You could be next!

 It’s not a day that is posted on most calendars, but it’s a day that should be of interest to you! Today, October second, is International Wrongful Conviction Day. The Innocence Network decided to do something about so many innocent people sitting in prison many years ago. It’s a network of organizations and agencies that provide free services to people who claim they were wrongfully convicted. Their goal is a lofty one: to highlight systematic flaws in the criminal legal system and to advocate for reforms. 

I have a particular interest in this topic because my very special friend Maurice Carter had been wrongly convicted, and my 10-year battle with him for his freedom resulted in a dramatic change in my life, as well as the formation of what is now HFP.  But, as I mentioned in today’s headline, the topic should be meaningful to you, as well. Let me explain. 

We often think that those who have been wrongly convicted are poor people, often Black, who probably had no dollars for good legal assistance. Granted, there are plenty of those. On the other hand, let me list the occupations and professions of others whose cases came to mind in the past 25 years:

-Doctor

-Lawyer

-Police Officer

-Insurance executive

-Banker

-Teacher

-Corp. CEO! 

According to the National Registry of Exonerations and the Innocence Project, experts estimate between 4% and 6% of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons are innocent. Our state prison population in Michigan is approximately 33,000. If we choose the lowest percentage figure, that still means that there are more than 13-hundred innocent people in our state prison system! 

And just as an aside: 46% to 53% of Michigan’s prison population are Black, even though state population for Black men and women is only about 14%. 

Now that we know that neither you nor I can expect never to be wrongly convicted, let’s take the look at the major causes for these travesties:

-mistaken eyewitness identification;

-police and prosecutorial misconduct;

-false confessions and coerced pleas; and

-use of “junk science.” 

Thanks to the efforts of organizations like Innocence Projects, more than 3,700 people have been officially exonerated in the United States since 1989. They spent over 27,000 years behind bars! To the credit of some fine organizations in our state, Michigan ranks fifth in the nation for total wrongful conviction exonerations! 

Some conclusions: Watch your back! Support those fighting for the wrongly convicted! Pray for those innocent persons living on the wrong side of bars. 

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere! ---Martin Luther King

 

   

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