The state House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing Tuesday, March 5 on measures to update Michigan’s exoneration law. One of the bills would allow defendants who pleaded guilty to ask to have their cases re-opened.
The legislation would allow people who entered guilty pleas to come back later and ask for a court-ordered test of DNA evidence. Currently that can only happen if the prosecutor agrees. But Jessica Zimbelman, managing attorney at the State Appellate Defenders Office, said people are cajoled into pleading guilty by law enforcement, attorneys, or friends and family members.
“There’s a whole host of reasons why someone who’s not guilty would plead guilty,” she told the committee. “I like to think of guilty pleas as a high-stakes situation, like an interrogation and we know that under pressure, people can falsely confess in an interrogation and it’s the same kind of principle when you’re looking at pleas.”
It did not come up at the hearing, but one of the arguments against making it easier to re-opening cases is the effects on victims and survivors.
Robyn Frankel, who directs the Michigan Attorney General’s Conviction Integrity Unit, addressed that argument. She said what victims and survivors want is justice.
“No victim has ever told us to stop what we are doing because the police might have gotten the wrong person,” she said. “A victim’s need for finality is the need to have the right person incarcerated and blamed.”
No one testified against the bills, which could be taken up again next week.
Also next week, the Michigan Supreme Court has arguments teed up on whether a man was improperly coerced into entering a guilty plea with a promise of leniency for him and his brother. The charges included assault with intent to commit murder.
