SUB-HEADING: Every time the wrong person is arrested and convicted, the true perpetrator of the crime, often a violent crime, remains at large.
GIST: “Last week the National Registry of Exonerations, a consortium of law schools that records and analyzes wrongful convictions, issued its annual report for 2021.
It recorded 161 exonerations in 2021, where exonerees lost an average of 11.5 years in prison for crimes they did not commit – 1,849 years total for 161 exonerations.
The Registry emphasized, as a “major theme” for the year, the importance of “professional exonerators” – innocence organizations and Conviction Integrity Units (sometimes called Conviction Review Units).
Working collaboratively, innocence organizations and CIUs were responsible for 97 exonerations, or 60% of the total.
Following best practice in this area, the CIUs were increasingly led by or included lawyers with significant prior experience as criminal defense lawyers.
Joyce Watkins case shows why conviction review is needed
Nashville District Attorney General Glenn Funk established Tennessee’s only Conviction Review Unit and appointed Sunny Eaton, a well-regarded criminal defense lawyer to run it.
In the last two years the Nashville Conviction Review Unit has identified, investigated, and successfully exonerated five people wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit.
Like Joyce Watkins, a 74-year-old woman, with no prior record, who spent 27 years in prison for a crime she did not commit. Her story was profiled this week on CBS Sunday Morning.
Ms. Watkins had a life, a home, a career and plans for her future. This was all stolen from her. Ms. Watkins always maintained her innocence and never stopped fighting for the truth. She went to the Tennessee Innocence Project for help and the TIP attorneys brought her case to the Conviction Review Unit.
After lengthy, collaborative re-investigation, the case was found to be fraught with problems: bad science, withheld evidence, bias at every level and inappropriate prosecutor conduct.
Wrongly convicted people like Paul Shane Garrett feel the impact forever.
Beyond the years stolen from innocent people languishing in prison cells, wrongful convictions do indescribable damage at every level of the criminal justice system, from the law enforcement agencies that investigated, arrested and testified against an innocent person, to the prosecutors who charged, tried, and obtained a conviction against the wrong person, the juries who convicted the wrong person, and the judges who wrongfully imposed lengthy, sometimes even life sentences on innocent people.
Most importantly, the people harmed by the crime and their families who never received justice, are forever impacted by a wrongful conviction.
Every time the wrong person is arrested and convicted, the true perpetrator of the crime, often a violent crime, remains at large.
That’s why the joint work of innocence organizations and CIUs help protect the safety of the public.
Take, for example, the Nashville case of Paul Shane Garrett, exonerated in August of 2021. Not only did DNA evidence exclude Mr. Garrett but it identified an alternative suspect who has been indicted for the crime Mr. Garret was wrongly convicted of having committed.
There are thousands of people's convictions in need of review
More CIUs are needed in Tennessee and across the country that include respected defense lawyers like Sunny Eaton who can work on true non-adversarial joint re-investigations with groups like the Tennessee Innocence Project.
This model facilitates efforts after the exoneration to do a root cause analysis, and what’s known as a “sentinel event” review to prevent miscarriages of justice from happening again. These are not efforts to identify “rotten apples,” but to improve systems.
In March, the Registry posted the 3,000th exoneration since 1989, representing an incredible 25,000 years lost by innocent men and women and their families.
That milestone should serve as an urgent reminder that there are literally thousands of other innocents imprisoned and that we should do everything possible using bi-partisan, scientific, non-adversarial approaches to find these cases before evidence disappears and the wrongly convicted die in prison.
Joyce Watkins was exonerated at 74 by the Nashville Conviction Review Unit but her innocent co-defendant Charlie Dunn died in prison from cancer. We are in a race against time to do justice. Let’s use new approaches that we can see are working."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
