The dispensation of justice is not always fair, and some pay a very high price

“I’m not the only innocent man in prison,” former Fort Worth police officer Brian Edward Franklin said after an appeals court determined that he had been wrongly convicted and granted him a new trial.

Franklin spent 21 years in prison, accused of the sexual assault of a child, which he has steadfastly denied. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found conflicting elements in his accuser’s testimony.

“The district attorney’s office does not believe there are innocent people in prison from Tarrant County,” he said. Do you believe there are? How much does that bother you?

Yes, I do believe there are innocent people in prison from Tarrant County. My brother is one of them.

He has been in 16 years of a 20-year sentence. There was never an investigation of any kind.

There is an affidavit from the arresting agency that states they never were in possession of any evidence.

The medical report has no physical findings. No DNA testing was done.

I feel the justice system has failed. It bothers me a lot. The courts are not doing their jobs. The system is very much broken.

Innocent until proven guilty? Not any more.

Our son is an innocent person put in prison by Tarrant County. We call it “Justice Tarrant County-style.”

In 2005, our son, Roy Adams Jr., was wrongfully convicted of intoxication manslaughter and sentenced to 12½ years for the death of a Grapevine police officer.

Our son was not drunk. A heartbreaking accident occurred — “reasonably, medically caused by a seizure.” Go to justice4royjr.com.

He remains in prison. Parole was denied six times. We are greatly concerned.

The average person has no idea that there are innocents incarcerated in Tarrant County.

If prosecutors do their jobs properly, they can feel confident in their convictions.

However, based on the large number of convictions of innocent people, one might suspect there may be some in Tarrant County.

Over-zealous prosecutors sometimes are the culprits.

Those taking part in convicting innocents should be held responsible. If so, there should be fewer innocents given long prison sentences.

Yes, innocent people have gone to jail — when the jury is lied to, or when the prosecution withholds information favorable to the defendant, or when an “eyewitness” is mistaken.

That last parameter is one that most juries are not aware of — that “eyewitnesses” are usually wrong. Therefore, reasonable doubt exists, and the verdict should be not guilty.

However, this is not common knowledge, and all tyrants love it when people are ill-informed, because then the tyrant can convince the people, or jury, that he has it right and thus take advantage of them.

Look up the case of Lenell Geter, who was “convicted” solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony in 1982.

You will gasp in disbelief at what happened.

Are there innocent people behind bars? Absolutely.

Common sense and the law of large numbers will say so.

Did the “system” fail? Are guilty people walking the streets because the evidence was flawed or because someone lied or refused to testify?

Did the “system” fail?

Of course there are innocent people in prison.

Defense lawyers care only about acquittals. Prosecutors are promoted for convictions. Judges get re-elected for being tough on crime.

No one gets a reward for being concerned about justice. The incentives are misaligned.

One solution would be a permanent innocence project in each prosecutor’s office, to examine each conviction for misconduct or flaws.

Like an internal affairs department for the police, they’d be resented by their colleagues but beloved by every wrongfully convicted person they freed.

The majority of adults who have had to hire any type of an attorney can probably tell some really good stories about how poorly their representations were.

A criminal case is even more magnified, and the unfortunate dilemma is a simple case of money and the fact that some defense lawyers have no real incentive to perform at an optimum level after they have locked you into a legally binding contract for services.

On the other hand, the Tarrant County DA’s office, with a budget of $38 million and more than 200 prosecutors and investigators, can proudly provide the best services humanly possible to convict you.

Hiring a great lawyer is a solid philosophy, but most folks have limited funds and can’t afford great lawyers as could, say, O.J. Simpson or even the family of Ethan Couch.

The deck is usually stacked against us.

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 5:18 PM with the headline "The dispensation of justice is not always fair, and some pay a very high price."