People often ask how can you defend people if you know they are guilty? In Atlanta, there is a lot of crime out there. We all see it on the TV, News, and our peers. For the most part, the system is crowded with Misdemeanor crimes, and other crimes that will be ple bargain away. However, there are many people who have been charged, convicted and will spend time in Prison for their crimes. But did you know since 2002, four people that were convicted in Georgia for hanis crimes, were later found innocent? So the answer is: If you were sitting in prison for a crime you didn’t commit, would YOU want a Defense Lawyer?
There were 149 known exonerations in 2015, where the exonerated defendants served on average more than 14 years in prison, said the report from the National Registry of Exonerations. That topped the previous recorded high of 139 in 2014…read the rest of the story
The issue has gained attention because of the hit Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer,” which suggests authorities planted evidence against two Wisconsin men convicted of murder, an allegation rejected by local law enforcement.
Among those exonerated, 58 had been convicted of homicide, including five people who had been sentenced to death, it said. About three-quarters of the homicide exonerations included official misconduct, it said.
Another large group involved drug possession. Many times people held in custody falsely confessed to a crime to avoid a trial where they faced much longer sentences, the report said.
Texas was the top state for exonerations, propelled by conviction integrity units set up in its most populous counties. The state known for its tough approach on crime has also been a national leader in prosecutorial reform.
Over the past few years, the county that includes Houston has been reviewing cases where there were convictions for felony drug possession but where lab testing, often coming after a guilty plea, showed there were no drugs.
Texas had 54 known exonerations in 2015, followed by 17 in New York and 13 in Illinois, the report said.
There are 24 district attorney offices nationwide with offices to review convictions, with Brooklyn also among the exoneration leaders in the past several years, the study said.
In Atlanta, we have the Georgia Innocence Project. The Georgia Innocence Project is a non-profit corporation based in Decatur, Georgia, United States. Its mission “is to free the wrongly prosecuted through DNA testing, to advance practices that minimize the chances that others suffer the same fate, to educate the public that wrongful convictions are not rare or isolated events, and to help the exonerated rebuild their lives
