, not just for remedying past individual wrongful convictions and enhancing community confidence in the justice system, but also as a tool for improving officewide practices in a manner that reduces the likelihood of errors occurring again in the future.”

Fair and Just Prosectuion recommends giving conviction integrity units a “broad mandate” that allows them to review a variety of cases, including misdemeanors, as well as “overly punitive” sentences.

Becton said that while her office is still in the early stages of making formal guidelines for the unit, there is currently no hard limit on what types of cases it will take — it could review misdemeanors, in addition to felonies. Its purview does not currently include sentencing review, she said, but that could be eventually be an option in her office under a new state law that allows district attorneys to review and recommend reductions of sentences that no longer seem just.

The unit will also take steps to make policy recommendations or advise on practices to help prevent wrongful convictions in the future, Becton said. While it hasn’t happened yet, she said, if staff were to find that a certain policy or practice was contributing to or could contribute to a wrongful conviction, the unit would point that out and hopefully help fix it.

That has garnered some initial support from public defenders in the county.

“The public defender’s office looks forward to seeing results from the conviction integrity unit, both in the form of changed practices preventing wrongful convictions going forward, and with the incarcerated innocent being released,” said Rebecca Brackman, who works in the county’s public defender’s office, in an email. “Effective conviction integrity efforts serve the community in so many ways: in freeing the innocent, more appropriate use of public safety resources and in prosecuting the actual perpetrators of crime.”