Can you imagine the police showing up at your home or office and arresting you for a serious crime like rape or a murder? You know you didn't do it! Your family and friends know you didn't. Suppose you went to a movie by yourself, threw away the ticket stub that you had paid cash for. No way to prove your whereabouts, and no one there knew you or would remember you. Perhaps someone picked you out of a lineup. You might look like the person they remembered. Well, this happens more than we would like to think. People are spending years and years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Even worse, people are being executed for crimes they did not commit. DNA has not been around that long, and unless you have the money for testing and legal fees....you are going to jail. Some DNA tests can run over $13,000.
Their Mission Statement: The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, over 220 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing including 14 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 12 years in prison before exoneration and release. The Innocence Project's full time staff attorneys and Cardozo clinic students provided direct representation or critical assistance in most cases. The Innocence Project's groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Now an independent nonprofit organization closely affiliated with Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence Project's mission is nothing less than to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.
Please visit their website at: http://www.innocenceproject.org/
Please donate to the cause, as they are asking for help this month. They do not take a case unless they are sure they can prove someone's innocence by DNA testing. Sign up for the monthly newsletter if nothing else. The thought of someone spending up to 20 years or more in prison-wrongly convicted, missing the opportunity to see their children grow up, shouldn't happen to anyone. Prison is a hard life for an innocent victim. They are currently working on over 200 more cases across the country that they need funds to pay for the DNA medical testing. To date, over 40% of the DNA testing that has freed someone, has convicted the person actually guilty of the crime.
WOW, I've known of this for some time, but the number released was much higher than I realized. I really like the fact the while proving innocence, it also is PROVING guilty party. That part is awesome in every way!
When lawyers and law students volunteer their time to do this, they are the ones who got into the legal field for the right reasons. I totally applaud them for this. They are just asking for the funds to pay for the DNA medical testing, nothing else. I hope everyone will support this cause.