"This law is a major step forward for justice in Colorado," said Rebecca Brown, a policy analyst with the Innocence Project, which lobbied for the bill. "This evidence can provide clear answers to lingering questions about innocence or guilt."

Read the full story here. (Fort Collins Colorado, 05/15/08)

Dr. L. Thomas Johnson is collecting dental impressions from around the country to build a massive database. The software would then attempt to calculate how rarely a particular dental characteristic shows up in the population.

[Dr. Johnson] acknowledged that his software will probably never turn bite-mark analysis into a surefire identifier like DNA and that he would need tens of thousands of samples before his work would stand up in court.

Nevertheless, Dr. Johnson maintains the database will lend scientific credibility to bite-mark testimony in criminal trials based on the belief that every person's tooth impression is unique. But human skin can change and distort bite impressions and other experts, including Dr. Mike Bowers, a deputy medical examiner in Ventura County, Calif., and a member of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, consider it sham science.

"... It's not science," said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, which works to free wrongfully convicted inmates.

Since 2000, at least seven people in five states who were convicted largely on bite-mark identification have been exonerated, according to the Innocence Project.

In Arizona, Ray Krone was found guilty in 1992 of killing a Phoenix bartender based largely on expert testimony that his teeth matched bites on the victim. He was sentenced to death, won a new trial on procedural grounds, was convicted again and got life. But DNA testing in 2002 proved he wasn't the killer. Krone was freed and won a spot on the ABC reality show "Extreme Makeover" to remake his teeth.

In Mississippi, forensic odontologist Dr. Michael West has come under fire after he testified in two child rape-murders in the 1990s that bite marks positively identified each killer. Kennedy Brewer was sentenced to death in one case, and Levon Brooks got life in prison in the other.

DNA tests later connected a third man to one of the rapes, and investigators say he confessed to both murders. In Brewer's case, a panel of experts concluded that the bites on the victim probably came from insects. Brewer and Brooks were exonerated earlier this year.

Read the full article. (Associated Press, 5/14/08)

While bite mark analysis may be the most notorious of the dubious techniques that are cloaked in science when introduced in court, there are several scientific disciplines that are not validated and have contributed to wrongful convictions. Read more about unreliable and limited scientific techniques.

The main evidence against Jerry Frank Townsend: his own confessions. But those confessions were fundamentally flawed. Townsend has an IQ of 58, making him vulnerable to police coercion. Following his 1979 arrest, he was questioned for five days by Miami police and the Broward Sheriff's Office, without an attorney present.

Prodding by both police departments led Townsend to claim responsibility for a host of crimes in Miami-Dade County, Broward County -- even California. Townsend's confessions were rife with inconsistencies, but he was sent to prison anyway.

Read the full Miami Herald article here.

Townsend's lawsuit against the Broward County Sheriff's Office still stands. Meanwhile the Florida Governor is expected to sign a new bill into law that would provide $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration to Florida exonerees. However, the law would render several of those waiting to be compensated ineligible for the funds.

Learn more about Jerry Frank Townsend's case here.

Learn more about Florida's "Wrongful Incarceration Act" here.

Several of those who have not yet been compensated would be restricted from receiving funds through the Wrongful Incarceration Act because of a "clean hands" provision which disallows compensation for anyone with an unrelated prior felony conviction. None of the other 23 states that provide compensation to the wrongfully convicted restrict funds in this way.

An article in the Tallahassee Democrat outlines the controversy around the bill:

Advocates for the wrongfully incarcerated say they will wait to see how the process works, but they have doubts whether all the proven innocent will be compensated.
"You're innocent when we release you but you're not innocent enough to be compensated?" said Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida. "These two ideas just don't jibe together."

Read the full story here.

The review has identified more than 2,100 files that contain forensic evidence with named suspects. The state has sent hundreds of samples to a private Fairfax County lab, Bode Technology Group, for testing.

Virginia's lab director Peter. M. Marone said the testing will continue with state funds if the grant doesn't come through.

"We're just trying to make sure we'll expend federal grant money rather than state money," he said.

Read the full story. (Washington Post, 8/12/08)

The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project is monitoring the case review and has raised questions about why the state is not notifying defendants when testing is being conducted in their cases. Read more on the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project blog (http://www.exonerate.org/category/blog)

Read more about the cases of Anderson, Ruffin, Whitfield, Thurman and Davidson.

Watch a video interview with Marvin Anderson.

Under current law, there's no mechanism for such testing; in most cases, judges can't order DNA testing - or do anything about it if such testing is somehow done and demonstrates the convict's innocence - unless the solicitor agrees to the request.

That wouldn't be a problem in an ideal world, because the job of prosecutors is to do justice, and so they would be just as anxious as anyone to make sure the wrong person isn't in prison. The reality is different. Prosecutors are human and dislike admitting their mistakes; and besides, they grow cynical from hearing the inevitable claims of innocence from criminals who really aren't innocent, so with rare exceptions, they fight tooth and nail against those claims.

When the wrong person is convicted of a crime, the only clear winner is the actual criminal - although police and prosecutors might appear to be winners, since they were able to score a conviction. The person wrongly convicted certainly doesn't win, and in fact we do incomprehensibly grave harm to that person. Neither do the rest of us, who are less safe because the real criminal remains free to harm others.

Read the editorial. (The State, 5/13/08)

The concept is a sound one and has been adopted by at least five states.

News flashes about Dallas cases obscure the fact that local exonerations would not be achieved were it not for the sound practice of storing biological evidence in all criminal cases. No other Texas county has done that; one can only imagine how many wrongly convicted people from the 253 other Texas counties have no shot at DNA exoneration. A special commission could recommend best practices for evidence storage, among a long list of other law enforcement procedures.

Williamson passed away in 2004, but his sisters Renee Simmons and Annette Hudson also attended the benefit. Williamson's family, Carter's family, and Fritz came to New York from all around the country to join the Innocence Project in honoring John Grisham for his best selling book, The Innocent Man, which tells the story of Williamson's wrongful conviction. Fritz shared a table at the benefit with two of Carter's relatives-her cousin, Christy Sheppard, and her mother Peggy Carter Sanders.

A recent New York Times column by Jim Dwyer looks at the poignant moment last week when Fritz and Sanders danced as 600 Innocence Project supporters looked on. The column discusses the friendship forged between the two wrongfully convicted men and the mother of the victim-despite some people's unwillingness to accept that a mistake had been made in the case:

"Ms. Sanders saw it plain. All around her, though, people refused to rewrite the ending to her daughter's murder, clinging to the belief that Mr. Fritz and Mr. Williamson somehow had been part of the killing, a spurning of reality so common that it has practically become an epidemic as DNA tests, year in and out, clear the wrongfully convicted."

Read the full story here.

Fritz was one of a dozen exonerees who attended the benefit. Also honored was the law firm Mayer Brown, for its collaboration with the Innocence Project in reforming eyewitness identification procedures.

Learn more about Fritz and Williamson's cases.

Learn more about how the Innocence Project is working with victims and their families, including Christy Sheppard and Peggy Carter Sanders, to improve the criminal justice system. (See page 10 of this PDF for "Common Interests.")

Miller is one of more than 160 exonerees whose wrongful convictions were caused, at least in part, by eyewitness misidentification. The victim in Miller's case identified him in a book of mug shots, and again at trial. He claimed his innocence throughout the ordeal but was convicted and sentenced to 26-45 years.

Read more about Miller's case here.

Other exoneration anniversaries this week:

Sunday: Glen Woodall, West Virginia (Served 4.5 years, Exonerated 05/04/92)

Wednesday: Jeffrey Pierce, Oklahoma (Served 14.5 years, Exonerated 05/07/01)

One by one, nine wrongly convicted men stood up on the floor of the Texas Senate on Thursday to explain how innocent men ended up in prison and how to prevent it from happening again.

"I'm here to tell you I lost everything. I am still hurting. I am still broken," said James Giles, who spent 10 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. "We can do better in the justice system. The system failed all of us."

...The applause was loudest when Giles tore up his sex offender registration card, something he had to carry for 15 years while he was on parole before getting exonerated. He ripped it up, he said, because he had a new card to carry: a voter registration card.

Read the full story here. (Associated Press, 05/08/08)

Watch a new Innocence Project video featuring interviews with three Texas exonerees: Brandon Moon, Chris Ochoa and Ronnie Taylor.

This strikes as three ostriches putting their heads in the sand. How can these DA's be at all confident in Hayne's work given the information that has come out about the pathologist?

The DA's have been asked by the Innocence Project to turn over any documents pertaining to Hayne, including official reports on autopsies.

We hope they are complying. They must, if they believe in justice.

Meanwhile, the Legislature has funded $500,000 this year for a state medical examiner. The state has been without one since 1994 and if more of Hayne's work is found to be faulty, the state will have no one but itself to blame.

Read the full editorial here. (Hattiesburg American, 05/04/08)

Read more about Hayne's activities and the exonerations of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks.

Meanwhile, Levon Jones was released from death row last week in North Carolina after his lawyers revealed new evidence of his innocence and showed that he received an inadequate defense at trial. Several death row inmates across the country are seeking to prove this innocence in the courts - including Innocence Project client Tommy Arthur, who has been seeking DNA testing from death row for years, and Georgia inmate Troy Davis.

Innocence Project client Paul House is still waiting in legal limbo for a decision after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the jury in House's case may have acquitted him. House has been in prison for 22 years - much of it on death row - for a murder he says he didn't commit. Prosecutors in his case said this week they would retry House, who remains in jail awaiting a new trial or his release. Read the full story here. (Tennessean, 05/07/08)

An article in today's New York Times considers the state of legal representation for indigent Americans charged with capital crimes.

Georgia's new public defender system came under attack by politicians and was recently forced to cut more than 40 positions.

That system, established after a series of lawsuits, was patterned after one North Carolina put in place in 2001, which was considered a national model. But not many other states have followed suit, said Robin Maher, director of the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project.

"I wish I could say that things have gotten a lot better, but in fact I can say with confidence that things have changed not much at all," Ms. Maher said. "We are seeing the same kinds of egregiously bad lawyering that we saw 10 or 15 years ago, for a variety of reasons, including inadequate funding."

Of the 36 states that allow the death penalty, only about 10 have statewide capital-defense systems, one of the practices recommended by the Bar Association.

Read the full story here. (New York Times, 05/07/08)

And CBS reported on Monday that 14 executions are scheduled across the U.S. in the next six months and five states are considering expansions to the death penalty - allowing them to execute people for crimes other than murder. Meanwhile, five states are seriously considering repealing the death penalty. Watch the CBS News video here, featuring an interview with Kirk Bloodsworth, who spent 8 years on death row before DNA proved his innocence of a Maryland murder.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Woodard you're not getting justice today," Dallas Judge Mark Stoltz tells Woodard. "You're just getting the end of injustice."

Watch the full story online. (60 Minutes, 05/04/08)

Read more about James Lee Woodard and other proven innocent by DNA testing in Dallas County.

"When they gave me 25 to life, that's 25 to death, because I'm never going to confess to something that I had nothing to do with," Brown said. "You know, I know that in 25 years, if I live that long, if I make it to parole, I'm not going to go in there and say I'm sorry for something I didn't do."

Read more and here. (Utica Observer-Dispatch, 05/01/08)

Read more about Roy Brown's case here.

Want to host an exoneree speaker in your school or community? Click here to get started.

Talk Left: Dallas County Sets Wrongful Conviction Records

GritsforBreakfast: Beyond the Iceberg's tip: Dallas to extend innocence investigations beyond DNA cases

StandDown Texas: Another Dallas County Exoneration

American Bar Association Journal: 18th Innocence Man Freed in 1 Texas County; Officials Vow Change

Texas State Sen. Rodney Ellis will hold a day-long Summit on Wrongful Convictions in Austin next Thursday. More details on the summit here.

And CBS News' "60 Minutes" will cover the Dallas County exonerations and Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins' quest for "smart justice" on Sunday. More here.

Eric Ferrero, spokesman for the national Innocence Project, said the clean hands provision is a ''fatal flaw.'' He said that of the 23 states that have compensation laws for the wrongfully incarcerated, none disqualify people based on unrelated prior felony convictions.

''Prior convictions have nothing to do with the fact that an innocent person was wrongfully convicted,'' Ferrero said. ``They have paid their debt to society for prior convictions but society has not paid its debt to them for a separate and unrelated wrongful conviction.''

Read the full story here. (Miami Herald, 04/29/08)

In other news, California exoneree James Ochoa has reached a tentative settlement in his lawsuit against Buena Park, California for his wrongful conviction. Ochoa spent 10 months in prison for a carjacking he didn't commit before DNA cleared him. He also received approval recently to receive $30,000 in state compensation. Read more here.

Does your state have a compensation law? Find out here.

In recent years, the Japanese criminal justice system has also been rocked with numerous false confessions, Drizin noted, explaining that these false confessions have been blamed on Japan's excessive reliance on confession evidence to gain convictions. Japanese law enforcement authorities, who have a 99 percent conviction rate, rely on exceedingly long interrogations and psychological coercion to obtain confessions, he added.

Read the full story here. (National Law Journal, 05/1/08)

The Innocence Project has worked for years on Armstrong's case with lawyers at the Wisconsin Innocence Project and other private attorneys. A new brief filed this month by the Innocence Project and Armstrong's local counsel reveals two affidavits showing that Armstrong's brother, Steve, has admitted that he committed the crime. The brief goes on to allege that the Dane County prosecutors knew of Steve Armstrong's confession in 1995 but failed to share this information with Ralph Armstrong or his lawyers.

"[T]he state deliberately suppressed and withheld, for approximately the last thirteen years, information that a known third party confessed to the rape and murder of the victim in this case," states the brief, filed on April 17 by Armstrong's defense attorneys, Jerome Buting of Brookfield and Barry Scheck of New York. The brief to Wisconsin's Dist. 4 Court of Appeals calls this confession "exculpatory evidence supporting the claim of Ralph Armstrong that he is innocent of this crime."

Read more about Ralph Armstrong's case here. (Madison Isthmus, 04/25/08)

"This is a perfect time to do it," Watkins said (of conviction reviews across the state). "We have to look at it. We have to balance that time when we are being a politician, and when we are a human being."

...Before walking out of the courtroom to "breathe in fresh, clean air," Woodard praised Watkins' office for having a public integrity unit that was willing to work with the Innocence Project to prove his innocence.

"I used to have nightmares about the DA's office, but now they are among my best friends," Woodard said in an earlier interview.

Read the full story here. (Star-Telegram, 04/30/08)

Read more media coverage of his case here.

Woodard was represented by the Innocence Project of Texas, a member of the Innocence Network. Read a blog post on the case by IPOT Executive Director Natalie Roetzel here.

Tomorrow night, May 1, IPOT will host a benefit event in Dallas featuring four leaders in the legal community - District Attorney Craig Watkins, IPOT Chief Counsel Jeff Blackburn, Judge John Creuzot and Southern Poverty Law Center Founder Morris Dees. Learn more here.

Two weeks ago, Innocence Project client Thomas McGowan was released in Dallas. Read more about his case here.

In light of the unprecendented number of wrongful convictions in Texas overturned by DNA testing, state leaders are holding a Summit on Wrongful Convictions at the capital in Austin on May 8. Learn more here.

"Justice is something you have to demand," he said, and encouraged McKoy's friends and family to keep faith.

"In June of 1985, I was one vote away from the death penalty," he said in his measured, deep voice. "If anybody here doesn't believe in miracles, I do."

...McKoy's mother, Mae Helen McKoy, and his son, 16-year-old Lamont Jr., attended the event.
Mae McKoy said she prays every night for her son, now in his 17th year behind bars.

"It was just wonderful," she said about the community outpouring Saturday. "It was so fulfilling, I couldn't even eat. I'm still full from the joy."

Read the full story here. (Fayetteville Observer, 04/27/08)

The state desperately needs a universal compensation law, and lawmakers are considering one right now. But there are serious problems with the Florida bill in its current state, and an editorial in today's Daytona Beach News-Journal details some of these problems:

Both House and Senate versions deny compensation to anyone with another felony conviction -- even if the other conviction is relatively minor. This so-called "clean hands" provision is a cruel excuse to perpetrate injustice.

The fact that someone has a prior conviction does not make a wrongful conviction any less wrong. In fact, the existence of a prior conviction increases the possibility of injustice: Police sometimes focus an investigation on someone who's already been in trouble with the law, to the exclusion of other more likely suspects.

Crotzer's case provides a perfect example of how unfair this provision can be. Before he was wrongfully convicted of robbery and rape, he stole beer from a store. While in prison, he was convicted of a drug offense. Both crimes were relatively minor and would draw relatively short prison terms -- if any. Yet under this proposal, he would be barred from compensation for his 24 years behind bars.

Read the full editorial here. (Daytona Beach News-Journal, 04/29/08)

"On the first day he was arrested, he told the world he was innocent ... and nobody listened," Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas, said during Tuesday's hearing.

Read the full story here. (Associated Press, 04/29/08)

Watch video of James Woodard's comments in the courtroom today. (WFAA, 04/29/08)

"This shows Hayne has misrepresented his credentials under oath," said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the New York-based Innocence Project, which has called for Hayne to be stripped of his medical license.

Hayne, who says he works 110 hours a week and conducts 1,500 autopsies a year, gave incorrect and misleading testimony at the trials of Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, both Innocence Project clients who were exonerated this year after serving a combined three decades in prison for murders they didn't commit. Brewer spent much of his time on death row.

Lawyers and inmates in Mississippi have begun to envision major legal repercussions as Hayne's questionable practices come to light.

Hinds County Assistant Public Defender Matthew Eichelberger has questioned Hayne under oath about his credentials.

"We as a state need to brace ourselves for a tidal wave of innocence claims as a result of what's been uncovered regarding Steven Hayne," he said. "And the scariest part of all of this isn't the thousands of hours of extra work we in the legal community will have to face. It's the stark realization that there are innocent people behind bars, some of whom have been there a very long time."

Read the full story here. (Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 04/27/08)

Read the Innocence Project's recent letter calling for Hayne's license to be revoked.

Read Reason Magazine's investigation of Mississippi forensics - "CSI Mississippi"

When the authorities do not certify innocence, "in effect, the sentence just goes on," said Stephen Saloom, policy director of the Innocence Project. Noting that legislators are recognizing "the lingering problems" of the exonerated after their release.

"A recent trend is not only to compensate at a monetary value per year incarcerated, but also to provide immediate services upon release," said Saloom, who said the project's clients spent an average of 11 years in prison. Advocates say the exonerated need help making the transition back into society, especially finding a job.

It's not enough to let the person out of prison," Saloom said.

Read the full article here. (Washington Post, 04/28/2008)

What's your state's stance on exoneree compensation? View our interactive map here.

The leading cause of the wrongful convictions in the 200 plus cases has been eyewitness misidentification. Other factors include false confessions, forensic fraud, government misconduct, lying snitches and bad lawyers.

All of those issues have cropped up in cases in Philadelphia over the years. That's all the more reason why an Innocence Project office is needed here. In fact, it's surprising the city lacks such an office, given its rich legal history.

The need is there. Just ask the more than 200 people who spent years in jail for crimes they didn't commit who have been set free.

Read the full editorial here. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 04/27/08)

"I think I have the education for it - and the experience," Mr. Tankleff said with a smile as he sat on the couch at his aunt's home. Referring to letters from desperate prisoners seeking help with appeals, he said: "I know what those guys are like. I was one of them."

But before he can focus on the future, he needs his case to finally be behind him. He was 17 years old when he woke up to find his mother dead and his father unconscious in the house he shared with them. His father would later die in the hospital, and Tankleff was interrogated by detectives as a suspect. He was charged with the murders after allegedly making statements that he may have "blacked out" and committed the crimes. The "confession" was immediately recanted by Tankleff and he never signed the written version.

The charges against Tankleff are still pending, and New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been appointed as a special prosecutor in the case. Cuomo will announce on June 16 whether charges against Tankleff will finally be dropped. But the case will never really be over, Tankleff told the New York Times.

"I just wish the case would be over," he said, referring to it as "the gorilla on my back."

But with his parents dead and 17 years of freedom lost, he said, the case "will always be part of me."

Read the full story here. (New York Times, 04/25/08)

"It's an 18-year nightmare for me. It's a never-ending nightmare for the (victim's family)," Baltovich said outside court. "I just hope that one day they can come to accept the fact that I didn't kill their daughter.

Read the full story here. (Toronto Star, 04/22/08)

A column in Canada's National Post today calls for a permanent office charged with reviewing possible wrongful convictions and exonerating the innocent. Read the full column here.

Attorneys at the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted represented Baltovich during much of his 16 year struggle for justice. AIDWYC is a member of the Innocence Network.

Vengeance can be the only explanation for the state's eagerness to resume executions as soon as possible after last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that lethal injections do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. We have had almost two centuries of legal executions in Alabama. In all of that time, no one has shown that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime.

We had hoped, naively perhaps, that Alabama's leaders would use the national hiatus on the death penalty as a time to launch a re-examination of the state's flawed capital punishment procedure. That won't happen.

For now, at least, vengeance and political expedience have trumped science and conscience.

Read the full story here. (Tuscaloosa News, 04/23/08)

Doubts about the accuracy of the lab's breath-test results surfaced last summer, when toxicology lab manager Ann Marie Gordon was accused of signing off on scientific tests in cases she hadn't actually done.

Another employee, Evan Thompson, made technical errors and violated lab procedures when analyzing a bullet's trajectory.

Both have since resigned.

Read the full story here. (The Olympian, 04/23/08)

Last fall, the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers urged the council to examine problems at the lab. Read more here.

Read about the Innocence Project's work to improve crime lab oversight.

"Every step of the way James had been screwed by government authorities. Finally, this board stood up and did the right thing," Ochoa lawyer Scott Borthwick said immediately after the hearing.

Read more. (OC Weekly blog, 04/23/08)

"This case casts into doubt the reliability of eyewitnesses," said Dan Ross, Minor's defense lawyer.

Ted Hunt, assistant county prosecutor, said the case showed the link between DNA and justice.
"It convicts and also exonerates," Hunt said. "That's a good thing for people to keep in mind."

Read the full story here. (Kansas City Star, 04/17/08)

Wrongful convictions are still happening in the age of DNA testing. Testing is not conducted in all cases involving biological evidence. Innocent defendants take plea bargains before expensive tests are conducted in an attempt to avoid harsh sentences at trial. And then there are the vast majority of cases - more than 90% of all criminal cases - that don't involve any biological evidence that can be tested. The risk of a wrongful conviction based on eyewitness misidentification or snitch testimony is just as strong - or stronger - in these cases today.

In a similar case, prosecutors in Virginia dropped charges last week against Anthony Worrell, a 20-year-old man who spent 17 months awaiting trial on charges he robbed a drug store. Charges were dropped after DNA testing on specks of blood believed to be from the perpetrator did not match Worrell. Prosecutors said they decided to drop charges "With our ID being a little shaky and without DNA..."

Read the full story here. (Southwest Virginia Today, 04/16/08)

Saturday: Alejandro Dominguez, Illinois (Served 4 years, Exonerated 04/06/2002)

"We have done everything under the sun and still can't get it," Fasano said in a telephone interview from a federal prison medical center in Rochester, Minn. "What's the big secret? Why won't they give it to us?"

[Neufeld] said "it's a mean-spirited position to deny DNA testing to inmates asserting a claim of innocence because it's unconscionable any law enforcement person would want to keep somebody innocent in prison. I'm not saying he (Fasano) is innocent, but he's certainly entitled to have a test to provide compelling evidence of innocence."

Read the full story here. (Clarion-Ledger, 04/21/08)

"There might be other attorneys who have similar secrets that they're keeping," attorney Jamie Kunz said. "What makes this case so different is that (we) came forward... and (talked) to Wilson before his death, and get his permission: 'If you die, can we talk?' Without that, we wouldn't be here today."

"They are quick to convict, but they are slow to correct their mistakes," Logan said.

"This is like a cancer within the system of providing indigent defense, and it's spreading," said Gerald Uelmen, executive director of the so-called Fair Commission, calling the spread of low-bid, flat-fee private firms "a race to the bottom."

Inexperienced, overburdened and negligent defense representation has contributed to countless wrongful convictions, and inadequate defense for the poor nationwide continues to contribute to cause injustice and inequality in the system everyday.

The commission recommended that California lawmakers create a panel to oversee the way counties fund public defense, and also recommended a law to ensure that the state funds investigators and experts for poor defendants.

Read the full story here: San Jose Mercury News, 04/18/08

Read the commission's full report here.

Read the Innocence Blog post last week on indigent defense shortages around the country and signs of hope on the horizon.

Read more about how overworked - or negligent - defense attorneys have contributed to the problem of wrongful convictions.

Read more about the work of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice and other innocence commissions around the country.