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A man is once again free after serving 20 years on Delaware’s Death Row. Jermaine Wright’s sentence was  overturned after his attorneys proved that, even with a videotaped confession, the evidence against him was not sufficient enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Wright was  indeed guilty. According to an article in the Delaware Times, Wright’s  Superior

In a case that was recently argued before the Supreme Court, questions have arisen regarding the reliability of eyewitness testimony. In Perry v. New Hampshire,  the State Supreme Court ruled that a trial judge “cannot exclude witness identification based on suggestive circumstances, unless there was improper police manipulation of the identification” (e.g. witness tampering and

After the release of a man that was wrongfully convicted of a murder, Florida’s Innocence Commission is rethinking the use of jailhouse informants in their felony cases.  The man, Chad Heins, spent 11 years in prison for a murder he was innocent of — his conviction was almost solely based on the testimony of two so-called “snitches”

According to a new study recently published by the RAND Corporation,  just providing an indigent defendant a lawyer is not enough to “obtain justice”. The issues that directly affect the outcome include: whether the lawyer assigned is screened for quality, whether they are trained to handle the client’s type of case, and whether they are paid

After spending 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Michael Morton was exonerated last month in Texas through the use of DNA evidence. In their attempt to prove Mr. Morton’s innocence, attorneys found evidence in court records that the prosecutor from his original trial had withheld critical evidence that may have helped Mr.

Bob Bartels, faculty advisor for the Arizona Justice Project, takes the important issue of post-conviction review to the United States Supreme Court. – Question Presented: Whether a defendant in a state criminal case – who cannot raise an ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim (IATC) on direct appeal but must wait to raise it on

Below, you’ll find an interactive resource courtesy of the Innocence Project in New York about the causes of wrongful convictions: The Innocence Project has also released a chart on the DNA exonerations that have occurred throughout the nation in which convictions were obtained involving unvalidated or improper forensic testing. Read more about 166 of the first 225 DNA

Relying on Scientific Research on Memory and Identification, Court Says Standard Set by U.S. Supreme Court 30 Years Ago Must Be Revised Contact:  Paul Cates, 212-364-5346, cell 917-566-1294, pcates@innocenceproject.org (Trenton, NJ – August 24, 2011) — Today the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a landmark decision requiring major changes in the way courts are required

A story about Californian Herman Atkins and his exoneration after serving a decade of his 47 year sentence. He was convicted in 1988 even though two witnesses gave inconsistent identifications at trial. Herman’s case is one that is featured in the documentary After Innocence (2005). Read more about the case here.