Page 4 of 9
An October 2002 district attorney report issued after Johnson's exoneration states that the victim told an investigator that "at the time, [she] was feeling pressure and just wanted to get everything over with."
Of all the known causes of wrongful convictions, faulty eyewitness identification is the most common. According to a 1996 National Institute of Justice study, 80 percent of the people who were exonerated before 1995 had been incorrectly identified by eyewitnesses. And statistics compiled by the Innocence Project Network (a national collective of these organizations) reveal that mistaken eyewitness identification played a part in 61 of the first 70 cases the organization handled.
Psychologists studying the subject have been aware of eyewitness error for decades. Since the 1970s, thousands of papers and articles and studies have been published on the topic, including research on how feedback given during a lineup can affect a witness.
"Well before DNA came along, I was talking about the eyewitness identification problem; a good share of that problem comes from ways we do these lineups," says Gary Wells, the professor from Iowa State University. "I published dozens of studies and so on. Defense attorneys picked up on it, but they have no clout. It was ignored by prosecutors, police, policy-makers, the attorney general of the United States. The DNA exonerations came along, and then it was, 'Whoa! There's something to this.'"
Researchers have proposed simple, inexpensive changes in lineup procedures, and ample evidence proves that those changes could help prevent wrongful convictions. According to the science, ideal lineups would use the "double blind" method -- in which the person running the lineup doesn't know who the suspect is, so he doesn't inadvertently influence the witness. Also, witnesses would be shown a "sequential lineup," viewing photos or individuals one at a time, comparing each one against memory and not against each other.
The Department of Justice outlined these reforms and others in a guide published in 1999. Four years later, that guide -- the result of a yearlong collaboration among 34 prosecutors, police officers, defense attorneys, and researchers -- remains nothing more than an elaborate suggestion; the Department of Justice cannot require local police departments to follow it. Currently, only the state of New Jersey and about 10 percent of the police departments in the United States -- including, in California, only those in Santa Clara County -- have changed their procedures.
And despite the research, the California District Attorneys Association, which has a powerful lobby in Sacramento, continues to question the need for such improvements.
"The question is whether or not the identification that is produced [using these other procedures] is really that much better," says Dave LaBahn, the association's executive director. "If you're doing something that will, in fact, get a better identification, then that's meaningful and folks ought to consider it. If, on the other hand, they're just expending a lot of resources to basically shore up your case so the defense attorney can't complain about it, then is that a good use of resources?"
In Santa Clara County, which has been using the improved lineup process since 2001, the reforms were adopted because of rare advocacy from the District Attorney's Office, and the litany of concerns voiced by opponents of modified lineups have not emerged.
"Some people have said that [these reforms] would reduce valid identifications, or they would be too expensive or too difficult to implement, but these problems have not come forward," says David Angel, the Santa Clara deputy district attorney who spearheaded the use of the new lineup procedures. "There is compliance; the training is not difficult; good IDs are made, and presumably they're more accurate."
Albert Johnson, for one, did not get the benefit of any of these improved lineup measures when he was arrested in 1992.
Johnson filled his life in prison with study. Except for three days of work in a prison kitchen that nearly drove him to vegetarianism, he refused to take a job while he was in jail. "I needed to be in that law library instead of working in they sweatshops, so to speak," he explains. "To me, being in prison for something I didn't do, I looked at it like modern-day slavery. So I knew I had to go to the law library, and whatever it took I was going to go."
Comments like these hint at Johnson's aggressive, self-righteous side, and he admits that he frequently resorted to blows when he was incarcerated. His prison disciplinary record is by no measure pristine: He has been punished for "insubordination/insolence," "interference with staff duties," using "abusive and obscene language," "assault/disruptive conduct," and fighting.
But that pugnacious spirit served him well in the courts. He taught himself how to write writs and motions, and once he got the hang of it, he flooded the legal system with what he calls "guerrilla law." He filed writs asking for a new attorney. He filed writs asking the court to allow him contact visits with his son. He filed writs asking for a "snack sack" to accompany each of his meals. He filed supplements to his trial appeals, and his own habeas corpus petitions.
His new jailhouse legal career, coupled with his anger and aggression, made Johnson unpopular with the prison staff, and he was moved about half a dozen times. His frequent relocation sometimes made it difficult for his family to visit, though Mejia tried to bring the kids to see their father twice a week.
Johnson's family supported his writ-writing habit by sending him money for copies or helping him type up complaints. His brother Dave stayed the closest to him while he was in prison, and still remembers how difficult it was to leave him there.
