Prosecutor Joshua Marquis of Clatsop County, Or., is on a crusade against news accounts that he believes portray prosecutors in an unfair light. His latest argument, says the Chicago Reader, is that some inmates who are characterized as exonerated “actually committed the crimes they were convicted of.” Marquis, a state director for the National District Attorneys Association, has maintained that “the idea that innocent people were being sentenced to die was ‘the new urban myth.’ ”
Marquis charged that of six people featured on the recent Court TV movie “The Exonerated,” two “are both factually and legally guilty.” The Reader describes Marquis’s efforts with Court TV and other media to ensure that criminal cases are reported accurately. James Curtis, the anchor of “The Exonerated,” is quoted as saying of one featured defendant cited by Marquis: “She was a gun-toting drug dealer — that’s what she did. In the movie they made her out to be love and peace. It’s understandable why these prosecutors are fit to be tied. She wants to be known as she’s been portrayed and may very well believe — that she’s a victim.”