So much for innocent until proven guilty

The New York Times is reporting on a new investigation into a murder case in St. Louis. Larry Griffin was executed for the crime 10 years ago.

Yet the city's top prosecutor has decided to re-investigate the murder as if it just happened, out of new concerns that the wrong man may have been put to death for the crime.

Prompted by questions raised in a report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the prosecutor, Jennifer Joyce, hopes to decide once and for all whether Mr. Griffin was guilty or innocent - though she acknowledges that 25 years later it may be hard to do more than show the flaws in the earlier prosecution.

From the article, the conviction sounds like the result of a lazy (original) prosecutor and a bad defense attorney. The case was built almost entirely on the statements of a convicted criminal who witnesses now say wasn't even at the murder scene. But the prosecutor won't be able to "prove" whether Griffin was innocent only that he should not have been found guilty.