The Innocence Project is a non-profit legal group that works on two goals: (1) to exonerate wrongly convicted people using DNA testing, and (2) to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck at Cardozo School of Law. They saw that there was a huge number of innocent people being incarcerated, based on flimsy evidence, forced confessions, misidentification and other suspect tactics by the criminal justice system. The tactics we read about in the Central Park Five case is a perfect example of these tactics, where the teens were forced into making confessions, their confessions were inconsistent with each other, there were no witnesses, and their DNA didn’t match anything on the victim.
The Innocence Project’s use of DNA technology to free innocent people proves that wrongful convictions are not rare events. They happen regularly, and are due to defects in the criminal justice system. This group is working to reform that system to prevent future injustice.
The Innocence Project’s Strategic Litigation department is working on the second mission, to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future wrongful convictions. This department works through the courts to aim at the main causes of wrongful convictions, especially bad evidence. The department has three full time attorneys that are employing strategies to make judges, attorneys and policymakers aware of the inaccuracy of certain forensic sciences and the unreliability of eyewitness identification evidence. They are trying to establish new legal precedent for reliable evidence.
Quick facts:
- 1989: The first DNA exoneration occurred
- 367 DNA exonerees to date
- 37: States where exonerations have been won
- 14: Average number of years served
- 5,097.5: Total number of years wrongly served
- 26.5: Average age at the time of wrongful conviction
- 42.8: Average age when released
- 21 of 367 people served time on death row
- 41 of 367 pled guilty to crimes they did not commit
- 69%: included eyewitness misidentification
- 44%: involved applying forensic evidence wrong
- 28%: involved false confessions; 49% under 21 yo; 33% 18 years or younger
- 267: DNA exonerees compensated
- 189: DNA exonerations worked on by the Innocence Project
- 162: true perpetrators were identified. Those actual perpetrators committed 152 additional violent crimes, including 82 sexual assaults, 35 murders, and 35 other violent crimes while the innocent sat behind bars for their earlier offenses.
Demographics of the 367:
225 (61%) African American
110 (30%) Caucasian
28 (8%) Latinx
2 (1%) Asian American
1 (<1%) Native American
1 (<1%) Self-identified “Other”
110 (30%) Caucasian
28 (8%) Latinx
2 (1%) Asian American
1 (<1%) Native American
1 (<1%) Self-identified “Other”
I'm glad that organizations like this one exists because there are so many injustices that are seen within the criminal justice system. There have been cases of people being wrongfully convicted because of factors such as their socioeconomic status, race, and gender. I wonder if there is more that we can do, as a society, to help those who have been innocently sent to jail.
ReplyDelete