On Aug. 11, the city of Long Beach
paid nearly $8 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a man who spent 24 years
in prison for a murder he did not commit. Thomas Goldstein, now 61, was
convicted of murdering John McGinest on Nov. 3, 1979, despite no physical
evidence that Goldstein had actually committed the crime.
|
Thomas Goldstein, unjustly convicted of murder |
One witness later recanted his
story. Another was a jailhouse informant named Edward Fink, who had been placed
in the same jail cell as Goldstein and claimed that Goldstein had confessed to
the murder during their time together.
In 2004, Goldstein was freed.
After his release, he filed a lawsuit alleging that the Long Beach Police
detectives swayed eyewitnesses to testify against him and that top prosecutors
of the case did not have proper procedures in place regarding the use of
jailhouse informants, which led to his wrongful imprisonment.
Goldstein’s victory in the lawsuit
is nonetheless bittersweet, because he still had to spend almost half his life
in the country’s worst prisons. By using informants and extorted testimonies,
the “justice system” can find whomever they want guilty. All workers are
vulnerable to this injustice.
The LA Times reported Aug. 11, “A
grand jury investigation in 1990 documented prosecutors’ widespread abuse of
false testimony by jailhouse informants in Los Angeles County during the 1970s
and ’80s.”
City Deputy Attorney Monte Machit
said, however, “It is our position that the police had done nothing wrong, that
the police did not investigate the case [improperly].” (Press-Telegram,
Aug. 11)
If the police had done “nothing
wrong,” why then was the wrong man imprisoned for almost a quarter of a
century? The reason why Goldstein was wrongfully convicted is because the
justice system is inherently flawed. Justice is not guaranteed for workers.
Rather, bourgeois politicians, cops and the court system serve the ruling class
in terrorizing and oppressing workers with impunity.
