The Wrongful Convictions Revolution™ is making great strides toward a legal system that is transparent and accountable to those who have already been wrongfully convicted and to keep it from happening to innocent people in the future. To that end, it is our goal to stay current with the progress being made by those willing to wage war against the status quo of wrongful convictions. For instance, there have been significant advancements made over the last few years in...
...best practices, policies, and laws relating to wrongful convictions. Among those are the devaluing of jailhouse snitches' testimony, the official acknowledgment of the irreversible harm done by solitary confinement, proper methods to conduct eyewitness identifications that will secure a reliable outcome, the exposure of invalid forensics, and scrutiny of the scientific community ad rem to wrongful convictions, etc.
Furthermore, because the standards in our community are constantly evolving, we recognize the importance for us to maintain real-time information. For instance, the addition of 3 (three) new categories that lead to wrongful convictions: crimes that never occurred, coerced corroboration (incentivized or threatened witnesses), and jury misconduct. Also, the creation of conviction integrity units (CIU), whose mission it is to prevent, identify, and remedy false convictions. Although the value of these units remains to be seen; mostly because they are an entity of the prosecutorial office and we are painfully aware that the risk of a 'fox guarding the henhouse' scenario being played out is an ever-present possibility. Even so, we view these divisions as a step in the right direction because customarily, you can't change that which you don't admit.
Equally important is the necessity to shine a light on 2 (two) utter perversions of our legal system--plea bargains and the current state of our bail system, which quite literally obliterates the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' and is grossly disproportionately biased against people of color and/or the economically challenged.
What's more, the current prosecutorial misconduct epidemic and the long-awaited accountability for such; both of which are finally being acknowledged by our justice system, and as such, they will soon have nowhere left to hide. This gross endemic is finally being exposed for what it is, thus calling for an end to qualified immunity through the new initiative "Signed, Justice Wants™," the most comprehensive justice reform legislative package to date.
Progress has also been made in empirical data and statistics that now prove wrongful convictions are a fundamental flaw of our justice system and not just an anomaly to be reported on by a major network to stir emotion in the masses.
Regrettably, also taking center stage recently is the current unrest between the law enforcement community and civilians, and the effect that wavering relationship is having on wrongful convictions--positively and negatively. Again, currently being addressed by Signed, Justice Wants™ and the call to end qualified immunity.
On an up note, celebrities from every genre have begun to join forces with advocates of the wrongly convicted, thereby using their prestige to spread awareness about wrongful convictions and bring about change.
And, last but most certainly not least, although no amount of money can buy back a life, one of the primary accomplishments made by some states in the past year or two has been the increase of exoneration compensation from little to none, to amounts that are much more equivalent to the damage done, if that is at all possible.
These are just a few of the developments in the past few years. As you can see, those putting in countless hours devoting their heart and soul, sweat and tears, to wrongful convictions ARE making a difference. Join us, won't you?