Prominent British lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith is assisting San Quentin Policy Group with a review of wrongful death penalty convictions. 

“As incarcerated people, we understand that the truth can be lost in the battle to win a criminal trial. Our review is to determine whether justice was served for the accused, the victim, and ultimately society,” said SQPG Chairman resident Jessie Milo. 

SQPG will examine the integrity of death penalty convictions of those long ago put to death at San Quentin. The group will act as a think tank for local officials and organizations to inform and shape statewide legislation.

According to Milo, the primary goal of SQPG is to establish a statewide review commission.

“In our State of California, access to justice is still influenced by money, race, and zip code, which is why we are seeking through legislation or executive order the establishment of an independent statewide innocence and resentencing review commission,” Milo said.

In 2004, the Legislature created the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice to study wrongful convictions and recommended reforms. Ultimately, California did not create an independent post-conviction review body, and many structural issues remain unresolved.

According to Milo, a fair and objective review commission would address that defect by creating an independent body with authority to investigate claims of wrongful conviction, sentencing injustice, racial bias, and government misconduct, and to refer meritorious matters to conflict-free courts for formal adjudication.

Upon learning of SQPG’s intentions through attorney Jennifer Sheetz of the People’s Commission for Integrity in Criminal Justice, Clive Stafford-Smith flew from the United Kingdom to meet the group in person and offer assistance. Sheetz will serve as the project liaison, aiding SQPG with gathering documents and necessary materials regarding the project.

Stafford-Smith, a human rights lawyer and author of “Bad Men, Injustice, and Far Side of the Moon,” has been involved with his own death penalty review project for eight years.

Stafford-Smith said, “Out of 171 capital murder cases in the South, we were able to acquit 124, 74% of them.”

According to Stafford-Smith, reviewing wrongful death penalty cases is a wonderful way to train young lawyers. It is also the most important tool to abolish the death penalty.

“My mom, who was a saint, taught me my job is to look around the world and at the people who were most hated, and get between them and the people doing the hatred,” Stafford-Smith said.

According to Stafford-Smith, who was a scientist when younger, DNA evidence has a one-in-three chance of being contaminated by a lab technician. Hair analysis has a one-in-two chance of a false match, and there has never been an objective study to validate fingerprints as infallible science.

According to the California Post-Conviction Review Commission, California’s history shows recurring wrongful convictions tied to official misconduct — suppressed exculpatory evidence, incentivized informants, coerced statements, and flawed forensics. 

“When Chief Justice Roberts said ‘Every time we exonerate someone it shows the system works,’ yeah, tell that to the person who did 48 years before he got exonerated,” Stafford-Smith said.

According to the California National Registry of Exonerations, there have been hundreds of individual exonerations, and multiple group exonerations, due to law-enforcement or prosecutorial misconduct. One example is the Los Angeles Police Department Rampart scandal.

California recognizes the importance of review in theory, but in practice post-conviction relief remains dependent on local institutions with entrenched conflicts of interest, unequal county-by-county practices, and limited accountability. 

The SQPG will adopt post-conviction review models already operating around the world. 

According to the Wrongful Conviction Law Review, the United Kingdom, Norway, Scotland, Denmark, and North Carolina have created independent review boards to help facilitate the proper administration of justice, without inherently biased courts controlling the outcome. 

An independent review is necessary to protect both individual rights and preserve public confidence in the justice system. 

“If one man got a bad trial, then one innocent man got put to death,” Milo said.

The SQPG has submitted an application to review the case of Thomas Thompson, who was put to death at San Quentin in 1997.

According to project liaison/attorney Sheetz, some senior members of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have cited the Thompson case as a breakdown of the judicial system of review. 

“Ultimately, Tommy’s case serves as an excellent review of the California justice system. It reflects our troubled history of using incentivized informants to secure convictions,” Sheetz said.

On February 20, Governor Gavin Newsom commuted Milo’s sentence, making him eligible for parole this year.

“If I’m fortunate enough to be released from prison, I want to do this work on the outside,” Milo said. “Our goal is equal access to justice for all.”