It's easy to sit here two decades later and blame the police and the prosecutor's office, but how about the twelve jurors in the case? CNN should go track them down and get their side of the story, too.
I wouldn’t blame the jurors. Quite often, the prosecutors have managed to get a judge to suppress evidence that might set free an accused, so the jury often never hears about evidence that might have led to reasonable doubt.
The US system of justice is very much weighted in favour of the prosecutors.
It’s not really the jurors’ fault. A jury is 12 people who don’t know each other and walking in, know nothing about the case. Typically, they do the best they can with the evidence they get. There is always the jury with the agenda, like in the O.J. Simpson case, but that’s not that common. The real problem is they trust the cops and prosecutor, and take the evidence at face value. They don’t always know what deals have been cut “off the record” for false testimony. They NEVER know about false confessions that have been psychologically coerced. And yes, the police are trained to psychologically coerce a confession. They NEVER know what exculpatory evidence the police ignore or sweep under the rug.
For the most part, they believe they are doing “the right thing.” It’s not their fault they’ve been lied to.