Tag: Wrongful Convictions

Posted on

False Statements and Superfluous Details

It is always fascinating to read about a very old mystery that is finally solved.

In 1984, a twelve-year-old girl, Jonelle Matthews, disappeared from her home in Greely, Colorado.  Police say they have been “haunted” by the case since then.  Last week, the mystery was “solved”.  A man named Steve Pankey was convicted of her kidnapping and murder.

Wow!  DNA evidence, right?  Fingerprints?  A witness?  A confession?

Well, we now know better than to trust confessions.

The evidence, as far as can be determined from the news article in the New York Times and Wiki, consists mostly of Pankey making “odd” comments about the case, showing an “unusual” interest in it, and …  well, read about it.   It’s get weirder and weirder.  Apparently, Pankey, who is divorced, and whose wife seems to have provided police with some of the evidence of Pankey’s “odd” interest in the case, admits to being a celibate homosexual, even while he served as an assistant pastor at his church.

His wife, apparently, does not remember that his alibi– that he was with her the night of the kidnapping– was a lie.  She was there with him, just a few nights before they left for a trip to California.  The car was already partly packed.  Would she not remember if he had been out that evening, if she remembers that he listened to radio accounts with suspiciously strong curiosity, or that he asked her to read newspaper accounts of the story aloud to him after they arrived home?

Jonelle’s body was found in 2019 by a construction crew working on a pipeline.  There is no DNA evidence, no finger-prints, no photos, no witnesses.  There is, in short, nothing but a rather bizarre interpretation of some odd but not really strange verbal expressions by the suspect.

This is not the first time some odd person has made curious statements about an unsolved murder.  We should know better by now: it’s a psychological condition, a personality quirk, a bizarre compulsion.  If a person behaves “oddly”, by all means, check it out.  But if there is no supporting evidence, you probably have something similar to this case.

Ask yourself this: would the police have ever excluded a possible suspect because he didn’t provide “superfluous details” when discussing the case with them?

But to bring a case like that to court, based sole on the “superfluous” detail or “excessive” interest is worse than inadequate.  It borders on criminal abuse.  Close enough!  Hang him!  Great police work!  Medals for everybody.

And Jonelle’s family is glad to have “closure”.  If I were in Jonelle’s family, I would tell the police, “are you fucking kidding me?”  Get back to work.

This is all absurd.  It’s idiotic.  And, as if we don’t already know from election-deniers,  it is further evidence that a lot of people are, frankly, stupid: a jury voted unanimously that, by golly, if the police think he’s guilty, he must be guilty.  They convicted him.

Pankey insists he is innocent.  He says he is being persecuted because of his homosexuality.  He might be right.

I love the “superfluous details”.  The police felt that the “superfluous details” implicated him.  Because there is some kind of magical police science that tells you that men who provide “superfluous details” likely committed a crime.  Just as, when I was little, my mother believed that giggling if someone stared at you and asked if you were lying meant that you were lying.

I know people who put on a grave, serious expression when talking about police who were killed or injured on duty, as if there is something solemn or sacred about them.   It is very hard, especially recently, especially after the numerous incidents in which police behaved very, very badly (even to the point of homicide) and not one of the officers who saw or heard of the incident reported it, to not believe that most police don’t deserve our respect.

Interesting side-note: Jonelle was born to a 13-year-old girl, and then adopted.

“A chokecherry tree was planted in front of Franklin Middle School in memory of Jonelle. The tree died after a few years and a plaque inscribed with Jonelle’s name disappeared.[18]”  (Wiki)  So much for that solemn commitment to commemorate and honor her memory.  I guess it was a superfluous detail.

 

Posted on

More Wrongful Convictions

I cannot understand why there is no movement in the United States to do a massive overhaul of the criminal justice system in the face of widespread, pervasive evidence of incompetence, dishonesty, and deception. In Canada, there would be a Royal Commission of Inquiry, ending with steps to be taken to remedy the serious defects in the system. The U.S. just blithely ambles along locking people up for ridiculous lengths of time after trials that engage in ritualistic presentations of “expert” testimony by people with titles of imaginary professions, witnesses who swear that the wrong picture of someone they never clearly saw is exactly like the face of the suspect they now see, and jailhouse snitches who miraculously extracted confessions from people they never met before.

And then there are confessions– the last hope in criminal cases with no evidence, no real suspect, no weapon, no matching blood samples. Ah, but we have a confession…

Here’s the latest: in 1992, on August 17, an eleven-year-old girl named Holly Staker was found raped and stabbed to death in a home in Lake County, Illinois. She had been babysitting two young children. The police were frantic to find the killer. The real killer. The person who actually murdered Holly Staker.

At least, that’s what they want the public to believe. And probably, at first, they were sincere about finding the actual killer. But as the pressure on the police increased, it appears they were willing to settle for a stand-in. They found him in Juan Rivera, a 19-year-old high school drop out, who had suggested to the police that he noticed someone at a party on August 17 “acting funny”, and later admitted he had made that up– a girl at the party had told him the story, but she didn’t want to go to the police. I would guess that he thought this would make him important.

That made him the suspect, and they questioned him incessantly and relentlessly for 24 hours straight, until he confessed. He confessed in great detail. He provided details that “only the killer” could have known, and which the police would never, ever surreptitiously provide to him during the course of the interrogation. Never. Honest. In the study quoted in the left sidebar, it was also shown that in 38 out of 40 cases of wrongful conviction, the suspect provided details that, the police claimed, only the actual murderer could have known.

But why would a man confess to a horrible crime unless he had actually done it? It’s hard to imagine. It’s hard for juries to imagine. So Rivera was convicted, once, twice, three times. I don’t know why but each time he was retried, and three times he was convicted. His lawyers are currently appealing the results. Most people would be quite glad to see him executed– perhaps nobody more so than the police, who finally have that monkey off their backs.

There is only one problem– there is no physical evidence linking Juan Rivera to the crime scene or the crime. No blood stains, no weapon, no finger-prints. I guess that ever since the “science” of fibre evidence has been discredited, they decided not to the try that route — why not– it used to be a sure winner.

And there was another problem: Rivera was wearing a electronic leg bracelet on account of having stolen a car stereo, and the leg bracelet showed he was home at the time of the murder.

And, there is an even bigger problem: Holly was raped. DNA analysis was conducted in 2005 and the defense used it at his fourth trial: the semen found inside her body could not have come from Juan Rivera.

That is a problem. The police and prosecution had a lot invested in Juan Rivera. It’s hard to give up investments like that. They decided that the confession must be true and the DNA evidence must be wrong.

And here’s where we get to why I believe the U.S. should conduct a large inquiry into how police collect evidence and conduct investigations: the police continue to insist that Juan Rivera committed the murder! They actually claim that 11-year-old Holly must have had sex with someone else before Rivera attacked her.

But wait– Rivera, in his confession, acknowledged that he had raped Holly. He confessed to that because at the time the police needed that as part of the confession. How to explain the wrong DNA in the semen? Rivera must have raped her without ever ejaculating.

But wait– there’s more! Mike Mermel, the prosecutor– a fan of Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Charlton Heston– defends the idea that 11-year-old Holly was sexually active by arguing that if you were having sex with an 11-year-old, you wouldn’t be bragging about it, would you? So the fact that there is no evidence that she was sexually active becomes proof that she was.

Shades of Stockwell Day’s “unreported crimes”.

But let’s go back to that confession. Did you even have to ask?– the initial confession contained numerous other “errors” that would have made it look ridiculous in court. No problem– we just call in ex-marine Lou Tessemann and have him take the confession all over again and straighten out those problems. And– of course, of course, of course– these sessions were not recorded.

And– of course, of course, of course– Tessemann denied knowing anything about the crime before he took the confession while some police officers admitted giving him details of the crime scene before he met with Rivera. According to Tessemann, Rivera was relaxed, comfortable, and rational during this interrogation. According to other witnesses, including a nurse who treated him, he was banging his head against the wall, shackled and bruised, and mumbling incoherently.

Why has a the judge not thrown this case out in disgust. Not merely with sadness or regret or reluctance– he should have tossed the case out with demonstrated disgust at the prosecution. You are a bunch of clowns.

And there’s more: take the case of Jerry Hobbs, for whom the death penalty was being pursued. Hobbs’ daughter Laura and a friend, Krystal, disappeared one night. The bodies were found the next day by Jerry Hobbs, stabbed to death. Hobbs was arrested and interrogated until he confessed.

There was nothing in his confession or in the police reports that suggested that either of the girls had been raped. The story, according to the confession, was that his daughter Laura and her friend Krystal had defied him and refused to come home and Krystal had pulled a knife on him, which he took away from her during a fight, and which he then used to stab them both to death in a blind rage.

Come on — doesn’t that just sound like a coerced confession, twisted and turned and designed to explain all the circumstances that Dobbs could only have known about if he had been the killer? With all that stabbing, there would of course be some physical evidence, right?

Two years later, analysis paid for by the defense team showed that Laura had been sexually assaulted, and, yes, there was sperm, and the sperm did not belong to Jerry Hobbs. Will the prosecution now finally admit that their theory about the crime is wrong? Hell no! According to Mermel, that area of the woods was often used by couples for having sex, and the girls probably came into contact with sperm from rolling around in the dirt!

Enough is enough! The fact that the police are willing to go this far to attempt to cover up their own incompetence and poor judgment tells us that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way they go about their business.

There was a time when I could not imagine how a rational person could confess to a horrible crime he had not committed. It made no sense on any level whatsoever. And Holly’s twin sister, Heather, believes devoutly in the confession. Why, oh why, oh why would an innocent man make a confession like that?

Over the years, thanks to close analysis and excellent documentaries by programs like PBS’s Frontline, it is not longer hard to imagine. We now know with a good deal of certainty that some confessions are absolutely false. We now know it’s possible. We even know how it’s done, how hour after hour of continuous, relentless psychological assault by clever and determined police detectives can eventually drive even a rational person to agree to almost anything. When the suspect is all primed and primped, that is when they start the recording.

There have been instances where the police are recorded questioning a suspect who continues to deny his guilt, and then the recording equipment is turned off, and then it starts again, and we have a rather diminished-looking suspect now in confession mode.

Do Miranda rights even mean anything anymore? Why would the police be allowed to suggest to a suspect that having his attorney present for questioning would imply guilt? Instead of insisting on a suspect’s right to have an attorney present while being questioned, perhaps it’s time we required a suspect to have an attorney present, to protect the administration of justice.

There are definitely a few things that could easily be done to prevent false confessions and false convictions:

  • relentless continuous questioning of a suspect for longer than three or four hours at a time should be absolutely banned. It is simply not possible to elicit more, accurate information from someone after three hours. But it is possible to begin to psychologically break a person.
  • evidence obtained from jailhouse snitches or informants or undercover cops posing as inmates should be automatically disqualified
  • no confession should be taken seriously unless it can be clearly demonstrated to provide new information which leads to the discovery of real physical evidence
  • no confession should be accepted unless the police have recorded every interrogation of the suspect from beginning to end and provided the defense legal team with accurate, complete copies
  • eyewitness identification should always be only conducted by police officers who do not know who the suspect is
  • police and prosecutors who ever violate any of these rules are suspended without pay for six months or more for a first offense, and fired for a second offense; if their actions result in a false conviction, there should be jail time.
  • Wait — why am I being so soft on crime here? Any police officers caught trying to manufacture a case through any of the techniques described should go to prison.  Because we want to be tough on crime.

In his 2011 book, “Convicting the Innocent,” Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia, examined most of the case files for the first 250 DNA exonerations. Garrett found that 76 percent of wrongly convicted prisoners were misidentified by a witness and half the cases involved flawed forensic evidence. NY Times, November 26, 2011

This story, about a professional jailhouse informant named Paul Skalnik, and the stunning fact that any judge might accept the testimony from this miscreant.

Posted on

The Lindy Chamberlain Case: the Australian Court gets High

In the Lindy Chamberlain case (famous as “A Cry in the Dark”), one of the scientists who testified that she found “foetal blood” in 22 areas of the Chamberlain’s car, destroyed all the original tests and photographs before the trial.

Should we say, someone who “claimed” to be scientist? Or remark on the fact that it was the policy of the lab to destroy original tests and photographs immediately after analysis had taken place? Is there any reason to do this, other than to ensure that no one can contradict your testimony?

On February 22, 1984, the Australian High Court confirmed the conviction.

Someone ought to place a monument in front of the court building to this event: and every Justice should look at it and think about it as he or she enters the building to hear cases.  We were wrong.

The Chamberlain case is a sharp tear at the fabric of self-deceit we practice in so-called civilized countries: when it comes right down to it, we don’t much care for facts and science when there is a witch to be burned.

Similar cases, that might give you pause: The McGann case in Portugal, and the infamous Jon-Benet Ramsey case in Boulder, Colorado.

Posted on

Richard Rosario’s Misplaced Trust in the Justice System

Eyewitness identification is the most common cause of wrongful convictions. Of the first 200 DNA exonerations, for example, 158 involved convictions based on eyewitness testimony, according to a 2008 study by Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia.  NY Times, 2011-05-02

From a story about a man who was convicted of murder based solely on the testimony of two witnesses who picked out his picture from a police book.

That’s it. Two witnesses, from a photo. The suspect, Richard Rosario, did not have a very good lawyer, because there were at least seven people in Florida willing to testify that he was somewhere else at the time the murder took place.

Visitation

But this is America where justice is a joke. That image on the left — that’s America’s Lady Justice. Look at that face: expectant, suspicious, arrogant, rubbing her hands in anticipation of another long sentence.

Sanchez and Davis identified Rosario as the shooter. The prosecution also called Diaz, the hotdog vender who had witnessed the argument leading up to the shooting, expecting him to make an in-court identification. However, Diaz refused to identify Rosario as the shooter. The prosecution presented no other evidence linking Rosario to the shooting. Although many people in the Bronx knew Rosario and his fiancée lived there, the prosecution presented no witnesses who said they saw him in New York during the month of June — except the two strangers who briefly glimpsed Collazo’s murderer

From www.justicedenied.org

Rosario’s mistake was the completely ridiculous assumption that he would be treated fairly by the criminal justice system when he voluntarily returned to New York to respond to the police investigation. He should have fled the country. But then, a lot of people–far fewer, I hope, than twenty or thirty years ago– would have insisted that only a guilty man would flee the country.

Posted on

Another Forensic Fraud: Bernard Spillsbury

And another.

Another so-called “expert” on forensic science is unmasked as a fraud and a charlatan. Why is there no outcry for reform of the criminal justice system? Because they are not you and I?

It begins to sink in. All this forensic “science” is mainly about theatre. It’s intended to dazzle the average uninformed jurist with the illusion of scientific certainty, unassailable facts, the immutable truth: he did it.

Of course some forensic science is sound, but only when performed soundly. When blood samples have not been contaminated, witnesses uninfluenced (and even then…), records undoctored. In most real cases against real criminals there is no need for Dr. Blowhard to sit on the stand and state with categorical certainty that no other sweater could have provided this fiber to the exclusion of all other sweaters that I never tested.

This man died of excited delirium. Excited delirium, or ED (the acronym proves it is widely accepted as truth) was the only cause of death. The splatter pattern of the blood indicates that only a 5 foot 7 Polish electrician with a moustache could have committed this murder. Oh, what the hell, let’s just give his name and address to Dexter.

Can you be a fan of the show Dexter without being a serial killer and torturer yourself? But I didn’t do anything! It’s my favorite show! And they deserved it!

They always do.

“Some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing,” Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote in 2009 for a divided three-judge panel.

From NY Times, Feb 18, 2011;

You could reasonably debate the value of Obama’s compromises on many issues, but this is one that I do not wish to forget: he has instructed his Justice Department to defend exactly this power: to arbitrarily arrest and detain anyone they please.

Posted on

The Lofti Raissi Case

The Lofti Raissi Case

It’s been a few years since Lotfi Raissi was finally released but people who actually believe in the competence, wisdom, and good judgment of the authorities in Britain, Canada, and the U.S., should reread this account every day. I mean every day–first thing in the morning, like a prayer: this is your tax dollar at work. You are paying for the keystone cops. But this is not a harmless comedy– these people are doing real damage to all of us.

The important thing about the Lotfi Raissi case is what it reveals about the practices, policies, and — most importantly– competence of American and British police authorities. What it reveals, actually, is that the idiots are in control. What it also reveals is that law enforcement officers have been consistently willing to lie to obtain convictions.

It is the tragedy of our age that the public largely supports violent, inhumane measures against anyone the police think might have ever been thinking of becoming a terrorist. We’re not safer– we’re generating 10 new terrorists for every new outrage. If you were an Algerian, just how would you feel about the treatment of Lotfi Raissi?

Posted on

James Driskell: Wrongful Conviction

I used to be amazed at the remorseless accuracy and precision of “science”. Thanks to the application of clear, consistent, and unambiguous standards and practices, the conclusion of a “scientific” inquiry into the essential facts of a particular issue could only result in the truth.

And then there are the police.

James Driskell was convicted in 1993 for the murder of his best friend, Perry Harder. I quote:

The RCMP said three hair samples found in Driskell’s van were Harder’s, and that evidence convicted him. Later test results from Forensic Science Services in the U.K. found none of the hairs belonged to Harder.

Three hairs? One can easily imagine the solemn testimony of the scientist who conducted the analysis. Science is truth. Science is certain. Science is never wrong. We found these tiny hairs in James Driskell’s van. How could they have gotten there if he hadn’t murdered Perry Harder?

Is someone going to be charged with obstructing justice? Perjury? Incompetence?

Probably not. Because the authorities will extend to those police officers and lab staff the kind of compassionate understanding that they wish we would not extend to criminals.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder how many of the police officers involved in some of these wrongful convictions still support the death penalty?

Posted on

Entrapment

And another…

Would Hamid Hayat have been convicted of providing material support to terrorists if his name had been Albert Smith and his race been Caucasian?

No. Not a chance.

An FBI fink claimed that Osama Bin Laden’s top lieutenant had been in Lodi, California. The FBI found that that was not true, but there were other Arabic-looking people in Lodi. Hamid Hayat and his father barely spoke English and were not provided with lawyers when they were interviewed after the FBI fink, Naseem Khan, pointed them out. Look– those guys look Arabic. The FBI provided the leading questions; nature provided the appropriate racial characteristics. An American jury decided that the FBI would not be prosecuting these men for no reason and convicted the son, largely on the basis of an alleged confession that he had traveled to Pakistan to attend a terrorist training camp.

Amazingly, the government seems to have no obligation to prove anything anymore. It did not offer any proof that Hamid Hayat had ever been to a training camp in Pakistan.

The government did not provide any proof that Hayat had actually taken a single action that would indicate preparation or planning of a terrorist act. It doesn’t matter. He’s Arabic.

Case closed.

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Where is the so-called liberal media on this? You would think this story would be on the covers of all the so-called liberal magazines and newspapers.

Are you people nuts?  Read this, from the New York Times, April 26, 2006:

Mr. Siraj talked about the economic damage that would be caused by stranding Staten Island without the bridges, and seemed pleased that he had recruited Mr. Elshafay, who he indicated was the actual author of the alleged plan.

Sound sinister?  You bet.  Consider this though– Mr. Elshafay is an informant for the New York City Police “intelligence” department, who received over $100,000 for hanging around some bookstores looking for “extremists”.  He befriended the pathetic Mr. Siraj and secretly recorded conversations with him.

Mr. Siraj hates America– no doubt about it– but it was Mr. Eshafay who brought up all kinds of exciting ides about building nuclear bombs or blowing up various bridges in New York.

Now, you’re a young, gullible, foreign-born Moslem.  Some lunatic befriends you and you end up driving around town in his car.  He starts talking about how evil America is and how great it would be to blow up some bridges.  I don’t know what you say exactly, but I know that if I was on a jury, I would think long and hard before coming to the conclusion that you were, by yourself, a threat to America.

Mr. Siraj did not actually take any steps– none at all– towards realizing his brilliant plan.  Not a single step.  Not one.

Mr. Elshafay is the actual author of the plan.  So the U.S. government has “informants” going around, hanging around with impressionable and misguided young Arabs, and saying, “hey, wanna blow up the Brooklyn Bridge?  Whaddya think– I could get a bomb.  Do you hate America or what,
huh?”  And when these pathetic and gullible young hostile Arabs say, “yeah, wouldn’t that be something.  I hate America” we arrest them and lock them up for terrorism.  What kind of whacked out country is this?  This is George Bush’s  America.

The bottom line is that there is not the slightest shred of evidence that Mr. Siraj, on his own, was up to anything other than minding his mosque and tending a bookstore.

Did he hate America?  Yes.  So let’s drop the pretense of looking for actual terrorists and just arrest everybody who hates America.  We are building a very large pool of candidates…

NY Times on Hamid Hayat Case

More Comments on Civil Liberties

More on Hamid Hayat

Posted on

“He didn’t act like someone who was unjustly accused.”

“He didn’t act like someone who was unjustly accused.”

Robert Lazzaro, one of two prosecutors of Kirk Bloodsworth, who was convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl, Dawn Hamilton, July 25, 1984.

Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted twice of the 1984 rape and strangulation death of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton outside of Baltimore. He was sentenced to death. His appeals were denied. The justice system works.

A lot of people were confident in Bloodsworth’s guilt, including the prosecutors who, even after DNA evidence had cleared Bloodsworth, asserted that he must have done it. He still must have done it. Well, he could have done it. Case closed.

The DNA was extracted from Dawn’s underwear.  Bloodsworth’s DNA was not found.  Someone else’s DNA was found.  That would lead most rational people to the conclusion that Mr. Bloodworth did not rape Dawn Hamilton.

Now every prosecutor will tell you that suspects will concoct remarkably preposterous stories to try to escape responsibility for their crimes. How is this for preposterous? Dawn must have left her panties in a clothes hamper where they came into contact with her father’s underwear, which might have had semen stains on them, which explains the wrong DNA, and then she might have put them on again without waiting for them to be washed.

So the DNA evidence is irrelevant. Bloodsworth is still guilty.

Amazing.

It must be very difficult for any person to admit responsibility for putting the wrong man behind bars for a heinous crime for 9 years. How nice for Kirk Bloodsworth to know that reputable justice officials continue to assert you might have done it, as you try to rebuild your life.

Bloodsworth is now a fisherman– he owns a boat and works hard for a living. His taxes help pay the salaries of the Baltimore district attorney.

So it must have been eating away at him for some time, until the police recently found the real killer. If DNA doesn’t match the suspect, of course, there is always a possibility that the real match can be found. It was found. Kimberly Shay Ruffner was a perfect match. Bloodsworth knew Ruffner– they had served some time together (Ruffner was in prison on other charges at the time). Bloodsworth was the librarian in prison and sometimes delivered books to Mr. Ruffner.

For the rest of us, a lesson to be learned. Study innocent men. Learn how they behave. Make sure, if you are ever charged with a crime, that you know how to put on the right act, so it cannot be said of you:

He didn’t act like he was unjustly accused.

Posted on

Governor George Ryan of Illinois

One of the most amazing news stories of the past few years is the story of Illinois Republican Governor George Ryan. Apparently Ryan is about to issue pardons for all of the inmates on death row in Illinois. If you’re like me, you have to read that twice to believe it, in this era of hardline punishment freaks. Yes, a Republican governor is going to issue a blanket commutation for the death sentences of 156 inmates.

Ryan has been investigating the investigations of these men for about two years, ever since it was discovered that a substantial number of them were wrongfully convicted. A law professor in Chicago had made it a personal hobby to reinvestigate capital cases and had remarkable success in showing police incompetence, brutality, and deceit in these cases. After looking at all of them closely, Ryan simply lost confidence in the system. He didn’t believe that he could believe, with any degree of certainty, that any of the men it was his job to have executed was actually guilty of the crime he was convicted of.

In spite of my sympathy for their losses, I always find it repulsive when the families of a murder victim express their horror, shock, and dismay, that they won’t get to see the murderer fry. There are loads of euphemisms for that desire– one of the ugliest and dumbest is the word “closure”– but it always strikes me as nothing more than a passionate desire to do unto the perpetrator the very horror he has visited upon us, and that is illogical. Murder is horrible and evil and obscene, and the evil that it does to us is not undone by repeating the action.

It is undone by acts like those of George Ryan, which show that occasionally we humans can be better than murderers.