The new FOX series “Lucifer” depicts a lopsided view of America’s criminal justice system, but that may be the least of its sins.
In “Lucifer,” Laura German plays Chloe Decker, a homicide detective who struggles to be taken seriously by her male co-workers. Tom Ellis plays Lucifer Morningstar, the fallen angel and beguiler extraordinary. Morningstar is the dark half of his and Decker’s buddy cop-consultant team — think ABC’s hit show “Castle,” but replace author Richard Castle with the Devil.
Lucifer loves quips and sex (in that order). What distinguishes him from Richard Castle is his obsessive compulsion to punish criminals and bad people who always turn out to be one and the same.
The SQ Reviews team meets in a lot between the Education Department and San Quentin News. The team discusses how the mainstream media romanticizes corruption in law enforcement. Members of SQ Reviews have also been watching FOX’s “Second Chance” and NBC’s “Shades of Blue,” two shows featuring corrupt police officers as protagonists whom the viewer should support.
“Lucifer falls into the same category as these other corrupt cop shows,” I said. “How is it in the age of Black Lives Matters that media still cast corrupt authority figures as heroes?”
“They’re playing to the confusion in society,” replied Juan Meza. “Everybody knows that there’s something wrong with our justice system. They think it’s the criminal, and so they cheer for the dirty cop – been that way since Dirty Harry,” said Meza. He added that audiences don’t want to see that some cops represent the problems with the justice system.
“Yeah, it’s hard for people to see problems with law enforcement,” said Jonathan Chiu. “They’re blinded by the Bernie Madoffs of the world. I mean, look at O.J. Simpson. The majority of America thought he was guilty and his acquittal gives the average person the impression that this kind of thing happens all the time. They think guilty people in court aren’t punished, so the public gets outraged and says, ‘Lock everybody up. We don’t care how you do it. We just want criminals in jail.’”
“Your O.J. example does happen all the time,” DeWeaver said. “Millionaires get away with crimes, but the thing is the 2.3 million people in prison today aren’t millionaires. Some are even innocent and wouldn’t be in prison if they’d had $5,000 to hire an average attorney.”
Contrary to the view that law enforcement is powerless to bring law breakers to justice, the members of SQ Reviews know how effective the criminal justice system is at obtaining convictions. It is so effective that defendants don’t even have to be guilty.
The National Registry of Exonerations (exonerationregistry.org) registered 873 exonerations that took place between 1989 and 2012, including 10 exonerations that occurred after the person’s execution. Between 2012 and 2014 the rate of registered exonerations increased by 46 percent to 1,304, and in 2015 registration set the record for a single year with 149 exonerations.
This is just registered exonerations. The National Registry of Exonerations investigated 1,170 exonerations (exonerations they don’t include in their register) that occurred “after it was discovered that police officers had deliberately framed dozens or hundreds of innocent defendants.”
Some people may think the 2,623 exonerations is a small number when compared with the 2.3 million people in prison, but we invite such citizens to read Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy” to discover how crushingly difficult it is for an innocent citizen to secure exoneration in the United States.
After you’ve read “Just Mercy,” please answer this: For every 146 exonerated in a record year like 2015, how many thousands weep in their cells because their stories of innocence aren’t clear-cut enough, procedurally valid enough, for exoneration by our murky system?
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