Save the Date: October 7, 2010
The Benefit for Innocence
Featuring Author and CNN Analyst
JEFFREY TOOBIN
Is the Innocence Project political?
No. We are a non-partisan organization that strives to improve the quality of justice. We do not endorse candidates nor do we take a public stance on political issues. While the treatment of the guilty is open to broad debate, we believe that justice for the innocent transcends politics.
I should not be in prison because my rights were violated during my arrest and prosecution. Can you help me?
Only if there is clear proof of your actual innocence. If someone is not innocent, we do not address technicalities, procedural mistakes, or even constitutional violations.
I have heard that the problem of mistaken convictions is statistically insignificant. Is this still worth pursuing?
This is about people, not statistics. We are primarily concerned with the innocent individual. We are concerned with statistical prevalence of mistaken verdicts only to the extent that it illuminates the plights of individuals and suggests where we can best direct attention. But consider the following:
Using DNA testing, more than 200 innocent people have been released from prison after serving an average of 12 years for crimes they did not commit. Added together, they were behind bars for over 2,600 years. Imagine spending the last twelve years of your life in prison. Then imagine the effect it would have those who care about you.
What has the Innocence Project of Minnesota done?
IPMN has done much to help the innocent. We have not just focused on DNA, but on all cases where clear evidence of innocence was present. We have worked to change procedures and are a model in many ways such as the audio taping of interrogations. We’ve done extensive forensic education, both as a part of continuing legal education and through clinics in two law schools which have educated hundreds of attorneys. We share best practices with attorneys. We also secured the release of one wrongfully convicted man from prison last year after he served ten years for a crime he did not commit. We continue to investigate numerous cases of potential wrongful convictions.
Is the system broken?
We believe the system suffers from correctable flaws. Most pressingly, we are advocating changes in Minnesota criminal procedure to preserve biological evidence used to identify perpetrators and to allow those convicted of crimes to more easily use newly discovered evidence.
Other fixes include a number of eyewitness identification reforms: administration by an officer who does not know the suspect, improved instructions for eyewitnesses, documentation of the eyewitness’s level of confidence, land presenting lineup members one-by-one. Needed reforms also include education on forensic science. Minnesota has already required the audio taping of confessions.
We don’t presume bad intent on the part of prosecutors, police, judges, or crime labs. We are, after all, the innocence project so presuming anyone’s guilt would be a dark irony. Of course, there will be individual cases of personal misconduct.
We don’t claim moral superiority over prosecutors, judges, or police. Some of us were prosecutors. We simply try act on clear facts to help innocent people and to address correctable flaws in the system. While we believe anyone guilty of misconduct should face consequences, we focus our energies on liberating those convicted of crimes they didn't commit and preventing the conviction of the innocent.
Doesn’t your work undermine verdicts?
We don’t render verdicts unstable. We act only in a small percentage of cases where there is clear proof that an innocent person was convicted.
There is a long tradition of such exceptional intervention, most famously in the executive powers of commutation and pardon, but also in limited exceptions for retrial. There’s always been the possibility of a Governor’s pardon. This is the same principle that underlies our work–we’re a fail-safe in exceptional cases.
Call me cynical. But aren’t a few false convictions a small price to pay for the greater good of keeping our streets safe?
Mistaken convictions make the streets less safe. Any time an innocent person is convicted, a guilty one walks free to commit more crimes. By investigating the truth of specific cases and by correcting the causes of systematic misidentification, we are helping make the process more accurate and alerting prosecutors to cases where they have not yet identified the true perpetrator.
