Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
That notion went lost on Gov. Bill Ritter this week as he works to ensure that a controversial evidence bill will not apply to the inmate for whom it was written.
Senate Bill 205 promised a new trial for convicts trying to prove their innocence in cases where police destroy crucial DNA evidence despite court orders to protect it.
As far as anyone can tell, those circumstances apply to one man.
Clarence Moses-EL is serving a 48-year term for a 1987 rape he swears he did not commit.
A month after he won a court order to test evidence for DNA, Denver police tossed the box marked “Do Not Destroy” in a Dumpster, quashing the possibility of scientifically proving the attacker’s identity.
Ritter in a meeting Tuesday threatened to veto Sen. Ken Gordon’s measure seeking a new trial. It bothered the governor that the bill applied only to one person.
Ritter convinced House sponsors to rewrite the measure so it would not include Moses-EL. In a stunning suspension of common sense, lawmakers are trying to “save” a bill shunned because it helped only one person by amending it so it helps, presumably, nobody at all.
Ritter’s objection is precisely the reason to pass the bill.
It sought to help one man because his case is so egregious and unparalleled in Colorado.
Consider Moses-EL’s innocence claim.
The victim named three other men in the minutes after being raped and brutally attacked. Those men weren’t pursued as suspects, even though one since has been convicted of two rapes nearby. Two days after her attack, the victim in Moses-EL’s case said his identity came to her in a dream.
A prison spokesman says he’s “thoroughly” convinced of Moses-EL’s innocence.
Also consider the lack of due process.
From prison, Moses-EL raised $1,000 from fellow inmates to pay for DNA testing and won a court order to submit key rape evidence for analysis. Even though the tossing of the box violated the court order and broke Denver police rules, a judge denied Moses-EL a remedy because police acted out of negligence, not “bad faith.”
“Makes no difference to me why they trashed it. It’s gone and I can’t use it to get out of here,” said Moses-EL, 52, who faces 27 more years behind bars.
Gordon’s bill wasn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. Rather, it offered the chance for a new trial — a revisiting of the case, which a judge essentially ordered by allowing testing.
The Senate overrode objections by powerful district attorneys, saying the downsides of locking up a potentially innocent man for 48 years would outweigh making one victim repeat her painful story.
The bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee. Then, hours before the full House was set to vote, it withered under a veto threat.
By whom? Ritter, who served as Denver DA when that office failed to notify the detective who signed off on destroying the evidence not only that Moses-EL was appealing, but that a judge had ordered the items preserved. The very governor who is a friend and former boss of the lawyers who prosecuted the case.
Ritter won’t comment.
First as DA and now as governor, he had two chances to bring justice to a man without a constituency. He is 0-for-2.
Instead, Ritter opts to support justice only in broad strokes.
Strokes that, in this case, are utterly meaningless.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
