Innocence After Guilt: Learned Lessons from Previous Post-Conviction DNA Cases

Описание: According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been 3,337 exonerations since 1989 accounting for more than 29,500 years lost. In our quest for justice, how do we work to eliminate wrongful convictions? What has history taught us? What role has forensic DNA played since its emergence? In this video series we delve into the role of DNA testing in the United States in post-conviction work to exonerate the innocent and reassert convictions of the guilty.

In this episode, our experts explore what we’ve learned as a field through post-conviction work and how we can continue to improve. John Collins and Mike Ware touch on the degree of campaigning and the number of elements that need to fall into place for a conviction to be overturned.

John also discusses the importance of maintaining integrity for all involved in post-conviction work, both on the part of innocence advocates and the investigative team. Further, he explores research that has been done suggesting that jurisdictions that are more punitive in nature experience a higher error rate due to the motivation to get a conviction and encourages all to focus on the integrity of the investigation and trial to ensure it’s fair and the evidence is presented in an honest, responsible, and professional manner.

Tiffany Roy and Peter Valentin discuss the human component to investigations and provide examples as to how errors could inadvertently occur. Tiffany also mentions a forthcoming report from the NIST Expert Working Group on Human Factors in Forensic DNA Interpretation, linked below.

We conclude our series by exploring the case of Tim Cole, who was an Army veteran majoring in political science at Texas Tech and was “doing everything right.” Tragically, Tim died in a Texas prison from an asthma attack while serving a 25-year sentence for a crime that he didn’t commit.