Monday, September 22, 2003

Disgraceful indifference

The LA Times reports:

"A Louisiana man [named Calvin Willis] was released from the state penitentiary Friday after spending nearly half his life behind bars for a rape that DNA evidence now shows he did not commit."

It should come as no surprise that Willis is poor and black.

What is shocking is that Hugo Holland, chief of the sex crimes unit at the district attorney's office in Shreveport, refuses to admit that Willis is innocent, saying only that there is now enough "reasonable doubt" of Willis's guilt that the DA's office will not retry him. Holland's indifference to the fact (and it is a fact) that the real rapist is still out there offends human decency. (To say nothing of the fact -- and it is a fact -- that an innocent man was imprisoned for over twenty years.)

Hugo Holland, you digust me. You are a disgrace to the human race.

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