Unfairness permeates the United States justice system. In 1997, the United States Department of Justice estimated that 29% of black males born in 1991 would serve time in prison. The incarceration rate for black males is eight times greater than that of white males. One of every 14 African Americans is now in prison. Sadly, there are five times more African American men languishing in California prisons than studying in the California state university system.

Such a skewed criminal justice system cannot be considered fair and even-handed. On the contrary, it is a symptom of too much power in the hands of prosecutors.

• The system does not search for the truth; prosecutors seek convictions, not justice. Since 1963, appellate courts have vacated 381 murder convictions because prosecutors presented false evidence or hid evidence of the defendant's innocence. In 1998, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigated the federal justice system and reported that "hundreds of times during the past 10 years, federal agents and prosecutors have pursued justice by breaking the law. They lied, hid evidence, distorted facts, engaged in cover-ups, paid for perjury, and set up innocent people in a relentless effort to win indictments, guilty pleas and convictions. Rarely were these federal officials punished for their misconduct . . . . Perjury has become the coin of the realm in federal law enforcement. People’s homes are invaded because of lies. People are arrested because of lies. People stay in prison because of lies, and bad guys go free because of lies."
   

• The DNA revolution has proven beyond doubt that innocent people are sent to prison, where they remain for decades. Of the 25 men condemned to death row in Illinois, 12 were executed. The other 13 were proven innocent after spending years in death row waiting to be killed by the State of Illinois; a shocking error rate higher than 50%. To put it in perspective, imagine living in a place where there is only one doctor, and he makes wrong medical decisions more than 50% of the time. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor asserted in a July 2, 2001 speech: "If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed."
   

• Two-thirds of all death penalty convictions were successfully appealed from 1973 to 1995. Ninety-four men and women from 22 states have been freed from death row. Twenty of them were freed in Florida, where three came within 16 hours of electrocution. The guilty verdicts that sent these innocent people to death row were fatally compromised by unreliable evidence, coerced false confessions, questionable eyewitnesses, false prosecution evidence, inaccurate scientific evidence, or prejudiced jurors.
   

• The justice system is a factory, designed to churn out convictions and lengthy sentences because someone in Congress, in your town or in your courtroom thinks it's efficient to do so.

There is an inequality of power and material resources in this system. The government has a large staff of lawyers, police and agents, sophisticated crime labs and experts, and a huge budget provided by the taxpayers. This gives them a huge advantage because the legal system is based on the premise that "the whole truth" is presented at the trial. If the defendant doesn't challenge the government's case, or submit its own witnesses, then the jury by default will accept whatever the prosecutor produces.

These days, a growing number of criminal cases evolve into high-stakes civil cases despite the fact that a jury may find the defendant “not guilty” of criminal charges. The resources facing a company or individual could be overwhelming in these instances. Our civil division employs the same tactics used in criminal defense allowing us to focus on these types of cases. The firm recently broadened its civil litigation practice by adding veteran trial lawyer Larry A. Stumpf, former head of the Miami litigation department at Akerman Senterfitt.

Because the law is evolving, the line between criminal and civil matters is blurring. Many criminal cases today have a parallel high-stakes civil lawsuit attached to them. Likewise, many civil cases today are brought by the same enormous power of government that is faced in criminal work. Even when a civil case is not brought by the government, the resources facing a corporation or an individual in a major case can be formidable. Success in these civil cases demands a team approach designed to fit the facts.