ExonerationInitiativ

Nothing. How unfair is that.

Provided that there is a state or city actor to blame for a person's wrongful conviction - typically, police or prosecutors - they can sue in state or federal court for civil rights violations. Also some states, like New York, allow wrongfully people to be compensated no matter what caused their wrongful conviction, provided they meet certain requirements. In New York there is no set amount and no cap on how much financial compensation a wrongfully convicted person can receive. So hopefully, John will be fairly compensated for everything he's been through! (If that's even possible...)

We thoroughly investigate our cases, sometimes for years if necessary, before we bring them to court. Generally, we are looking for evidence of innocence from multiple independent sources - i.e. unconnected to one another - which overwhelms the evidence used to convict the client. In these situations, the only logical explanation based on all the evidence is that the client is innocent. Every case is different, but every time we argue that a client is innocent, it's based on the evidence and nothing else.

The criminal justice system is still racist and classist. One recent study found that innocent black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted than innocent white people and African-American prisoners who are convicted of murder are about 50% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf. As the study notes, these numbers are extrapolated from exonerations (i.e. wrongful convictions we know about) and of course we can't possibly know about all of them, especially in cases where the innocent person is never exonerated. Still, the numbers are staggering. One positive thing is that over the past 20 years dozens of innocence organizations have emerged which provide free legal assistance to the wrongfully convicted regardless of race. And hopefully changes in law, practice, and social norms which cause judges and juries to doubt certain kinds of unreliable or possibly biased evidence (like being skeptical of law enforcement, and questioning the accuracy/good faith of identifications) will translate into less black men being railroaded like John was. Also the widespread press coverage and public dialogue of these issues helps to educate future juries who may have innocent people's lives in their hands. Shining a light on a problem is always the first step in finding solutions.

We generally reject about 80% of cases at every stage of our evaluation as failing to meet our criteria. It is very rare that we discover new, damning evidence of guilt during our investigations but it has happened, and obviously we are unable to go forward with those cases. More often, when we choose not to go forward on a case after an investigation its because we've exhausted all of our leads and we can't find enough evidence of innocence to the point where we think we can prevail in court. And since our cases are difficult to litigate and labor intensive - sometimes it has taken us as much as a decade of litigation to undo a wrongful conviction - we have to be very selective in the cases we choose. To give you an idea, we've reviewed and investigated over 4000 cases and only ever accepted approximately 20 people as our clients. But when we do take on a client, their our client for life. We won't give up on the fight, not ever.