Freeing the Innocent


	Print or Email This Page March 2000 Freeing the Innocent By *Barry Scheck; Peter Neufeld; Jim Dwyer* Journalist Jim Dwyer and lawyers Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck first met on a visit to a prison in upstate New York. In March 1992, Neufeld and Scheck gave a brief on the first DNA innocence case to a newspaper editor who in turn gave it to Dwyer. Intrigued by the emerging use of science in the courtroom, he wrote a series of newspaper columns on how justice had gone wrong. The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist has worked for the New York Daily News since 1995. He is the author of Subway Lives and co-author of Two Seconds Under the World (an account of the World Trade Center bombing). Peter Neufeld first met Barry Scheck in 1977 when both were public defenders. They formed a professional collaboration and friendship that’s invincible. As legal aid alumni they continued their partnership, but not in the traditional sense. Scheck became a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1978. Neufeld opened a private practice in Manhattan. In 1986, Neufeld and Scheck took on the case of Marion Coakley. Two years into a 15-year sentence for raping and robbing a women, Coakley was mildly retarded and widely suspected of being innocent. After involving students in a dogged investigation and devising a novel testing procedure, the lawyers were able to convince the prosecutors and judges that the wrong man had been imprisoned. The Coakley case inspired them to establish the Innocence Project at Cardozo in 1992. This article contains material from ACTUAL INNOCENCE: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted, published by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, NY, February 2000. Informational materials on Building an Innocence Network and Innocence Agenda are available. These include: Post-Conviction DNA Statutes & DOJ Recommendations, Compensation for the Wrongfully Convicted, Eyewitness Identification, Jailhouse Informants, Death Penalty Moratoriums, Innocence Commissions and False Confessions. Contact NACDL staff member Jeniffer Miller ( jennifer@nacdl.org ) for details. Wrong Numbers The thing is, you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That’s contradictory. If a person is innocent of crime, then he is not a suspect. Edwin Meese, Attorney Generalof the United States, quoted in 1986 The phone rings. His mother and aunt have gone to bed. Dennis Fritz stares at a movie, though he doesn’t know its name or plot, and is ready for sleep, just as soon as he can hoist himself from couch to bed. It is a spring night in Kansas City, and the windows of Lister Avenue are open to the cool air, and curtains skip along the breeze. A jangling phone at that hour, in this house, could only be a wrong number. "Hello," says a woman. "Is Dennis Fritz there?" "Yes," says Fritz. "Is this Dennis Fritz? she asks. "Yes, it is," he says, and his soft, western-accented voice is answered by a dial tone. The woman had hung up. A wrong number, he thinks for an instant, then realizes that made no sense. Dennis Fritz walks back to the sofa and plops again in front of the television. He is 37 years old, a handsome man, his hair neatly trimmed and piled back. This gives a clear view of his finely featured face, unlined skin, and the blue eyes that seem intelligent and generous. His compact body probably would be fit even if he did not work at construction and home repair in southeastern Oklahoma. This week, he has come to Kansas City to do a paint job for his mother and aunt. At night, the history of the day can be read in his muscles, a mild fatigue written by eight hours with brushes and cans, rollers and masking tape, ladders and drop cloths. Slowly, the house is taking on a fresher look, but he knows a few coats of paint will not transform it. When he finishes, his mom’s home still would look pretty much the same as every other one on the street, a 50-year-old, 2-story house that happened to be in the middle of the country, a home for people who could have been anyone. The promotions for that night’s TV news are playing, but nothing grabs Dennis. He stands, stretches, yawns, and then hears the car doors. He glances past the curtains and sees a small army of police officers fanning across his yard and taking up combat positions. They must have rolled up silently. Dressed in sniper and SWAT team gear, they focus, for some reason, on his mother’s house. He opens the door and steps across the threshold. Two men in plainclothes materialize from the shadows. "Dennis Fritz," said one, and now Fritz could make him out, placing the face of a detective from the little town where he had lived, Ada, Oklahoma. Whatever in the world was he doing in Kansas City? "Yes," says Dennis. "Raise your hands. We have a warrant for your arrest." "What?" asks Fritz. "You are charged with murder in the first degree and rape in the death of Debra Sue Carter," says the detective. As he feels them cuffing him behind his back and sees the snipers uncoil from their firing position, the name of Debra Carter moves through his mind. The girl had been killed, it must have been four or five years earlier in Ada, and half the men in town had been questioned at the time, Dennis included. lt had been an unpleasant episode, but a necessary one, he had supposed at the time, and he had thought little about it in the years since. Now, the police had emerged from a spring night to accuse him of murder. A moment before, he had been ready for bed, stretching his arms. Now he had fallen into an unreal dream. He left his mother’s home in handcuffs on that spring night in 1987. He would not return until the spring of 1999. Before he took up construction, Dennis Fritz had been a high school science teacher, a single parent, amateur musician, a thoughtful man. Nothing about him suggested that he would be plucked from a home in the middle of the country, singled out as a murderer who carried out his gruesome business in especially hideous fashion, and sent to prison for the rest of his life. Dennis Fritz looked like he could have been any one of hundreds of millions of ordinary American citizens. In fact, he was. He, too, was an innocent man. On another spring evening, 12 years later, the matter of Dennis Fritz crossed the desk of a senior executive at a major television network. The network’s prime time newsmagazine show had been collecting footage on Fritz for nearly a year, as it grew more likely that he would be set free. The executive was called by Fritz’s lawyer in early April 1999. "Dennis is getting out a week from Wednesday," said the attorney. "We’re going to pass," said the executive. "After all you’ve put into it?" asked the lawyer. "I’m really sorry, but my bosses think there are too many of these stories going around," said the newsman. "He’s just another one of these innocent guys getting out." Not long ago, to claim that an innocent person had been imprisoned was audacious, even risky, a proposition that was close to unprovable. In 1992, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld dropped legal papers with an editor at a New York City newspaper. They said they had proof that a Long Island, New York, truck driver had done 11 years hard time for rapes that he did not commit. New tests, not available at the time of his trial, showed that the rapist had one kind of DNA and the prisoner another. The papers landed with Jim Dwyer who did not know Barry or Peter, but knew that no sane lawyer would try to bluff such a story. Nine months later, that man walked free from a courtroom on Long Island. And word of this new DNA test moved from cell to cell block, from tier to prison yard, from the weekend visiting room to the chartered bus rides home, from cities to states, coast to coast. Innocent people in jails lunged at this story. They wrote to Barry and Peter and asked them to make it happen again. Other defense lawyers called to ask for help. So did mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. As the letters and requests piled up, Barry and Peter decided to give this paper pyramid a name. They called it the Innocence Project. And in two out of every three cases where the old evidence could be found, the Innocence Project clients were exonerated. A grave digger in West Virginia was freed from a life sentence. Then a rich man’s son in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was sprung from a 300-year term. A marine corporal in Orange County, California, doing 25 years. A boiler repairman in Virginia, locked up for 45 years at the age of 20. A Chicago drifter, sentenced to die. That truck driver on Long island, serving 20 years. The former science teacher Dennis Fritz, arrested in his mother’s home in Kansas City and sent away forever. As of August 1999, DNA testing has provided stone-cold proof that 67 people were sent to prison and death row for crimes they did not commit. The number grows every month, as the Innocence Project and other advocates file new cases. Stories of innocent people liberated from prison by DNA tests have flickered onto the evening news shows across the country, almost faster than the eye can follow, certainly before any reasonable person would have a chance to think about what they mean. The newly freed men hug their families at prison gates. They talk on TV about how they are looking forward to that first bite of pizza, or sip of beer, or long hot bath. They say they feel no anger or bitterness. They do wonder why it took so long for anyone to hear their cries of innocence. Officials vow to find the true perpetrators. They say that if they had to do it all over, they would change nothing. By the start of the next news cycle, the babble of trivia is spent — long before the question of what went wrong is answered, or even asked. A moment of rare enlightenment is at hand. For generations, American lawyers and crusaders have fought to overturn the convictions of people they believed innocent. Until recently, they had to rely on witnesses to recant or for the real perpetrators to confess. In what seems like a flash, DNA tests performed during the last decade of the century not only have freed 64 individuals but have exposed a system of law that has been far too complacent about its fairness and accuracy. What matters most is not how these people got out of jail but how they got into it. Now the fabric of false guilt is laid bare, and the same vivid threads bind a wealthy Oklahoma businessman and a Maryland fisherman: Sometimes eyewitnesses make mistakes. Snitches tell lies. Confessions are coerced or fabricated. Racism trumps the truth. Lab tests are rigged. Defense lawyers sleep. Prosecutors lie. DNA testing is to justice what the telescope is for the stars: not a lesson in biochemistry, not a display of the wonders of magnifying optical glass, but a way to see things as they really are. lt is a revelation machine. And the evidence says that most likely, thousands of innocent people are in prison, beyond the reach of the revelation machine, just as there are more stars beyond the sight of the most powerful telescope. Most crimes, after all, do not involve biological evidence — blood, semen, hair, skin, other tissue — which means there is no genetic material to test. Beyond the vista of the wrongly convicted looms another phenomenon, barely noticed but of vast importance. Today, DNA tests are used before trial. Of the first 18,000 results at the FBI and other crime laboratories, at least 5000 prime suspects were excluded before their cases were tried. Overall, more than 25 percent of the prime suspects could not be implicated because many, if not most, were innocent. For this unseen legion of innocent suspects, only the genetic tests halted their forced march from wrongly accused to wrongly convicted. How many other innocent people, charged with crimes that involve no biological evidence, were chained and led at gunpoint into prison? Thousands, these tests suggest, far more than the most jaded jurists or cynical scholars ever envisioned. The emphatic belief of witnesses, police, and prosecutors in the correctness of their accusations — even in the face of undeniable evidence of innocence — drills into issues at the marrow of humanity. A woman in California, to this day, maintains that her ex-husband raped and beat her into a coma, even though a serial killer confessed to the crime and was proven to have been her attacker. The powerful human drive to right a wrong, the instinct to improve a personal narrative that has taken a turn for the worse, cannot be denied. Neither can this fact: Eyewitness error remains the single most important cause of wrongful imprisonment. The face of a suspect is pressed into the soft putty of memory. Then it hardens into a shape. History is made. And the histories formed by mistaken identifications are buttressed by every level of society. "Juries seem disposed more readily to credit the veracity and reliability of the victims of an outrage than any amount of contrary evidence," Professor Edwin Borchard wrote in his 1932 classic, Convicting the Innocent. After a violent crime, both the damaged victim and society seek the equilibrium of prosecution, as relentlessly as ice will melt and boiled water will cool. To disturb this balance by suggesting the wrong person has been punished borders on heresy, in nearly half the 64 exonerations, local prosecutors refused to release crime evidence for DNA tests until litigation was threatened or filed. These officials argue that as much as a convict might hope to prove his innocence, he has no absolute right to do so after a trial. He is not an innocent person but a convicted criminal, one who had been given his day in court. Society, they say, has a greater interest in the finality of judgment. So an innocent person’s hope of getting access to the evidence for testing is a crap shoot, dependent on the state, the county, the judge, even the clerk. "The execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event," wrote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 1993, a sentiment shared by most, but not all, members of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, for one, cited precedents suggesting that "a claim of actual innocence is not itself a constitutional claim." He ducked the question of whether a "truly persuasive" showing of innocence, by itself, was enough to render a conviction unconstitutional. Some 6000 people have been sent to death row since 1976. As of this writing, 80 of them have been cleared through a variety of means, including DNA tests. "Some people think that an error rate of 1 percent is acceptable for the death penalty," notes Kevin Doyle, the capital defender for the state of New York. "But if you went to the FAA and asked them to approve an airplane, and you said, oh, by the way, on every one hundredth landing, it causes or almost causes fatalities, people would say you were nuts." The courts can minimize the risks of persecuting the innocent without undermining, and in fact, actually improving, the prosecution of the guilty. But that requires a rigorous inquiry into the mistakes revealed by DNA tests. "Our procedure," wrote Justice Learned Hand in 1923, "has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream." Today, those ghosts walk the land. But Hand’s unreal dream is costing little sleep. The innocent neither count nor are they counted. Every unit of government, from the smallest locality to the U.S. Justice Department, totes crimes, complaints, warrants, arrests, indictments, pleas, dispositions, trials, jury trials, judge trials, verdicts, sentences, paroles, appeals, opinions. An entire division of the federal government tracks the quantity of felonies. Many states have similar machinery. Statistics are kept by the gigabyte and the shelf-full. Yet not one number is assigned to represent the distinct matter of the innocent person. No one has the job of figuring out what went wrong, or who did wrong. No account is taken of the innocent person, wrongly convicted, ultimately exonerated. The moment has come to do so. A Short List of Reforms to Protect the Innocent DNA Testing Pass statutes on the state and federal level, modeled after legislation in New York and Illinois that allow post-conviction DNA testing if it could establish a reasonable probability that inmate was wrongfully convicted. Until these laws are passed, follow the 1999 Justice Department report Post-Conviction DNA Testing: Recommendations for Handling Requests. DNA testing should be done within seven to 14 days of a crime to make sure innocent suspects are not incarcerated and to improve the chances of catching the guilty. Do DNA tests on unsolved crimes, including more than 100,000 untested rape kits. Mistaken Eyewitness Identification Implement the recommendations from the 1999 National Institute of Justice report Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement. These measures all can be implemented by changes in police policies; legislation is not necessary: All lineups, photo spreads, and other identification processes should be videotaped. An independent, trained identification examiner should run the lineups and photo spreads. The examiner should not know the suspect — avoiding the possibility of hints or reactions that would steer the witness. Witnesses should always be instructed prior to viewing that the actual perpetrator might not be in the lineup or photo spread. Lineups and photo spreads should use the sequential presentation method rather than the simultaneous presentation method. With the sequential procedure, witnesses must decide on each person before seeing the next one. This prevents relative judgments and makes witnesses "dig deeper" to make the determination. Studies show such sequential presentations are more reliable. Show-ups should be used only in rare occasions, such as when the person was detained near the scene of the crime and the witness can be shown the suspect within sixty minutes (or less) of the offense. Beyond this, proper lineups or photo spreads (using fillers) should be conducted. The witness should be asked to rate his or her certainty at the time of the identification. Police and prosecutors should be trained about the risks of providing corroborating details that may disguise doubts a witness may hold. False Confessions One simple rule: Videotape, or at least audiotape, all interrogations so there is an objective record. Alaska has such legislation, and it has long been the rule in the United Kingdom. Jailhouse Snitches and Informants Following the lead of Canada’s Guy Paul Morin Commission recommendations, jurisdictions should set up a high-level screening committee of prosecutors to vet the jailhouse snitch/informant’s testimony and all the attendant circumstances before permitting it to be used at trial. There are fourteen factors that must be considered, including: Can the statement be confirmed by extrinsic evidence, i.e., not by another snitch? Does it contain details or leads to the discovery of evidence known only to the perpetrator? Does the statement contain details that could reasonably be accessed by the in-custody informer, other than through inculpatory statements by the accused — e.g., press accounts or legal pleadings? What is the snitch/informer’s general character — e.g., criminal record or other disreputable or dishonest conduct known to the authorities? Is the snitch/informer a recidivist snitch/informer? Trial judges should presume that a jailhouse informant’s testimony is unreliable and require the prosecutor to overcome that presumption before a jury can hear the evidence. All deals with snitch/informants must be in writing and all communications between the snitch and the police or prosecutor should be videotaped or at least audiotaped. Forensic Fraud Forensic scientists should formally agree, as standard of practice, that crime laboratories function as an independent third force within the criminal justice system, unbeholden to prosecutors or defense lawyers, operated by professionals who will not misrepresent or slant data for either side. Crime laboratory budgets should be independent from the police, and police officials should not be able to exercise supervisory responsibility over the scientists. Complete discovery of underlying data from forensic tests should be provided in criminal cases. Reports from forensic tests should be comprehensible explanations of the work performed, not conclusory assertions, and must describe all potentially exculpatory inferences that could be drawn from the results. There should be whistle-blower protection for forensic scientists in government who question the reliability of work, and experienced omsbudspersons who can be called in to mediate disputes between scientists. State and local governments should establish an independent inspector general-type lawyer who is authorized to investigate allegations of misconduct in crime laboratories the same way that Michael Bromwich investigated the FBI laboratory. First-rate postgraduate forensic science programs should be established in leading American universities; they are desperately needed, and there are plenty of jobs in the field for highly qualified personnel. Law schools and medical schools should become active sponsors of these programs. Junk Science, Sloppy Science The underlying scientific basis for many forensic tests must be objectively reevaluated under the standards enunciated in recent Supreme Court decisions designed to keep junk science out of court. Microscopic hair-comparison evidence should be abandoned. Instead, mitochondrial DNA testing of hairs should be conducted in any hair evaluation involving a matter of importance. Like medical labs, all the disciplines in crime labs should be subjected to regulatory oversight and should meet standards of professional organizations. States should create agencies modeled after New York’s Forensic Science Review Commission~ independent panel composed of scientists, prosecutors, defense counsel, crime lab directors, police, and judges — that have real authority to provide effective regulation of laboratories. All crime laboratories must be accredited. This is not a panacea but a good first step. Accreditation should involve rigorous quality-control and quality-assurance review, periodic inspections, and spot checking of technicians’ data. Laboratories must submit to a rigorous proficiency-testing program, including blind proficiency testings, in which samples would be sent in and analyzed as though they were part of an ordinary case. Labs should be rated on their ability to come up with valid results. In court, the scientists should provide, as a matter of course, information about "controls" and whether they failed; and what the error rate is for a procedure. Defense lawyers should have all material scientific evidence independently scrutinized, if not retested, by a competent expert. Public defenders and court-appointed lawyers must have funds to retain qualified independent experts. Every public defender’s office should have at least one lawyer who acts as a full-time forensic science specialist, helping other lawyers on their cases. Bad Prosecutors, Bad Cops Create specialized, blue ribbon disciplinary committees to deal exclusively with misconduct by criminal defense attorneys and prosecutors. Enhance federal involvement in prosecution of misconduct by state police officers. Bad Defense Lawyers Fees for court-appointed lawyers must be raised to a level that will attract competent lawyers to take cases. Public defender salaries should be the same as prosecutors in each jurisdiction to ensure adequate pay levels. Public defender caseloads should not exceed the generally accepted standards of the National Legal Aid and Defenders Association. Ethical complaints should be filed with the state bar when lawyers are forced to proceed with too many cases. To ensure high-quality defense services for the poor, there must be performance standards enforced in every jurisdiction — standards that apply both to defender organizations and to individual court-appointed counsel. The standards serve three purposes: educating a skeptical public about what it takes to provide capable lawyers, promoting an understanding of why greater funding is essential, and providing notice to the lawyers themselves of what is expected. Federal money to assist defense services should be roughly comparable to prosecutorial funding. Compensation and Victims Victim services experts should be assigned to assist victims whose mistaken identification testimony turns out to have convicted an innocent defendant. Each state should pass no-fault compensation statutes to provide decent relief to those who can prove they were wrongly convicted by clear and convincing evidence. New York’s no-fault statute, which permits recovery for past and future pain and suffering and lost wages, should be the model. The Death Penalty At the very least, follow the American Bar Association recommendations that call for a moratorium on the death penalty and other affirmative reforms, including adequate compensation and resources for death penalty counsel. Innocence Commissions Form state and federal institutions modeled after the Criminal Case Review Commission in the United Kingdom to investigate wrongful convictions. Require the official collection and reporting of data on cases where newly discovered evidence of innocence is the basis for overturning a conviction. Create and fund Innocence Projects at law schools that will represent clients in DNA and non-DNA cases. Fund teaching and research on wrongful convictions, causes, and remedies. An Innocence Network at Law Schools Building an Innocence Network and an Innocence Agenda At the time of this writing (February 2000) there have been seventy post-conviction DNA exonerations in North America, 64 in the United States and 6 in Canada. When the Department of Justice issued a monograph cataloguing post-conviction exonerations in June 1996 it reported 28 exonerations since the advent of forensic DNA testing in 1989. Thus, the rate of exonerations has accelerated (41 in the last three years versus 28 in first 7 years), and there is every reason to believe we have not yet reached the apogee of this phenomenon. Nothing comparable to these exonerations has ever happened in the history of American jurisprudence; indeed, nothing like it has happened to any judicial system anywhere. The significance of these DNA exonerations does not lie simply in the extraordinary number of documented miscarriages of justice, but in the unique certainty of the innocence determinations and the concomitant utility such certainty brings to revealing and studying the strengths and weaknesses of the criminal justice system. It’s not how they got out, but what got them in that matters. In our book Actual Innocence, written with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Dwyer, we make a first cut effort at studying these post-conviction DNA exonerations: Why are the innocent convicted? What are the implications for cases where there is no determinative biological evidence that can be subjected to DNA testing? What practical, simple, politically feasible reforms of the criminal justice system can be undertaken to minimize such miscarriages of justice? While telling the gut-wrenching stories of more than a dozen men who were wrongfully convicted, we try to address the big issues raised by these DNA cases: Mistaken eyewitness identification, false confessions, jailhouse informants, junk forensic science, fraudulent forensic science, ineffective/underfunded defense lawyers, prosecutorial and law enforcement misconduct, compensating the wrongfully convicted, race, the death penalty, and the ways DNA testing itself ought to be used both to exonerate the innocent and to apprehend the guilty. There is, without question, much more to be learned from these matters, and from the new exonerations that will undoubtably occur in the coming decade. They pose an exacting but critically important challenge for academics and policy makers, who must study the cases without worrying about whom they offend or embarrass, and collect data with care and alacrity, before sensitive evidence disappears. But there are two more daunting and rewarding challenges presented by this wave of exonerations: The creation of an "innocence network" across the country that will re-open wrongful convictions, with and without the aid of DNA testing; and the implementation of an affirmative "innocence agenda," reforms that fair-minded Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges can all agree are necessary if we are serious about justice in America. Building An Innocence Network Through the NACDL and a number of other organizations an effort is being made to organize an "innocence network" — a coalition of law schools, journalism schools, and graduate schools (psychology, criminology, etc.), public defenders, members of the private bar, and working journalists devoted to the reinvestigation, analysis, and litigation of cases where there have been miscarriages of justice. We believe these academic institutions, lawyers and journalists have a critical role to play in reforming the system, as well as a special responsibility. Probably the best illustration of how this model can succeed is the remarkable work being done in Illinois. On January 31, 2000 Governor Ryan of Illinois, a Republican and death penalty supporter, declared a moratorium on executions. He also called for a blue ribbon commission to investigate why, since the state reinstituted the death penalty in 1977, 13 inmates on death row had been exonerated with newly discovered evidence of innocence, as compared to 12 executions, and whether the cases against more than 160 other men on death row were sound. What accounts for this remarkable turn of events? There is no reason to believe that the criminal justice system in Illinois is to any appreciable degree worse than the systems in Texas, Florida, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama or any other state that has substantial numbers of inmates on death row. Indeed, one might argue, at least in terms of its public defender offices, Illinois may have a superior system. Rather, what explains the extraordinary number of exonerations in Illinois is the effort put forth by an extraordinary "innocence network": Journalism professors led by David Protess at Northwestern University and their students; law professors such as Larry Marshall and Tom Geraghty at Northwestern, Locke Bowman at Chicago, and Richard Kling at Chicago-Kent, and their students; journalists from the mainstream press such as Ken Armstrong, Steve Mills and Eric Zorn; public defenders such as Alan Sincox, Greg O’Reilly, Charles Hoffman and Steve Clark in Chicago; and a myriad of dedicat ed lawyers from the private bar participating pro bono — everyone working together to reinvestigate wrongful convictions and change the system that produced them. This coalition can be reproduced. At the winter meeting of the NACDL in New Orleans there was a full-day session devoted to building "innocence projects" and the "innocence network," initiated by Fred Leatherman of Seattle, Washington who created Innocence Project Northwest, at the Washington University Law School with Professor Jacqueline McMurtrie. IP Northwest, although it began with the idea of doing DNA cases, wound up leading a spectacularly successful effort in re-opening wrongful convictions in the Wenatchee child abuse cases. Other innocence project initiatives are already underway at Georgetown University, a co-operative effort at the University of North Carolina and Duke, the University of Wisconsin, Nova Law School in Florida, Boston University, Washington & Lee Law School in Virginia, the University of Utah, the University of California at Irvine, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at San Diego and serveral other schools. A complete list of schools and contacts at each of these schools is reproduced a t the end of this article. Among the projects the "innocence network" will tackle this fall will be a "distance learning" course that will be offered simultaneously through an Internet video connection by various schools, on the network and the creation of an innocence network Internet site. It is extremely important that the innocence network include journalism, communication, and social science graduate schools as well as law schools. This will not only be useful for stimulating efforts to reinvestigate wrongful convictions, but it will upgrade the experience for law students. Unfortunately, the study in law schools of what causes wrongful convictions has been limited. The primary orientation of the legal academy in the criminal law area has been toward teaching substantive doctrine and procedure. There is nothing wrong with this orientation per se; indeed, it is a necessary first step. But to gain a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the criminal justice system one needs to adopt an interdisciplinary approach. There is a rich literature and a high level of expertise among psychologists with respect to the phenomenon of eyewitness identification and confessions. It must be integrated into the legal academy, just as the input of legal academics can greatly benefit the social scientists. Similarly, forensic science now involves knowledge of the hard sciences (molecular biology, neurology, biophysics, pathology, neuropathology, chemistry, and computer sciences, to choose just a few) along with the procedures and approaches of traditional criminalistics. These disciplines are increasingly crucial parts of the process of criminal investigation and trial. Unfortunately, legal academics are no different than lawyers generally — if we had natural gifts in the hard sciences many of us would be doctors! But that is no excuse for failing to pursue serious, interdisciplinary study of the way the system itself really functions. The idea behind the innocence network is to stimulate this kind of research and teaching within the legal academy with the goal of not only training better lawyers but making constructive, institutional changes. Building the Innocence Agenda As a starting point for bringing about substantial legislative and administrative reforms of the criminal justice system to correct and minimize wrongful convictions, we have identified a few practical, simple, mainstream proposals: In 33 states there is a statute of limitations of 6 months or less on newly discovered evidence of innocence motions. Such procedural bars have prevented the Innocence Project at Cardozo and others from getting access to DNA evidence that could be used to prove the innocence of inmates, some of whom are on death row. Only two states — Illinois and New York — have post-conviction DNA statutes, which permit an inmate to obtain a DNA test which could help prove innocence, without any statute of limitations restrictions and without regard to ability to pay. Illinois and New York also have the most post-conviction DNA exonerations, 14 and 7 respectively. This is no coincidence. Moreover, there is an urgent need to adopt such legislation because our experience has been that in 75 percent of cases where DNA tests could be determinative, the evidence is either lost or destroyed. On February 11, 2000 Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the Innocence Protection Act which contains a Title called Exonerating the Innocent Through DNA Testing. This bill would require every state to pass a statute similar to Illinois and New York if the state wants to continue receiving federal funds for its DNA databanks. The statute also provides for a cause of action for an inmate to obtain a DNA test that would raise a "reasonable probability that [the inmate] was wrongfully convicted or sentenced" pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is our hope that members of the Innocence Network will try to get post-conviction DNA statutes passed in their states while, at the same time, working to pass the Leahy bill. In this interim period, one can always rely upon Recommendation for Post-Conviction DNA Testing, a 1999 report from the United States Department of Justice that urges prosecutors and courts to permit DNA testing on consent, notwithstanding statutes of limitations and ability to pay if the testing could raise a reasonable probability that the inmate would not have been convicted. The Innocence Project The Innocence Project serves as a "Court of Last Resort" for the hundreds of inmates who contact the Project each year. Created by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the Innocence Project assists prisoners claiming actual innocence where DNA testing of critical biological evidence, if exculpatory, could lead to exoneration. In the last decade, 64 people in the United States have been cleared through post-conviction DNA testing. Operating as a legal clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, the Innocence Project is comprised of 18 law students who are supervised by Professors Scheck and Neufeld, an Executive Director and an Assistant Director. Innocence Project clients can be found in nearly every state. The Innocence Project takes on only those cases in which the assailant’s identify was an issue at trial, relevant biological evidence was collected and preserved during the investigation, and future DNA testing could conclusively refute a finding of guilt. Once a case is accepted, following a lengthy review of appellate briefs, laboratory reports and testimony regarding biological evidence, it is assigned to a law student. Students’ duties include tracking down biological evidence, researching state statutes and case law, drafting motions and other legal documents. Students are supervised on a daily basis by Professors Scheck and Neufeld. In those cases in which DNA testing exonerates the inmate, students and faculty embark on a searching inquiry of what went wrong in the law enforcement investigatory stage and the prosecution of the case, to allow an innocent person to be convicted. For more information on the Innocence Project, contact: Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School 55 5th Avenue New York, NY 10003 Ph: (212) 790-0354 Innocence Project Contact List CALIFORNIA Univ. of CA at Irvine Sch. of Social Ecology Criminology, Law and Society Irvine CA, 92697-7080 Profs. Bill Thompson, Richard Leo (949) 824-6156 Univ. of California Hastings College of Law 200 McAllister St. San Francisco, CA 94102 Prof. Rory K. Little Stanford Law Sch. Nathan Abbot Way at Alvarado Row Stanford, CA 94305 Prof. Robert Weisberg Univ. of California at Davis Sch. of Law, King Hall Davis, CA 95616-5201 Prof. Edward Imwinkelried Univ. of California at Berkeley Sch. of Law, Boalt Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-7200 Prof. Charles Weisselberg Loyola Law Sch. South Albany St. P.O. Box 15019 Los Angeles, CA 90015-0019 Prof. Laurie L. Levenson Southwestern Univ. Sch. of Law 675 S. Westmoreland Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90005 Prof. Myrna S. Raeder California Western Sch. of Law 225 Cedar St. San Diego, CA 92101-3046 Prof. Justin Brooks (619) 525-1485 jpb@cwsi.edu DELAWARE Ofc. of the PD, State of Delaware Carvel State Bldg. 820 French St., 3rd Fl. Wilmington, DE 19801 Lisa Schwind (302) 577-5125 lschwind@state.de.us FLORIDA Nova Southeastern Univ. Shepard Broad Law Ctr. Profs. Catherine Arcabascio, Carol Henderson 3305 College Ave. Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33314 (954) 262-6174 arcabascioc@nsu.law.nova.edu Cooperating Attorney: NACDL Bd. Member: Milton Hirsch 9130 S. Dadeland Blvd Ste. 1504 Miami, FL 33156 (305) 670-0077 ILLINOIS Ctr. For Wrongful Convictions & the Death Penalty Northwestern Univ. Sch. of Law 357 East Chicago Ave. Chicago, IL 60611 Prof. Lawrence Marshall Profs. of Journalism, David Protess, Rob Warden, Shawn Armbrust (312) 503-7412 Cook Co. PDs Ofc. 2650 S. California St. Chicago, IL 60608 Greg O'Reilly, Allan R. Sincox Univ. of Chicago Sch. of Law MacArthur Justice Ctr. 1111 E. 60th St. Chicago, IL 60637 Prof. Locke Bowman INDIANA Indiana Univ. Sch. of Law 735 W. New York St. Indianapolis, IN 46202 Prof. Fran Hardy (317) 274-5551 Co-operating Attorney: NACDL Member Jodie English 117 S. 7th St. Richmond, IN 47374 LOUISIANA Tulane Univ. Sch. of Law 6329 Freret St. New Orleans, LA 70118-5670 Prof. Jancy Hoeffel MASSACHUSETTS Boston Univ. Law Sch. 765 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 02215 Prof. Stan Fisher (617) 353-3124 szf@bu.edu Co-operating LLP Firm: Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault 125 High St. High St. Twr. Boston, MA 02110 Jennifer Fago (617)248-7000 fago@tht.com Northeastern Univ. Sch. of Law 400 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 02446 Dan Givelber (617) 373-4298 dgivelber@nunet.neu.edu Suffolk Univ. Law Sch. 41 Temple St. Boston, Mass 02114 Prof. Michael Avery Co-operating Firm: Silverglate & Good 83 Atlanta Ave. Boston, Mass 02110-3711 (617) 523-5933 NEW MEXICO Univ. of New Mexico Sch. of Law 1117 Stanford NE Alberquerque, NM 87131 Profs. April Land, Barbara Bergman, Rob Schwartz (505) 277-5265 NEW YORK The Innocence Project Benjamin N. Cardozo Sch. of Law 55 Fifth Ave., 11th Fl. New York, NY 10003 Prof. Barry C. Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Esq. (212) 790-0354 NORTH CAROLINA UNC-Duke Joint Program UNC Sch. of Law CB# 3380 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3380 Prof. Richard Rosen (919) 962-8505 rich_rosen@unc.edu Duke Univ. Sch. of Law PO Box 90362 Durham, NC 27708-0360 Profs. Jim Coleman, Teresa Newman (919) 613-7057 jcoleman@law.duke.edu newman@law.duke.edu OHIO Co-ordinator Case Western/Cleveland State Bill Summers 23240 Chagrin Blvd. Suite 525 Cleveland, OH 44122 (216) 591-0727 wlslawyer@aol.com Case Western Reserve Univ. Law Sch. 11075 East Boulevard Cleveland, OH 44106 Prof. Paul Cane (216) 368-2769 Cleveland State Univ. Cleveland-Marshall College of Law 1801 Euclid Ave. Cleveland, OH 44115 Prof. Adam Thurschwell (216) 687-3944 adam.thurschwell@law.csuohio.edu OKLAHOMA Oklahoma Indigent Defense System Capital Trial Division PO Box 926 Norman, OK 73070 Mr. Mark Barrett (405) 325-0832 (405) 364-8367 mark@defense.ou.edu TEXAS Univ. of Texas Law Sch. 727 East 26th St. Austin, TX 78705 Prof. Bill Allison (512) 472-0144 ballison@mail.law.utexas.edu Co-operating Attorney: NACDL Bd. Member Cynthia Orr 310 S. St. Mary's St. Ste. 2900 San Antonio, TX 78205 UTAH, MONTANA, NORTH DAKOTA Univ. of Utah College of Law Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 Prof. Lionel Frankel (801) 277-0690 VIRGINIA Washington & Lee Univ. Sch. of Law 469 Lewis Hall Lexington, VA 24450 Prof. Darryl Brown browndk@wlu.edu WASHINGTON Innocence Project Northwest Univ. of Washington Law Sch. 1100 NE Campus Pkwy. Seattle, WA 98105 Prof. Jackie McMurtrie (206) 543-5780 jackiem@u.washington.edu Contact: Frederick D. Leatherman 1325 Fourth Ave., Ste. 1200 Seattle, WA 98101 (206) 382-1100 WISCONSIN Univ. of Wisconsin Law Sch. Remington Ctr. 975 Bascom Mall Madison, WI 53706 Profs. Keith Findley, , John Pray, Wendy Paul (608) 263-7461 japray@facstaff.wisc.edu kafindley@facstaff.wisc.edu
	National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) 1660 L St., NW, 12th Floor, Washington, DC 20036 (202) 872-8600 • Fax (202) 872-8690 • assist@nacdl.org