Re: Assistance in doing the impossible.
I write for assistance and support in changing the laws of Ohio and the United States to comport with the fundamental principles of liberty and justice and the mandates of substantive due process embodied in the Due Process Clause of the 5th and 14th Amendments.
At present, with a narrow exception for DNA evidence which is haphazard at best, and being thwarted through the denial of access to evidence needed for testing, no laws exist in either Ohio or Federal courts which provide a court forum or remedy for convicted felons who, after trial and exhaustion of appeals, obtain absolute evidence proving their innocence.
I intend to change that.
The particulars of my case are fact intensive and would require this letter being 20 or 30 pages for me to relate in detail. Further, the opinions issued in my case by the Court of Appeals, the U.S. District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit are all extremely misleading, as, I believe, they were intended to be. It is my belief the opinions in my case to date have been written with the intent of prejudicing anyone reviewing those opinions into not delving further into the case. The reader, and any subsequent researcher, is forewarned not to accept the conclusive allegations set forth in the court opinions, but to delve into the briefs filed on my behalf, and the newly discovered evidence, prior to reaching an opinion.
Initially, I ask you to go to www.innocentinmates.org and review the synopsis of my case, and the actual documents proving my innocence posted on that website.
The 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act placed a one-year time limit on the filing of a Petition For a Writ of Habeas Corpus, at a time when Congress knew the average length of time it took for a prisoner to obtain proof of innocence and obtain relief was 9½ years. My first witness was not located until three years after my trial, and three months after I was forced to file a 28 U.S.C. §2255 by the mandates of 28 U.S.C. §2244(d)(1).
The first witness was located in January, 1999. Her affidavit, photos, and documents were not obtained until April of 1999. Subsequent witnesses and documents were obtained over the next three years, cumulating with a disclosure from the United States Department of State pursuant to the Freedom of Information/Privacy Act in June of 2002 --three days prior to oral arguments before the 6th Circuit.
From the initial evidence submitted to the U.S. District Court, until the final evidence submitted to the 6th Circuit on the day of oral arguments, I was told that proof I was innocent was IRRELEVANT, and my motions to expand the record were summarily denied. My reaction to this is that if proof of innocence is IRRELEVANT, then the truth itself becomes irrelevant once a conviction has been obtained, regardless of the falsity of that conviction.
I am not alone in this. In July, 2002, Chip Rowe, Associate Editor for the Playboy Forum published an article entitled False Justice. This article was generated by three previous articles I had published on the website of Ohio S.O.R.T. . These articles also appear on this site, PrisonerLife.com, along with the letter from Mr. Rowe sent to me in March 2002. The articles from which False Justice was constructed are: Collateral Damage, Civics: An Advanced Course Taught Only In Prison, and Once You Are Accused. Subsequent articles, written since False Justice appeared in Playboy in July, to include Let's Get To The Truth, and Ostrich Decisions. Another article relevant to my claims of an unconstitutional trial is entitled Why Megan's Laws Are Unconstitutional. This last article advances a unique approach, which I have not seen used to-date except in one case where it prevailed, to challenging Megan's Laws as unconstitutional.
But, as I previously said, I am not alone in the position I now find myself in. Using a different method of arriving at the same figures, Chip Rowe found by extrapolating percentages of DNA exonerations, that roughly 5% of all prisoners in the United States are actually or factually innocent. My figures were based on a U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics study reported in Prison Legal News around 1993 or 1994, which found 8 to 12% of all state prisoners, and 4% of all federal prisoners, to be actually or factually innocent. Taking the mean of those percentages and dividing them in half, I also arrived at the 5% figure, or a 95% efficiency rate, for the judicial system.
The Economist, Packet World in Figures, 2003, gives the population of the prisons of the United States as 2,071,686. A 5% error rate results in a little over 100,000 innocent citizens incarcerated in this nation at a cost of $23,000 a year each, or, a cost of $2,300,000,000 (that's two BILLION, three-hundred Million dollars) a year to society, or, 1.56% of the total expenditure of the United States for law enforcement. ($147 billion dollars according to a recent study released by the Department of Justice.)
Of those 1000,000 innocent incarcerated citizens, the ones like me who have obtained proof of their innocence, have no recourse at law as a matter of right.
The States' interest in the "finality" of criminal convictions, based on the legal fiction of "comity," is somehow deemed to out-weigh any interest in liberty, or freedom from arbitrary imprisonment.
At this point I must pose a question to you. I have posed this question to many courts and counsel, and to Governor Taft, without receiving an answer from anyone. I thought perhaps someone could answer this question for me.
"What legitimate government interest exists in maintaining the "finality" of the conviction, and the continued incarceration, of an innocent citizen?"
Except for, as Mr. Rowe stated, the arrogance of a judicial system that refuses to admit it is not 100% efficient, I cannot conceive of an answer to this question in relation as to why no laws exist allowing a prisoner a court forum in which to present evidence of innocence, and obtain relief from a wrongful conviction and imprisonment. So I must endeavor to change that.
In order to do so, I need your support, and the support of organizations interested in doing the right thing.
I ask you to consider supporting me in lobbying Legislatures and Congress to establish the right, constitutional or otherwise, for prisoners who have PROOF OF THEIR INNOCENCE, to have recourse at law as a matter of right, a court forum, or Commission as is now established in the United Kingdom, in which to present that proof and obtain relief, in accordance with the Convention On Human Rights of the Organization of American States and the United Nations, adopted by reference in the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the United States is a signatory.
It just seems the right thing to do.
Your time and attention are appreciated.
Sincerely,
JAMES F. LOVE
P.S. I am serving four (4) consecutive life sentences with a first parole board date of May, 2036. I am 51 years old. You can read more about me HERE.
