Ken Anderson is a fine specimen of awful that was a prosecutor and then a judge in Texas. He prosecuted Michael Morton for the murder of Morton’s wife and deliberately failed to disclose evidence during the trial, including a pesky eyewitness statement that actually cleared Morton. Today, Anderson pled guilty to failing to disclose and got…10 days in jail. How long, you ask, was Michael Morton wrongfully imprisoned? Oh, 25 years…. Now, to be fair, poor little Ken Anderson also has to be disbarred and do 500 hours of community service. Awww. Tears for Ken Anderson. Pour one out for Ken Anderson. You know what Ken Anderson does not have to do? ROT IN JAIL FOR 25 F——-G YEARS FOR SOMETHING HE DID NOT DO.
For those of you who staunchly believe in the death penalty- because…Well, he was convicted, right??- I would offer the story of Michael Morton, who served 25 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Morton’s dilemma wasn’t simply the result of a jury that made an honest mistake and with it a wrong decision. No, Morton was a guest of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for 25 years because the prosecutor at his trial deliberately failed to disclose evidence that would have cleared him of the charges. That prosecutor, a moral midget by the name of Ken Anderson, went on to a long career as a free man…all while Michael Morton was sitting in a jail cell, convicted of a crime HE NEVER COMMITTED.
Anderson, who was an ambitious prosecutor eager to make a name and a career for himself, was evidently somehow able to look at himself in the mirror for 25 years and not see a monster staring back at him. The knowledge that he’s stolen the life and future of an innocent man was simply the price to be paid for Anderson’s ambition and careerism.
In 1986, Morton’s wife was murdered and his three-year-old son witnessed the crime. His son told his grandmother that he’d seen a strange van and a man with a big mustache who was crucially NOT Michael Morton kill his mother, but Anderson decided to keep that from the jury because…you know what? There is no good way to finish that sentence because there is no f——-g reason on earth that you would do that except that you’re a monster. As a prosecutor, you are required to turn over what is called “Brady evidence” — anything that might tend to show the defendant’s innocence — to the defense, and it is drilled into you from day one.
Anderson, who for 25 years managed to never recognize the monster he’d become, carried on with his life while Morton suffered the consequences that a criminal serving a life sentence can reasonably expect. His in-laws cut off any and all contact. His son renounced him and changed his name so he’d no longer be associated with his father. Michael Morton lost everything he had. EVERYTHING. And Ken Anderson went through life enjoying success and stature, all while knowing he’d put an innocent man behind bars.
He fought for 20 years to get free, mainly because of what how he hadn’t murdered his wife. He went through rounds of DNA testing back when it was too crude to really help. He sought — and got — help from the Innocence Project, but then ran into the wall that was Anderson’s successor, who impossibly managed to be more of an asshole than Anderson had been.
Meanwhile, Ken Anderson went onto a life and a career, the very things he’d robbed Morton of. And he seemed to do it without so much as a thought for the man whom he’d unjustly crushed and banished to a life in Texas’ version of Hell.
By the time Michael walked out of prison a free man, Ken Anderson had long been a respected member of his community. He was a Sunday school teacher and Boy Scout volunteer who cast himself, in his rulings, as a champion of both crime victims and children. A father of two, the 59-year-old jurist held a regular mock trial for fifth graders that he called “The Great Stolen Peanut Butter and Jelly Caper,” and he frequently made appearances at local schools to talk about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.
Governor Rick Perry made him a judge in 2001, and Anderson managed to have a long and distinguished career protecting Texans from monsters like himself Michael Morton.
Unfortunately for Morton, even once the Innocence Project decided to take on his case, it took nine more years and six lawyers to finally clear their client of the injustice done so many years ago. Such is the nature of (frontier) justice in Texas.
Once Anderson was finally confronted with his own monstrosity and hypocrisy, he predictably declined to issue a mea culpa and accept responsibility for what he’d done. “Failures of the system,” don’tchaknow? One thing led to another, though, and finally there was nowhere for Anderson to turn. He accepted a plea deal that sentenced him to…wait for it…10 DAYS IN JAIL.
Justice is a fickle wench, ain’t she??
And so everyone left, congratulating themselves that justice had finally been done, and in a way I suppose that’s true. Here’s what I don’t understand, though; I may have been a History major, but even what little math I do know can’t make 10 DAYS equal 25 YEARS. Michael Morton served 25 years for a crime he didn’t commit…and Ken Anderson gets 10 DAYS for putting Morton behind bars?
WTF?? Ain’t Texas justice grand? (see Willingham, Cameron). Not only does it imprison innocent men; it executes them.
I have a few more questions, though: Where does Michael Morton go to get his life back? Who’s going to return the 25 years Ken Anderson stole from him? Who’s going to help him put his family back together? Who’s going to help Morton heal the wounds?
This being Texas we’re talking about, you can expect the silence to be deafening…and it certainly has been.
One last thing before I go: If Michael Morton was wrongly convicted, no reasonable person could assume that he’s the only one in the entire state of Texas in that predicament…right? So how many other innocent people are rotting in Texas jails? And how many other Ken Andersons are walking around when they should be the ones behind bars? I think the answer to those questions would be disturbing in the extreme.
This is why Texas is the world’s largest Third World country….
