Today we called a client to tell him that 15 years after he was convicted, the state appellate court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial “in the interest of justice.” It was an exciting moment. A crowd of people packed into the room and hovered around the phone–our clinic had had the case for 11 years and over 22 students had worked on it.
Nonetheless, while the excitement of the moment prevailed, the reality of what the decision meant was bittersweet. “So, they’re going to try me again?” the client asked. Possibly. Despite the fact that someone else has confessed to our client’s crime, the State can still choose to pursue convicting him again. On top of that, they can still appeal to our state’s supreme court, and have the reversal thrown out. So while it feels like a win, it’s really only a step. A powerful, meaningful step–but the end result is still out of our hands.
In the meantime, even though the court has thrown out his conviction, the client will probably have to stay in prison pending the State’s appeal. We’ll ask for him to be let out, of course, but unless they allow him out on his signature (where they accept his promise not to flee), he has no money to post bond. As our client said, “15 cents an hour isn’t worth much. And items in the canteen are expensive.“
And so here we are. Gathered around a phone to tell Mr. Client that a court agrees with him–they believe that it is likely that he is innocent, and that his conviction was unfair. But other than that acknowledgment, our client’s not gaining much. He’s still going to be in prison for an indefinite period: he’s still going to have to do what he is told, no questions asked; he’ll still have to wake up at 4am for breakfast and eat his lunch at 9am; and he’s still going to be unable to do so much as walk outside to look at the stars at night, if that’s what he wanted to do. But none of this is because he is guilty. Instead, his current crime is that he’s too poor. And nothing we can do as attorneys can change that.
So we’ll wait–us in our offices, our client in his cell– and for the next who-knows-how-long, nothing will change. But we’ll still call it a win.