Mher Ynokyan

This time for “Prison Notes” I’ve interviewed  Betty Anne Waters, a lawyer with U.S. based The Innocence Project a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. Betty Anne Waters was 29 years old when her brother Kenny Waters was convicted of a murder in Ayer, Massachusetts and sentenced to life imprisonment. He swore he was innocent and Betty Anne vowed to do everything she could to help overturn his wrongful conviction. For two decades, she fought for justice in Kenny’s case, putting herself through college and law school in her pursuit. Finally, in 2000 Betty Anne and the Innocence Project obtained access to DNA testing on evidence from the crime scene in Kenny’s case. The results proved his innocence and led to Kenny’s release in March of 2001 after serving 18 years.

Hello, Ms. Waters,

I am writing to you from Armenia, as a person with a destiny similar to that of your brother’s, Kenneth Waters. In 1996, at the age of 20, I was accused of murdering my co-ed and convicted to capital punishment by the Supreme Court of Armenia. For 20 years and until this day I have been striving for case review, persisting in my innocence and non-participation in the murder, yet my voice remains unheard before the system of justice in Armenia.

I keep a folder on the table in my cell; I call it “A Folder of Hope”, as it urges me to move forward and inspires me hope not to give in. Here I collect materials and photos about those who were acquitted and granted freedom through the verdicts of not guilty in the US and European countries. Your brother’s name is also to be found here, as he was also a victim of a judicial mistake, and was acquitted after long years thanks to your perseverance. If I were to post the pictures of the acquitted on the walls of my cell, the gloomy walls would perhaps be fully covered with their happy faces.

Here in prison I have also watched the “Conviction”, the movie telling about your struggle. I learnt that, in order to free your brother from prison and to reparate justice, you studied law to become a lawyer and to protect your brother’s rights, to find the material evidence and to achieve acquittal.

I am currently studying at the law department; I am expanding and will further expand my knowledge and skills in a sphere that is yet non-existent in our country, i.e. the sphere of forensic genetics. Unfortunately, once the verdicts are announced, the physical evidence gets continually destroyed in Armenia by law, depriving us of the possibility to conduct genetic examination. Being a victim of a judicial mistake, I am going to contribute to the development of such procedures that will make the conviction of an innocent person almost impossible. 

As the editor of hetq.am online newspaper offered me to work for them, I would like to interview you on the issue. I hope you won’t decline my invitation.

I WOULD BE GRATEFUL to receive your answers.                                                  

Here are my questions.

-How did you manage to reparate justice in your brother’s destiny? To what extent does the movie portray the reality?

After my brother’s conviction, I sought to prove his innocence. I put myself through college and law school, all with the goal of exonerating my brother. In 1999, I located the blood evidence collected from the scene of the crime and obtained a court order to preserve the evidence for possible DNA testing.

In 2000, I began working with the Innocence Project on the case. Together, we reached an agreement with the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office to allow a private lab to conduct DNA testing on the evidence. The results excluded Kenny, proving that he was not the perpetrator. His conviction was vacated soon after. After nearly 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, my brother was freed while prosecutors considered whether to retry him.

The Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office opened a new investigation of the case to determine whether to retry Kenny. The reinvestigation was led by a state police officer, who found the police reports to be incomplete, and contacted Ayer police officers who had been involved in the original investigation. At this point, for the first time, the police turned over complete records from the case — including a police report confirming Kenny’s work schedule and extensive documentation on the fingerprint evidence that had been collected before trial.

On March 15, 2001, the District Attorney’s office dropped all charges against my brother and his exoneration became official.

-Following your brother’s acquittal, how many people did you manage to help in reparating justice?

It is hard to tell exactly how many people I have reached to help educate them on wrongful convictions.  Since 2001 I have spoken at many different forums to talk about and educate people about wrongful convictions.  I have spoken in many places in the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland. I do know that there have been more people than I could keep track of that have told me "I had no idea this was going on in our country". I have spoken at various legislatures to help change laws on not destroying evidence, that is so important of course to every case,  but in my brothers' case the evidence could have been legally destroyed, only by a stroke of luck it had not been destroyed and that is how Kenny was able to prove his innocence.  I think you can imagine how elated I am that his evidence was not destroyed.

I have been actively involved in a case for the past 13 years. This persons' sentence was vacated last year by a State Superior Court Judge, but it has been taken up on appeal by our State Supreme Court.  We should know in the next few weeks what the outcome will be.  This started out as a DNA case and ended up as a non-DNA case...showing police misconduct including a violation of withholding exculpatory evidence. This case has taken the New England Innocence Project, the Innocence Project (NY) and a private large firm to get to this point.

-I accomplished my third year of studies at the law department. In our country, item 6 of the evidence list in criminal proceedings is reserved to testimony, whereas expert's findings and material evidence play a secondary role. The “queen” of all kinds of evidence continues to be the confessional statement. What opinion do you hold in this regard?

Astonishingly, more than 1 out of 4 people wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement. The reasons that people falsely confess are complex and varied, but what they tend to have in common is a belief that complying with the police by saying that they committed the crime in question will be more beneficial than continuing to maintain their innocence.

The electronic recording of interrogations, from beginning to end, is the single best reform available to prevent wrongful convictions caused by false confessions. This record will improve the credibility and reliability of authentic confessions, while protecting the rights of innocent suspects.

-Re-opening cases based on newly discovered circumstances is nearly impossible in practice in Armenia. Judicial mistakes remain only on a theoretical level, whereas in real life we see that our judicial system does not accept the possibility of an innocent person to be incarcerated in the result of a judicial mistake. If you judge from this index, it may seem as though the juridical system of Armenia is one of the most ideal in the world, as the judges are never mistaken and innocent people never find themselves in prison. I hope this complex of infallibility will be overcome one day, and they will realize that the system of jurisdiction won’t collapse if they accept their mistakes. What do you think, is it an issue of judgment or mentality?

DNA exonerations help convince the public that mistakes are made in the court of law by proving wrongful convictions conclusively.

I will always be ready to do whatever I can to help the wrongfully convictedI hope you will be the one that changes how the system in Armenia now feels about the wrongfully convicted.  This is a world-wide human problem that no country is excluded from.

Top photo: Betty Anne Waters, Mher Yenokyan

2nd photo: Kenny Waters before being convicted of murder

3rd photo: Kenny and Betty Anne on the day he was exonerated

4th photo: Betty Anne and her brother Kenny after being vindicated

Photos: innocenceproject.org