Sion Jenkins and Michael O'Brien

Within literally weeks of each other, Sion Jenkins and Michael O'Brien have both launched books about their wrongful convictions, and the dreadful experiences they have both had to endure and overcome. What is truly terrifying is that at virtually the same time the system was overturning one wrongful conviction, it was perpetuating another - Sion was convicted in July 1998, Michael's conviction was overturned in December 1999, after he'd served 11 years in prison. Although I haven't read Michael's book yet (as it only came out today), I know that it talks not only about the time he spent in prison, but the ten years since - the struggle to come to terms with what was done to him and the others, dealing with the ongoing suspicions and prejudices, even though the system has exonerated him. (Isn't that the ultimate irony??? The "system" is required to "exonerate" someone who never did anything wrong in the first place.) There is a tendency to assume that once a conviction is overturned, then the balance has somehow been re-instated, and everything is now OK. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I have read Sion's book, and I would strongly recommend it to everyone, whether they are involved with wrongful convictions or not. As I keep pointing out, this could happen to any one of us. In all cases of wrongful conviction, the end of one part of the nightmare is only the beginning of the next. The journey that Michael began ten years ago, just after Sion was convicted, is the journey Sion now faces - where does it all end? I can say, from experience, that just as Sion's conviction was being overturned, others were facing the dreadful reality - that innocent people are tried, convicted, and jailed for years on end, without a shred of evidence against them. From Micheal O'Brien's conviction in 1987, to the conviction of Sion Jenkins in 1998, to the convictions of Luke Mitchell (2005) and Stephen Marsh (2007), amongst many others, we are forced to face a terrible truth - nothing has changed, or is changing. Week after week, month after month, year after year, and, almost unbelievably, decade after decade, the same "mistakes" are being made. If you look closely, the same "failures" in procedure, legal process, media coverage, and judicial decision-making, turn up with depressing regularity.
Twenty years down the line, we have just set another raft of innocent people adrift - their lives will never be the same, they will never again enjoy the ignorant bliss that wraps most of us in its deceptive comfort. If anyone chooses to go a little further back.....
We need to wake up. Every innocent person is imprisoned on our behalf - yours and mine. Is that what any of us really want? Rather than live with the discomfort of knowing that the police haven't found the real perpetrator of a terrible crime, we'll settle for the fake security that "someone has been caught." Your son or daughter? Your husband, wife, mother, father, brother, sister? And meanwhile, the real killer is walking amongst us, undetected and undeterred.
Think about it.

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