Threats to witnesses for criminal trials has long been a problem in urban centers, Los Angeles specifically included. But according to a new story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, for the city of brotherly love, the witness problem has become a crisis. Witnesses are winding up dead, and cases are crumbling, reports the Inquirer.
Here’s the opening of the story:
Martin Thomas looked at the flier and blanched.
“Don’t stand next to this man. You might get shot.”
The threat was scribbled on a copy of his signed statement to police, implicating a man in a murder.
Thomas, then 20, had revealed a buried cache of weapons and named one of the gunmen who killed a man at 22d and Somerset on a summer night.
Now, there were his words to detectives, posted on the wall of a Chinese restaurant in North Philadelphia for all to see.
Panicked, Thomas fled, flagged down a police car, and told the officers he feared for his life.
Police and prosecutors, who described Thomas’ flight from the restaurant, said he had every reason to be frightened. Another witness in the murder case, a 17-year-old, had been killed 10 days after testifying at a preliminary hearing. They said Thomas worried that he could be next.
Witness intimidation pervades the Philadelphia criminal courts, increasingly extracting a heavy toll in no-show witnesses, recanted testimony – and collapsed cases.
“It’s endemic. People are frightened to death,” said District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham. “We’ve had witness after witness intimidated, threatened, frightened.”And the city cannot guarantee their protection.
Here’s the rest.
It is unclear whether or not Philly’s problem is that much worse than, say, LA’s or Chicago’s. But this story reminds of the nature of the dilemma. What might solve it, is another, much longer conversation.