Conviction Is a Crime Against Justice

Re “New Light on a Distant Verdict,” May 22: What if Bruce Lisker had been executed for killing his mother and only now new evidence pointing to his innocence was unearthed by your enterprising reporters? The Lisker case reveals many of the fatal flaws plaguing our criminal justice system: police misconduct, sloppy investigations, lack of scientific testing, prosecutorial misconduct, failure to share exculpatory evidence with the defense, false testimony by jailhouse snitches, ineffective assistance of counsel, false confessions and stubborn refusals to reopen questionable cases.

Prompted by serious concerns that innocent people are being convicted of crimes they did not commit, the California Legislature has established an independent nonpartisan commission to study the administration of justice in this state, including the death penalty, with a mandate to issue its findings in December 2007.

In the meantime, we need a moratorium in this state to ensure that we do not execute people whose death sentences are a product of a flawed system, riddled with the kinds of problems found in the Lisker case, not to mention racial, economic and geographic disparities.

Stephen Rohde

Los Angeles

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The excellent article on Lisker’s 20 years of incarceration leads to one overwhelming question: How many more are there? Government agents, enforcers and prosecutors have awesome responsibilities and equally awesome opportunities to deny us our liberties.

John Ziebarth

Fountain Valley

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That a defendant could be railroaded by an overzealous prosecutor and a detective determined to dig up only enough evidence to support his own private theory of the defendant’s guilt was, sadly, not surprising. Far more chilling was your description of the Los Angeles Police Department’s successful efforts to shut down any meaningful investigation of Det. Andrew Monsue’s continued malfeasance, including the apparently false statement he filed to prevent Lisker from obtaining a parole.

Predictably, the internal affairs investigator who worked hardest to shed light on this case, Sgt. Jim Gavin, abruptly found himself transferred to a new post in Sylmar for his efforts. LAPD Chief William Bratton has been preaching department-wide reform for a few years now. But whatever Bratton’s successes so far, he’s got to agree that tawdry “L.A. Confidential”-style cover-ups like this one should be played out in movies about the department’s sordid past, and not on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

Vince Waldron

Los Angeles

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Well, well, well, it seems as if the LAPD has done it again. Wrongfully convicting an innocent man of a crime he probably did not commit, and the detective on the case, Andrew Monsue, was so arrogant and self-assured that he would not look further than the end of his nose for more evidence. And to top that, every time a parole hearing came up, Monsue blocked it. I wonder what he was afraid of. This seems to be deja vu all over again.

All of Monsue’s cases need to be investigated to make sure he didn’t railroad other people. He even had the district attorney’s office convinced, and now things are coming to light. Monsue should be taken out of the field and put on a desk job, and internal affairs should investigate this whole situation.

This man spent 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. The city of Los Angeles will be paying through its nose on this one.

Jacqueline Kestler

Culver City