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Exonerees freed by innocence projects work for justice

ABA Journal, Terry Carter – “Wrongly imprisoned, these men spent many years behind bars for crimes they did not commit. Plenty of convicted felons claim to be innocent; too many of them actually are. The criminal justice system stole from these men the carefree years of young adulthood. While many prisoners dream of going to law school, these three did it. Now they’re working to prevent others from suffering unjust imprisonments, and to eventually end the injustice of wrongful convictions…Given the more than 1,400 confirmed exonerations in recent decades, it was inevitable that some of the wrongfully convicted would move from sitting in the dock to being officers of the court. Still, it is both surprising and understandable that theirs is a tiny universe. Many of the wrongly convicted come out of prison with a fire in the belly, but few might negotiate the rigors of law school. Experts are certain the number of exonerees comprise an iceberg’s tip of the wrongly convicted still held, so the men featured here beat odds little better than winning a state lottery, despite the convincing factors of their innocence. These three men are focused primarily on helping others who were wrongfully convicted. In a world where a leg-up is often necessary, they were weighted down. Each lost a huge chunk of young-adult life to the dreary monotony and dangerous disciplines of survival in perhaps our most Darwinian social environment. Yet exoneration can revive the faith in humanity prison life would kill. [Note – law libraries are a part of this story.]

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