Spotlight on Innocence Project Senior Advocate for National Partnerships

Innocence Project Senior Advocate for National Partnerships

Katie Monroe

was recently profiled by her law school alma mater about her work to overturn and prevent wrongful convictions.

 

Two years after Monroe earned her law degree, her mother, Beverly Monroe, was convicted of a murder she didn’t commit and sentenced to 22 years in prison. Monroe was compelled to quit her job at the Civil Rights Commission and took up her mother’s case for the better part of a decade before the conviction was overturned. Despite having a background in criminal law before her mother’s conviction, she credits the personal experience for her dedication as an innocence advocate.

 

In her role as the Innocence Project’s first Senior Advocate for National Partnerships, Monroe meets with national law enforcement and prosecutorial organizations to discuss partnerships and efforts to prevent wrongful convictions. The

George Mason University Spirit

reports:

“Preventing [wrongful convictions] is not just for the benefit of an innocent suspect, it’s for the benefit of crime victims and for the benefit of the tax-paying public, and for the benefit of law enforcement officials themselves,” Monroe says. “Nobody wants the wrong person to end up in prison.”

Monroe splits her time between New York City, where the Innocence Project is located, and Washington, D.C., where her family, including her mother who is now remarried, lives.

“There’s no room for us to feel anything but blessed,” she says. “I know hundreds of exonerees, and almost across the board, these are people who are not embittered. The reason is that they feel lucky.”

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