I have previously written how Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez has lead a national effort to jail citizens who film police in public — a major deterrent to the use of the single most important technology in fighting police abuse. She was previously criticized by the Seventh Circuit for her “extreme” arguments to strip citizens of their first amendment rights. Now Alvarez has added to her rather notorious reputation with a bizarre claim as part of a 60 minutes piece on a litany of wrongful convictions by her office. She suggests that the fact that a serial rapist’s DNA was found on the body was not proof of the innocence of five teens because he might have come across the girl’s dead body later and had sex with it.
The case involves Cataresa Matthews, 14, who was raped and murdered in 1991. Five teens were convicted and became known as the Dixmoor Five. In 2011, they were exonerated when DNA linked a serial rapist to the crime. Alvarez appears in the clip as suggesting that the teens could still be guilty and that the serial rapist raped the corpse later.
Alvarez claims that the segment, “Chicago: The False Confession Capital,” gave a distorted view of her interview and that her statement was taken out of context. She insisted that she was only saying that we do not know, with certainty, what happened at the crime scene.
You can judge for yourself in the interview below. She seems quite clear and ridiculous. There was no DNA evidence of any of the boys at the scene or on the victim.
The question is how long will it take for Chicago to remove Alvarez from office. Between these cases and her campaign against free speech in the filming of police officers, Alvarez is becoming a public menace — at least to constitutional rights and due process.
Source: ABA Journal
Some good news:
Cook County Coroner would be a good job for her. When she examines the dead ones she wont scare em with that ugly puss. Although that would be a possibility.
ID, First female MBL manager..Chicago Cubs.
Rafflaw,
Can we help ease her out of the door? She isn’t judge material, but seems to be bucking for a right-wing appointment, who will do as told by higher ups.
Wonder if JS or NickS have a place for her?
Alvarez should be looking for another career.
Reblogged this on illinoisduilawyer.
MikeS,
Most would agree that Ms Alvarez is contemptable. But if she and others are defined as a sick personalities, but not mentally ill, then where in the scale and on what values should they be placed?
We have discussed these “paths” before, in effect concluding that all politicians are socio- or psychopaths.
So what are we who are the defectives who can not create a society which will protect us from them, and where did our mental detection systems go wrong? Maybe Dredd and the researchers are right; and the microbes have removed or inactivated that circuit. Surely, evolution should have decided that it was necessary for survival.
“So what are we who are the defectives who can not create a society which will protect us from them”
ID707,
We are somewhat sane. Humanity has always been led by the sociopaths. This is why while I do get caught up in politics I don’t believe that “Isms” are solutions long term. Our lives now in general are better than they have ever been in history, but we are still a self-destructive species whose only hope is to evolve into less belligerent beings. As for my solutions I don’t have any, I’m just trying to be one of the many, many messengers. I’m somewhat of an Alpha, who rejects leadership because I don’t enjoy it, yet avoids following anyone. I do my thing as we used to say.
JT: We appreciate the topics which center on this nazi Cook County prosecutor but can you omit her photo? I openned up the computer and was not ready to stomach looking at that ugly duckling.
Harsh but accurate, Mike.
The rest of the paragraph was this, Mike S.:
“Unlike Ms. Alvarez, so many decent and professional police and prosecutors conduct root cause analyses in order to come to terms with the errors and missteps that lead to these wrongful convictions, they take corrective action, implement improvements, and the community is better for it. Why can’t Anita Alvarez be like them?”
IMO, Neufeld ably made his point. But I don’t disagree about Alvarez’s “ruthless ambition.”
AP,
Yes I read and understood Neufeld’s point, but I wanted to underline the fact that I don’t believe her denial is psychological, but the act of a self-serving sociopath. Such is the contempt I hold Ms. Alvarez in.
Putting a minor in a 12 hour interview with coercive interrogation techniques is going to result in a false confession more times than many people realize. I don’t know the percentage but it is very high. It is not only wrong morally and legally but it is terrible detective work (saying the least).
I can understand some investigations being very complex such as one where multiple crimes have been committed, but there is totally no reason to beat someone up for twelve hours to deduce a single fact such as “did you kill this woman?” The person in the video who talked about detectives having tunnel vision said a lot of what is going on.
There also are a very small minority of people who will confess to anything. I have seen this happen personally and in that case it was with a mentally handicapped person who lived in a town I worked in.
Ms. Alvarez has the advantage of being in a system where it takes nearly an act of God to remove someone from office. Unless they steal money from the state, removing them takes horribly slow processes and during the entire time they continue to abuse the system and regular people. I wish it was not this way but it is.