Criminal Discovery: Sowing the Seeds of Justice
One our taglines at Texas Appleseed is “Sowing the Seeds of Justice.” And, as any gardener knows, it can take a long time and a lot of work to see those seeds grow and bear fruit. The Michael Morton Act and criminal discovery reform is one example of the persistence we know it takes to achieve real reform.
Michael Morton was convicted of the murder of his wife and sentenced to life in prison in 1987. Years later, evidence from the investigation surfaced that had not been shared with his attorneys, including among other things, a bloody bandana. When that bandana was finally tested for DNA, it came back with a match for a convicted felon whose DNA had also been found at the crime scene of a strikingly similar murder. Michael Morton was exonerated, and the real killer was convicted and sent to prison for life.
This kind of terrible mistake, which robbed an innocent man of more than two decades of freedom, is much less likely with uniform and open criminal discovery procedures, where defense teams are given access to all potentially useful evidence. In the early 2000’s Texas Appleseed had surveyed several jurisdictions to understand how juvenile courts were handling the discovery process. After a request from a public defender office, we decided to update that study and increase its scope dramatically, including the criminal courts that decided Michael Morton’s fate.
The resulting report, co-authored with the Texas Defender Service(TDS), Improving Discovery in Criminal Cases in Texas, showed the wide variety of criminal discovery policies and practices in place across the state, and illustrated how access to a fair trial could be severely compromised simply depending on where the trial took place. The report and Texas Appleseed’s advocacy supported efforts at the legislature in 2013 that ultimately resulted in the passage of the Michael Morton Act, which guaranteed open discovery policies throughout the state for the first time.
Not content just to watch implementation of the new law from the sidelines, we issued a follow-up report with TDS in 2015, Towards More Transparent Justice, which evaluated the first year of the Michael Morton Act. We found that while problems existed with a few offices not fully complying with the Act, that overall no additional legislative fixes were necessary.
We have found in our twenty years of advocacy that this dogged persistence and long term view is necessary to change the unjust laws and policies that keep Texans from reaching their full potential. When we start a project, there are often few advocates and little work being done on the ground. We start by surveying the field and conducting the research and analysis to find practical, data-driven solutions. We sow seeds by recruiting partners and by educating policymakers. And finally, we continue to advocate until we see permanent change take root and justice begins to flower.