26-Year Secret Kept Innocent Man In Prison (Includes a DU call-to-action)

[Subdivisions]

Alton Logan doesn't understand why two lawyers with proof he didn't commit murder were legally prevented from helping him. They had their reasons: To save Logan, they would have had to break the cardinal rule of attorney-client privilege to reveal their own client had committed the crime. But Logan had 26 years in prison to try to understand why he was convicted for a crime he didn't commit.

Logan, still in jail, speaks to 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon in his first interview for a report that also includes the lawyers which will be broadcast this Sunday, March 9, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

"Yes. Sympathize with , yes. Understand it, no," Logan tells Simon. "If you know this is an innocent person, why would you allow this person to be prosecuted, convicted, sent to prison for all these years?" asks the 54-year-old inmate.

Lawyers Jamie Kunz and Dale Coventry were public defenders when their client, Andrew Wilson, admitted to them he had shot-gunned a security guard to death in a 1982 robbery. When a tip led to Logan's arrest and he went to trial for the crime, the two lawyers were in a bind. They wanted to help Logan but legally couldn't.

-snip-

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/06/60minutes/main3914719.shtml?source=mostpop_story">Continue »

This is a tragic and frustrating story. I urge and challenge DUers to contact http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/about/contacts.html">Illinois Attorney General's office tomorrow to lobby for Mr. Logan's release pending a new trial that should set him free.

Otherwise, after watching the segment on CBS' 60 Minutes just now, I'm speechless.

[redwitch]

1. 1 in 99.1 Americans are in prison.

How many really should be? There seems to be plenty of law and very little justice. :-(


My husband created a website for Gary Tyler, convicted of murder in Louisiana over 30 years ago with a sham trial and coerced witnesses. He has been in Angola since he was 17. Still there. Gary and his lawyers have decided to pursue other legal avenues beyond protests to get him out, but when?

[ConcernedCanuk]

8. Trouble is, they got the wrong people in jail - Think Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, etc.,

.
.
.

But no

Nail the pot-smokers

The homeless

The poor

But not the real criminals

The ones running the USA into the ground.

USA's Government.

[roguevalley]

13. those lawyers were tested and they failed. I would have told, fuck

the client privilege. It is a matter of your soul and getting right with God. No way I would have shut my mouth for this.

[Warpy]

2. I thought priests were the only people who could legally

conceal crimes. I know that lawyers can't be compelled to testify against their clients due to privilege, but as officers of the court, I have always been under the impression that they were duty bound to report crimes.

[Midlodemocrat]

9. I thought that as well. This story doesn't make sense to me.

[varkam]

14. Nope.

AFAIK, the only thing that lawyers are compelled to report to authorities is if they believe that their client will commit a crime. If a crime has already been committed and they discover this via their client, then they are duty-bound to keep silent about it.

[emilyg]

3. k

[Kolesar]

4. Sounds like a conspiracy, broadly defined...eom

[BrklynLiberal]

5. A horrific comment on our "justice" system..

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. What are the arguments for attourney-client priveledge?

Does it assist innocent defendents, or is it just there to prevent criminals being punished more harshly than is just?

[JerseygirlCT]

12. It assists the defendent, who legally speaking is *always*

innocent until proven guilty. That's really important to remember.

This was a frustrating story to watch. I think I may have risked disbarrment, myself, in order not to see an innocent man in jail for years and years.

But attorney-client privilege is part of our system for a good reason. An atty cannot adequately defend someone who cannot trust the atty with the truth. I kept wondering if there weren't some way around it - a way to talk to the judge privately and without disclosing names, say that you know the defendent is innocent... I have to assume the atty's investigated that, though.

[mucifer]

7. The IL attourney gen is Lisa Madigan and she has a good reputation

so with some pressure I think she will listen and act.

[flashl]

10. K&R n/t

[varelse]

11. An innocent man will be kept imprisoned until a judge can decide

If he should be tried a second time for a crime he never committed?

This has brought back painful memories from the state-sanctioned killing of Willie Darden :(

Our justice "system" needs an overhaul :(

[Laurier]

15. There's an "innocence at stake" exception to attorney-client privilege

in the UK and Canada, which would have allowed the attorneys to speak up without violating privilege in the circumstances, in order that they not contribute - through silence - to a miscarriage of justice. The US should adopt a similar exception.