Page 14 - ACTL Journal Win24

Inspired by the discussion at the CLE and Melissa’s example, and with the guidance of Melissa and other Fellows, the Access to Justice Committee is now looking into whether and how the College might be able to support meaningfully the creation and successful operation of Conviction Integrity Units in other jurisdictions.
Justin Brooks explained that the work needed to free an innocent man or woman is not easy and can take years or decades to reach fruition, if it ever does. Because of very limited manpower and financial resources, there is only a one in a thousand chance each year that a prisoner’s letter to the California Innocence Project, asserting innocence, will actually make it through that office’s comprehensive screening process to a successful result in court. Moderator Silver stressed the significant injustices done to many individuals over time. As of 2021, the National Registry of Exonerations indicated that there were 2,795 exonerees listed in its Registry. On average, those exonerees had served nearly nine years in prison, collectively totaling a staggering 25,000-plus years of wrongful imprisonment.
While innocence organizations have had remarkable success in achieving exonerations and reforms designed to prevent wrongful conviction, one of the profound messages of the panel discussion was how much more pow- erful the innocence movement is on the whole when it has a broad base of support, including from prosecutors and public officials. Melissa Nelson drove this point home, describing how Florida never had a single CIU in any prosecutor’s office statewide before she was elected as State Attorney for Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit in January 2017.
When Melissa first began her career as a prosecutor, she doubted that her office could ever convict an innocent person. But she soon saw first-hand that such a result not only could, but actually had occurred. Mindful of that experience, she created Florida’s first CIU. Her leadership then led to the creation of CIUs in three other Florida Judicial Circuits. Melissa stressed that properly functioning CIUs serve a valuable role in our criminal justice system because they provide a prosecutor’s office with an internal oppor- tunity, when presented with new information or evidence, to take a fresh look at a conviction to make sure an innocent person was not wrongfully sent to prison.
Charlie Weiss provided another example of groundbreaking leadership by a Fellow of the College. For years, Charlie has been very much involved in innocence-related work. He truly serves as a role model for oth- ers seeking to get involved in this highly re- warding work. Charlie most recently played a significant role, along with the Midwest Innocence Project and others, in the enact- ment of a landmark Missouri statute in 2021, which directly led to a court vacating Lamar Johnson’s murder conviction on February 14, 2023 nearly nine years after he had served 28 years behind bars. Lamar had been convicted of a 1994 murder after an eyewitness picked him out of a police line-up. The two actual murderers eventually confessed to the crime and the eyewitness recanted his testimony against Lamar. But remarkably, even though the City of St. Louis prosecutor’s office sought a new trial based on this newly discovered ev- idence of innocence, the Missouri Supreme Court held that the prosecutor had no legally recognized right to proceed with its motion.
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