Are you a Netflix user or a fan of the podcast “Serial?” If so, then you’ve definitely heard of the Innocence Project–it’s been a part of Steven Avery’s story in “Making a Murderer,” and the Innocence Project has been investigating Adnan Syed’s case in “Serial” as well. The Innocence Project is a non-profit organization that strives to find the truth when prisoners continually maintain their innocence after they’ve been incarcerated. In the last several decades, it has become all too clear that the American justice system isn’t without its flaws, which sometimes leads to wrongful convictions. It is these wrongful convictions that the Innocence Project strives to fight in hope that they will lead to law revisions in each state. But what exactly is the Innocence Project? Read on to find learn more.

How Did the Innocence Project Get Started?

The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld as a legal clinic, but later turned into a nationwide project. It was founded after the release of a landmark study by the US Department of Justice and the US Senate that found that 70 percent of wrongful convictions are because of eyewitness misidentification of perpetrators. This study was revised in 1999 to become the manual for law enforcement regarding eyewitness testimony. The Innocence Project became a 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2003 after maintaining its role as a legal clinic at Cardozo for more than a decade.

Both Scheck and Neufeld were law professors at Cardozo and also worked as defense attorneys when they founded the Innocence Project. They are known nationwide as being part of the O.J. Simpson defense team who fought his double homicide charge in 1995. Notably, Simpson was found not guilty in that case in one of the most infamous invocations of reasonable doubt in US history; his defense team, including Scheck and Neufeld, have achieved notoriety in the years since.

Misidentification by Eyewitnesses

Since the original study in the early 1990s on the tendency for eyewitnesses to misidentify perpetrators of crimes, many more studies have been released that continue to corroborate those facts. Eyewitnesses have become notoriously unreliable. They often remember small details but not the big picture, and they are beginning to be treated as less valuable than hard forensic evidence in court cases. This is a big win for the Innocence Project, which has been trying to reform laws in each US state since its inception.

There are two ways that the Innocence Project is trying to reform laws to help prevent wrongful convictions. First, it is trying to make sure that DNA testing is accessible to all sectors of law enforcement, no matter how remote or small. This will help take the burden off of eyewitness testimony in trials. Second, by compensating the wrongfully convicted after they are freed, the justice system pays for its mistake. This should make law enforcement and the court system more interested in convicting the guilty party and should prevent more wrongful convictions in the future.

Looking to the Past

Criminal Justice Degrees Guide compiled a list of ten infamous wrongful executions that could have been prevented by the Innocence Project. The list includes Claude Jones, who was executed for killing a liquor store owner based on the testimony of his friends and a hair found at the scene. The hair was later proven to have been the owner’s—not Jones’—by DNA evidence after Jones had already been executed. Another sad example is the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for killing his three young daughters in a house fire. Arson investigators testified that the fire was intentional, even though Willingham appealed for years. Five years after Willingham was executed, it was determined that the arson investigators used flawed science in their investigation; this could mean that Willingham may be the first officially declared wrongful execution in the state of Texas. These are just two of many sad cases of wrongful executions, which was part of the drive to form the Innocence Project in the first place.

What Methods are Used to Exonerate Prisoners?

In most cases, prisoners are exonerated based on DNA evidence. The majority of the cases that are taken on by the Innocence Project had convictions that occurred before DNA was regularly tested. Therefore, the lawyers affiliated with the Innocence Project generally move to have evidence looked at again so that anything available can be tested for DNA that may have been overlooked originally. An interesting and important point to remember is that, as long as it is not contaminated, DNA evidence can be preserved for decades. This is especially true with blood and other bodily secretions and hair follicles.

Other forensic evidence may be used to exonerate prisoners as well. In one case, blood type should have proved that the convicted person couldn’t have done it from the beginning; he was eventually exonerated on that evidence. In other cases, the real perpetrator was caught and confessed, exonerating the falsely imprisoned. In one final example, a judge found that a prosecutor willingly withheld evidence of innocence and overturned a prior conviction.

Success Stories

So far, there have been 337 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States, along with seven cases where falsely convicted prisoners were exonerated by other means. In many of the cases, the convicted person spent more than a decade behind bars before DNA evidence or other evidence was able to exonerate him. Some even spent time on death row.

Oddee tallied ten of the worst wrongful conviction cases, and it’s easy to see how lawyers can become very passionate about the Innocence Project. William Dillon, for instance, served 27 years for murder, but was released when DNA evidence proved he wasn’t the killer. Kirk Bloodsworth spent nine years in prison—two of those on death row—before DNA testing excluded him. Robert Dewey was freed from a life without parole sentence because of a blood stain on his shirt that supposedly linked him to a murder; 17 years later, that blood was tested for DNA and it was concluded that it was not the victim’s blood. These are only three examples, but they show how the story usually goes when the Innocence Project is successful.

How Does the Innocence Project Work?

The Innocence Project works in a fairly set pattern each time it gets involved in a post-conviction case. Often, the convicted person or the person’s family reaches out to the Innocence Project members, asking them to take a look at the person’s case; other times, the Innocence Project independently hears of a case and offers to take it on. Once the Innocence Project takes on a case, its lawyers work tirelessly to get the evidence reviewed again and to get the case back in front of a judge for reassessment. This process is rarely quick—more often than not, it takes years for the Innocence Project to prevail in a case. There are two end goals that the Innocence Project is always working toward: freeing the wrongly convicted person, and reforming laws that prevent justice in each state where they work.

In concurrence with its work to free the wrongfully convicted, the Innocence Project also continually works toward reforming the justice system in order to prevent future wrongful convictions. This includes strategic litigation, where lawyers on the Innocence Project team work through the legal system to bring attention to the causes of wrongful conviction. Once the causes are made known, the Strategic Litigation team usually works with the Innocence Project’s Policy department to start petitioning to change laws in order to prevent future injustice in the court system.

The Innocence Project in the News

So, why have you been hearing of the Innocence Project in pop culture recently? There are two likely reasons: “Serial,” the ultra-popular podcast from NPR, and “Making a Murderer,” Netflix’s sensational documentary that was released in December 2015.

In the last episode of the first season of “Serial,” Sarah Koenig talks to Deirdre Enright, who leads the Innocence Project clinic at the University of Virginia Law School. Enright said that her students have opened an investigation into Adnan Syed’s conviction, and they have identified another potential suspect. This is entirely separate of the appeals process that Syed is currently going through in the state of Maryland, but will definitely help his case should he get a new trial.

The Innocence Project has been even more prominently featured in the news in the case of Steven Avery, the man who is the subject of “Making a Murderer.” Avery is actually featured on the Innocence Project’s website, because he is a success story for them—he was exonerated after being convicted of the attack and rape of a jogger in 1985. He spent 18 years in prison for that crime before DNA evidence freed him—and two years later, he was back in court, this time facing murder charges in the death of Teresa Halbach, a photographer who was last seen on Avery’s property. He and his nephew have been in prison for that crime for the last 9 years, and the Innocence Project is again involved in Avery’s case.

The Medill Justice Project at Northwestern University–formerly the Medill Innocence Project–has also been in the news in the last year, but for a completely different reason. In February 2015, a man was freed from prison after serving 15 years for a crime he did not commit–but he alleges that he was put in prison after a coerced confession to one of the professors who led the Medill Innocence Project. When he was imprisoned, another man was freed, and it is postulated that the original man was the actually perpetrator. This was very unfortunate press for the Innocence Project, but the program has since been under reform. The Medill Justice Project is now being led by a former investigative reporter for the Washington Post, and has continued to do good work despite the lawsuit.

Conclusion

In the two-plus decades that the Innocence Project has been working toward freeing the wrongfully convicted, it has grown and had many success stories. What started as a small law school clinic in New York, is now a nationwide non-profit with 344 success stories. Forensic evidence has become standard in court cases now, but there are still many prisoners who were convicted based on more circumstantial evidence, like eyewitness testimony. Humans make mistakes, and that has become apparent as the Innocence Project continues to free wrongfully convicted criminals throughout the country. The greater goal now, after two decades of working on individual cases, is to reform laws in each state that allow eyewitness testimony to put away people for crimes in the first place.

Resources

Primary

US Department of Justice: Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement

State of Washington: Eyewitness Identification Procedures: Legal and Practical Aspects

The Justice Project: Eyewitness Identification: A Policy Review

Additional

The Atlantic: Making a Murderer: An American Horror Story

Virginia Lawyer: Behavioral Science Research Leads to Department of Justice Guidelines for Eyewitness Evidence

Oddee: 10 of the Worst Wrongful Imprisonment Cases

Criminal Justice Degrees Guide: 10 Infamous Cases of Wrongful Execution

Time: The Innocence Project Tells Serial Fans What Might Happen Next

Huffington Post: 7 Terrifying Things ‘Making a Murderer’ Illustrates About American Justice

The Washington Post: Where Do the Cases at the Center of Netflix’s ‘Making a Murderer’ Stand Now?

Columbia Journalism Review: How the Medill Justice Project has Thrived Following Controversy

The Daily Beast: The Innocence Project May Have Framed a Man for a Crime He Didn’t Commit

Amanda Gernentz Hanson

Amanda Gernentz Hanson is a Minnesota native living in Austin, Texas. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Hope College and a Master’s degree in Technical Communication from Minnesota State University, where her final project discussed intellectual property issues in freelancing and blogging. Amanda is an instructional designer full time, a freelance writer part time, and a nerd always. Contact Amanda at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Innocence Project: A Shot at Redemption in the U.S. Criminal Justice System appeared first on Law Street.

Capital punishment has long been a controversial practice in the United States. Some feel that society needs to rid the country of America’s most heinous criminals in order to make room for new prisoners or to save taxpayer money, while others point out that the U.S. has executed more than 150 innocent people and this punishment cannot be undone. But why do people feel so strongly about the death penalty, how have their feelings changed over time, and what does this mean for capital punishment moving forward?

The Death Penalty Today

Demographics of the Death Penalty

In 2013, of the 2,979 inmates on death row, roughly half of them were held in four states: California, Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Divided by race, inmates were 56 percent white and 42 percent black. Along gender lines, men outnumbered women one to 49, with men comprising 98 percent of death-row inmates and women only two percent.

Which states still use the death penalty?

The following states still use capital punishment:

The federal government and military also use capital punishment.

Each state determines which crimes are punishable by death. Crimes other than murder that can end in a death row sentence include rape of a child, weapons of mass destruction resulting in death, aggravated kidnapping, assault by an escaped capital felon, and aircraft hijacking.

The U.S. Federal Government uses the death penalty for 41 capital offenses including murder for hire, treason, terrorism, espionage, genocide, large-scale drug trafficking, and attempting to kill a witness, juror, or court officer in certain cases.

The following states abolished or no longer use capital punishment:

When the death penalty was removed or abolished in some states, lawmakers were faced with the question of what to do with those already on death row. Should those sentenced to death before the new law be allowed to live? In New Mexico and Connecticut, the answer was no. In 2009 when New Mexico eliminated the penalty, the law was not retroactive, which meant the two people on the state’s death row would still face execution. As of 2015, those two are still on death row. Also those who committed crimes worthy of the death penalty before 2009 could still face execution. The same ruling occurred in Connecticut, which had 11 people still on the state’s death row.

Arguments For and Against the Death Penalty

According to a 2014 Gallup poll, the most common justification for the death penalty is that the punishment fits the crime: an eye for an eye. This reasoning has dramatically decreased in the last 13 years, with 48 percent support in 2001, to 35 percent in 2014. Other reasons include a belief that the convicted person deserves it, that the death penalty can be used to set an example, and that it saves taxpayer money.

According to the same poll, the most popular reasons why people do not support capital punishment include a belief that it’s wrong to take a life at (40 percent), the fear of wrongful execution (17 percent), and religious purposes (17 percent). The fact that it costs more to keep prisoners on death row is very far down the list, polling at only two percent.

These are the various ways in which Americans perceive the death penalty, but are they correct?

The Cost of the Death Penalty

Despite 14 percent of Americans supporting the death penalty in order to save taxpayer dollars, it is actually more expensive to kill an inmate than to incarcerate him for the rest of his life. This revelation complicates the argument over whether or not it makes sense to employ the punishment.

A Los Angeles Times study found that the state of California spent more than $250 million per execution. California has executed 11 people over the course of 27 years and spends an average of $114 million per year on death row inmates. The state spends an additional $114 million per year on security and legal representation. The study also found that housing a death row inmate costs $90,000 more than non-death row inmates. Since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, California has spent more than $4 billion on executions. The reason why death row inmates are so costly is due to the complex and drawn out judicial process. Appeals cost the state and federal government time and money, and the concrete evidence needed, such as DNA testing, is costly. 

Other states have also found that the cost of the death penalty is higher than life sentence cases as well. A Seattle University study that examined death penalty cases in Washington state since 1997 concluded that on average capital punishment cases cost $1 million more than cases that did not seek the death penalty, with costs of $3.07 million and $2.01 million, respectively. Defense and prosecution costs were more than triple in death penalty cases. Since Washington reinstated the death penalty in 1981, the state has spent $120 million on five executions with an average of $24 million per execution.

In Nevada the cost of a capital punishment case is between $1.03 million and $1.3 million while a non-capital punishment case costs about $775,000. The reason for this difference is because death penalty cases are more lengthy and costly to make certain that the sentence is correct.

The average time a convict sits on death row has been increasing since the 1980s. In 1984 the average time between sentencing and execution was 74 months, or a little over six years. In 2012 it was 190 months, or nearly 16 years. That means the average inmate executed in 2015 was convicted in 1999.

In order to prove a fair sentence for execution all doubts must be erased. That is why death row inmates are given due process and appeals after their original sentences.

Concerns Over Wrongful Executions

Even today death row inmates are exonerated due to new evidence and doubts. As of May 2015 there have been 152 people exonerated from death row in United States history, leading to the concern that the justice system is far from infallible.

For example, in 2015 accused murderer Anthony Ray Hilton was freed after 30 years on death row in Alabama. His case made it to the Supreme Court and his defense attorney during his 1985 trial was found “constitutionally deficient” and ballistic evidence proved that he was not the murderer. The case was dropped by the Jefferson County district attorney’s office on April 1, 2015 and two days later his conviction was overturned. Because of his wrongful incarceration, Hilton missed the birth of his grandchild and the death of his mother.

So, is public opinion on the death penalty changing?

Since the 1930s, statistics show that a majority of the U.S. population supports the death penalty. The public’s opinion has fluctuated slowly over time with approval increasing from 47 percent in 1967 to 80 percent in 1995 and decreasing to 63 percent in 2014.

One thing is clear: Americans are losing confidence in the death penalty. According to Gallup, since the late 1990s, support for the death penalty for a convicted killer has fall by 17 percent and opposition has increased by 17 percent.

Conclusion

Capital punishment is legally complicated in many states. Some have the death penalty but do not use it. Others have abolished it but can still sentence people to death. Americans have a lot of things to take into account when deciding what side of the debate they fall into–whether its ethics, costs, or the time it takes to enact capital punishment. The more than 150 confirmed wrongful executions in the United States show that trials and law are not infallible. While approval of the death penalty continues to decrease every year, it’s doubtful that the U.S. will be making a big change any time soon.

Resources

Primary

Bureau of Justice Statistics: Prisoners in 2013

U.S. Department of Justice: Capital Punishment

Additional

Gallup: Death Penalty

Death Penalty: The High Cost of the Death Penalty

Death Penalty: Cost of the Death Penalty

Guardian: Alabama Man Off Death Row After 28 Years

Death Penalty Info: States With and Without the Death Penalty

Mike Stankiewicz

Mike Stankiewicz came to Washington to follow his dream of becoming a journalist. The native New Yorker studied Broadcast Journalism and Law and Society at American University. In his leisure time he enjoys baseball, hiking, and classic American literature. Contact Mike at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Capital Punishment: Is American Opinion Changing? appeared first on Law Street.

Justin Ross Harris was indicted on September 4 by a grand jury on eight counts for the murder of his 22-month-old son, who was left in a hot car. The public anxiously waited for this verdict after Harris became public enemy number one after the incident in June. Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds stated that he will decide over the next three weeks whether to seek a mandatory life sentence or the death penalty in this case. If Reynolds does seek the death penalty, it will be for the malice murder charge, which alleges that Harris, who has claimed his son’s death was an accident, premeditated the child’s killing.

There has been much debate over the outcome and potential sentence of punishment that Mr. Harris will receive. Some believe these charges are way too severe, considering there may still be a possibility that the death of Harris’ young son was in fact an accident. In my opinion, this all comes down to just how ethical the death penalty really is? The death of a 22-month-old baby is tragic, and what is even more heartbreaking is that this seems to be becoming the norm. I was reading the news today, and several newspapers have created sections in which ‘hot car baby deaths’ are featured. It is clear that enforcing the death penalty as a deterrent just does not work.

In the twenty-first century, I honestly believe if we were to live by the saying ‘an eye for an eye’ we would be living in chaos. In order to lead by example, as a country that punishes individuals who commit heinous crimes, we should rise above just killing them off by an injection. It costs more money to keep an individual on death row than it does to place them in prison on a life sentence. An eye for an eye means that equal amount of suffering should be received, and I ask you, do you really think a quick lethal injection can compare to some of the horrific murders and rapes these victims suffer? Would it not make more sense to sentence these individuals to life sentences in prison, forcing them to acknowledge what they have done, while being punished by depriving them of any normal life they once had? What I think a lot of people fail to understand is that although these individuals can be sentenced to death row, they will spend years awaiting their actual death while money is wasted on them sitting in a cell.

With ironic timing, after three decades on death row, this week 50-year-old Henry McCollum and his brother were released from prison in North Carolina due to DNA evidence after serving a sentence for the rape and murder of a female in 1983. As expected, social media jumped at the chance to voice their opinions on this case, and the death penalty in general. Many believe that if someone commits such a heinous crime they should also suffer, whereas others argue that killing them via the death penalty is the easy way out. I have done a lot of research in the use of DNA to exonerate individuals. The Innocence Project is an organization that dedicates itself to cases exactly like this in the hope of overturning wrongful convictions. The flaw with the death penalty is the fact that in most cases, with an absence of evidence or lack of investigative material, it is close to impossible to be 100 percent sure of conviction. The risk that an individual can be sentenced to death, and then be proven innocent is way too high to warrant any ethical justification for this form of punishment.

As a country that bases itself on a constitution that protects the rights of the people and forbids cruel and unusual punishment, I struggle to see how sentencing someone to die by lethal injection for a crime that cannot be supported with 100 percent guaranteed proof is not in itself a contradiction of what we stand for. By sentencing Harris to death, I do not see how that can compare to the suffering of a young baby in a hot car. It is controversial to compare the suffering of ways to die for both the victim and the perpetrator, but I actually think the death penalty can sometimes be an easy way out.

Justice for victims who have lost their lives due to crime demands that their perpetrators be punished and made to understand and take responsibility for their actions. I am still unsure about where I stand in terms of rehabilitation for these types of criminals, but I genuinely feel like (and for this you can blame my criminology background and psycho analytic personality) if we do not try to understand why these things happen and why people do the things they do, we will not be able to prevent any harm done to us in the future, and more importantly to the next generation that will live in this exact same era of punishment.

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Hannah Kaye (@HannahSKaye) is originally from London, now living in New York. Recently graduated with an MA in criminal justice from John Jay College. Strong contenders for things she is most passionate about are bagels and cupcakes.

Featured image courtesy of [Luigi Caterino via Flickr]

Hannah Kaye

Hannah Kaye is originally from London, now living in New York. Recently graduated with an MA in criminal justice from John Jay College. Strong contenders for things she is most passionate about are bagels and cupcakes. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Death Penalty is the Easy Way Out appeared first on Law Street.

When Jabbar Collins was arrested in 1994 for the murder of Rabbi Abraham Pollack, no one believed him when he said he was innocent. Now, after 16 years in a maximum security prison and three years following his exoneration, Collins is slated to receive $3 million from the state of New York in one of the largest wrongful conviction settlements ever awarded by the state.

Collins is one of the lucky ones. Only 30 states and the District of the Columbia provide compensation to exonerated criminals. A total of 1,405 innocent people have been wrongfully imprisoned since 1989. In 46 percent of these cases, the government and its officials were at fault. Official misconduct (police, prosecutors, or other government officials abusing their power) is responsible for putting 647 innocent people behind bars over the past 25 years. Despite these numbers, the road to compensation is far from easy.

Even in the states that have compensation laws on the books, the process for receiving money is fairly difficult, requiring years of waiting and expensive legal battles. On average there is a minimum of a three year wait (as in Collins’ case). Additionally, a successful lawsuit depends on the person’s ability to prove that their wrongful conviction was caused by intentional misconduct. This requires naming a responsible party such as a prosecutor, police officer, or witness. It also excludes compensation for legal technicalities and unintentional errors made during the original investigation and trial.

If that isn’t bad enough, compensation laws vary widely state-by-state, and most of the money that exonerees receive is taxed. Some states deny compensation to any exoneree that falsely confessed or pleaded guilty, while others deny money to those who were exonerated without the use of DNA testing. Florida refuses to compensate anyone that has an unrelated prior offense under its “clean hands” provision, and Montana offers no money at all, instead offering educational aid for state or community college. New Hampshire offers a flat maximum of $20,000 no matter how many years an exoneree spent wrongfully imprisoned.

According to federal standards, exonerees should receive up to $50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment and $100,000 per year spent on death row, but these standards are currently met by only 5 states. More often than not, exonerees receive small amounts–if anything at all–which do not even begin to cover the damages they suffered as a direct result of their wrongful confinement.

One thing that all exonerees almost uniformly receive is the horrific experience of being falsely imprisoned. Most suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, institutionalization, and depression as a result of years they spent behind bars. They have to endure the censure for a crime they never committed and the psychological damage of being branded a criminal by the public.

Even after an exoneree is released from confinement, the consequences of their imprisonment has the potential to taint every aspect of their lives. For some exonerees, half a lifetime has passed them by; family members have died, children have grown up, and spouses have moved on with their lives while they spent years behind bars. Others suffer physically from years spent with sub-par prison health care, while others suffer professionally as they lack the job experience, vocational training, and educational skills that are needed to secure a job.

Perhaps worst of all is the fact that their wrong conviction is not even immediately expunged from their records upon exoneration and release, often appearing on background checks and inhibiting their ability to fully reintegrate into society years later. Despite all this, most states do not provide transitional services for exonerees, leaving a large portion without a means of transportation, a source of income, or even a place to call home upon release.

It seems rather counter-intuitive to not provide these people with immediate and automatic compensation. They have clearly suffered unjustly at the hands of a flawed criminal justice system and it seems only natural that the government should take on the responsibility to help them rebuild their lives, regardless of liability.

The fact that these people are left with no other option but to sue for the compensation they rightfully deserve is adding insult to injury. They have already proved their innocence-they would be in jail otherwise–and while you cannot put a price on freedom, exonerees should not have to suffer through an expensive, protracted legal battle in order to be compensated for the years they spent unjustly serving time for a crime they did not commit.

[Innocence Project] [National Registry of Exonerations]

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Luigi Caterino via Flickr]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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