By: John Hardin
Jason and I, along with our board of directors, are excited to announce the formation of Proclaim Justice, and the beginning of this blog.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations there have been 1030 exonerations since 1989. There are many factors that contribute to wrongful convictions. Sometimes they are the result of good investigators and prosecutors simply getting it wrong. Some are the result of counterintuitive errors like eyewitness misidentification and false confessions. In some instances, they occur due to outright corrupt or incompetent police and prosecutors. The list goes on and on.
Innocence advocates often hear from people who do not study the issue, or have not been personally affected by a wrongful conviction, that if a person is found guilty by a jury of his peers, then he must be guilty. Unfortunately, our criminal justice system fails this high ideal with startling frequency. Thanks to the hard work of other innocence organizations, people have come to realize that more and more over the last 10-15 years. Despite the important progress that has been made, there is still work to be done. Laws can be changed and policies can be implemented that will make wrongful convictions more rare. Important constituencies can be educated and mobilized. When appropriate, we can hold authorities accountable when they do the wrong thing. And, most important, the number of people advocating for that man, woman, or child who has been the victim of this type of injustice can grow exponentially.
This blog will strive to educate readers on the issues of wrongful convictions, humanize victims and their family members, and mobilize others to help free innocent people from prison. We will do this through original research, commentary on current cases and issues in the news, guest blog posts, and other methods.
We look forward to getting to joining you in proclaiming justice for those innocent prisoners who need advocates on their side.