Innocence Blog

Friday Roundup: Opinions on Innocence

Posted: December 5, 2008 6:20 pm

To start this week’s roundup, here are some views from around the country from editorials and op-eds published this week.

Law professor Dan Simon questions a recent report by that Larimer County, Colorado, District Attorney that found that no past convictions in his jurisdictions warranted post-conviction DNA testing.

A former Baltimore Police officer and a former Texas District Attorney both wrote op-eds this week calling for the state to repeal the death penalty due to the risk of executing an innocent person.

And in Montana, The Daily Inter Lake ran an editorial on the Montana Innocence Project and its quest to free innocent inmates in the state and preventing wrongful convictions.

There was also plenty of news this week on exonerees and prisoners seeking to overturn wrongful convictions.

New York inmate Lebrew Jones is waiting for DNA test results that could prove his innocence after 21 years behind bars for a murder he has always said he didn’t commit. The Innocence Project has consulted with Jones’ attorneys on the case.

A new book will be released later this month on the wrongful conviction of Marty Tankleff, who was released from prison in 2007 after serving 17 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

A California woman’s burglary conviction was overturned last week more than a decade after her wrongful conviction, thanks to the work of the Northern California Innocence Project.

And the Innocence Project client Curtis McCarty, who was exonerated last year after serving 21 years on death row in Oklahoma prison for a crime he didn’t commit, was in Rome this week for a conference on the death penalty.