Will you help us fight for justice in 2018?

Chat with Rebecca Brown, Director of Policy, on Monday, December 12/11 at 4 p.m. on Facebook Live. Get started by leaving a question for Brown, who has been leading our policy reform efforts for 12 years, in the comments below.

We Need You in the Fight

As a member of the Innocence Project’s community, you know that we do more than fight to overturn wrongful convictions. We also work to improve the system by advocating for policies that prevent and reveal wrongful convictions, and help the exonerated rebuild their lives.

Among the reforms we focus on are:

• Preventing wrongful convictions through best practices including eyewitness identification reform, recording interrogations, jailhouse informant regulations and prosecutor disclosure of key evidence for defendants.
• Revealing wrongful convictions by improving access to DNA testing and access to courts for pursuing claims of innocence, and in particular, enabling the wrongfully convicted to go back into court when convictions involved the misapplication of forensic science.  
• Helping the wrongfully convicted by enacting laws to compensate the innocent for the years they were unjustly imprisoned.

A human system will never be perfect, but it can be much safer and fairer. Just last year, our team collaborated with partners across the country to pass ten state statutes and another three statewide reforms achieved through the judiciary. The simple reforms and protections we support will save lives and prevent grave injustices. And we need your help to make them a reality in 2018.

We’re asking you to say you’re in for this fight in 2018. Add your name here, and we’ll be in touch with opportunities to take action to support these crucial reforms as state legislatures begin meeting.

By adding your name to this pledge, you’re committing to help advocate for policy reforms that reveal, address and prevent wrongful convictions. Our team of policy advocates will be working with Innocence Network partners in more than 25 states next year to pass bipartisan reforms addressing exoneree compensation, eyewitness identification reform, and much more. We’ll be in touch with actions you can take for reforms in your state and nationwide.

Here are a few of the campaigns already underway:

• Compensating the exonerated in Kansas — Kansas is one of 18 states that doesn’t compensate exonerated people after they’re cleared. We’re working to change that.
• Access to DNA testing in Pennsylvania — We’re supporting two bills (HB1801 and HB1802) that would improve access to DNA testing in the state and expand time limits to file innocence claims.
• Safeguarding against jailhouse informants in Illinois — Jailhouse informants are a major contributor to wrongful convictions, and in Illinois we’re supporting SB1830, along with the Illinois Innocence Project, to protect against these unreliable witnesses.

These are just three of the many state and federal reforms we’ll be supporting in 2018. We’re already going full speed ahead on these efforts, and we need all of the help we can get.

Say you’re with us today and we’ll be in touch with next steps.