Page 8 - Delaware Lawyer - Spring 2022

FEATURE
Justice for All
Steve Descano
Equitable
A fair system requires a rethinking of prosecutorial methods
Elon Wilson spent the first year of his son’s life confined to the Nottoway Work Center in Burkeville, VA, because our criminal legal system failed. The D.C. firefighter was one of the luckier ones — the failure was caught, and he was released. Though not before spending over two years behind bars.
6 DELAWARE LAWYER SPRING 2022
It’s hard to fathom a system where a young father who is incarcerated for years, missing so many firsts
with his child, can be associated with any degree of luck. But there are thousands of people estimated to be wrongly convicted in this country,1 and the average sentence of those who have been exonerated is more than eight years.2 In a system where suc- cess is defined purely by the ability to maximize the pace and punitiveness
of convictions, lives like Elon’s are ruined, inequity pervades, and our communities are made less safe as trust in the system diminishes. This rush to convict at all costs is the predominant culture in traditional prosecutors’ offices. And it is the responsibility of reform-minded prosecutors to build a system that prioritizes the thorough and fair pur- suit of equal justice over a running tally of convictions. Achieving this