Innocence Project

Less than a year after Massachusetts state laboratory chemist Annie Dookhan was arrested and prosecuted for alleged mishandling of evidence that led to more than 300 convicted inmates being released, another state chemist has been charged with tampering with evidence and stealing drugs seized as evidence.

Dookhan, arrested in September, had worked at the William Hinton State Lab in Jamaica Plain lab before she was dismissed. Although Dookhan has not been found guilty, concerns about her work prompted Attorney General Martha Coakley to recommend a full review of the lab. In total, 534 cases have been reexamined. The same process is now underway in the case of the second state chemist under investigation, who once worked with Dookhan at the Hinton lab, and more recently at an Amherst lab. Authorities allege that she lost evidence and, mixed drug evidence samples with counterfeit drugs to hide her theft. She has been charged with cocaine possession. Chemistry World reports:

'Every case she handled now has a huge question mark around it,' says Josh Lee, a criminal defense attorney and founding partner of law firm Ward, Lee and Coats. 'Such an individual is not going to be concerned with good laboratory practices or proper evidence handling and testing,' he adds.

The Hinton State Lab has been closed since August and the Amherst lab was closed in January, pending further investigations.

Read the full article.

Recent national coverage of the MA crime lab scandal.

Read more about how forensic errors can contribute to wrongful convictions.

Nearly one year after kidnapping and rape charges against a former Southern California high school football player were dismissed, Brian Banks' dreams to play professional football were fulfilled Wednesday when he inked a deal with the Atlanta Falcons.

The alleged victim claimed that she had been forced to the school's basement and raped without a condom, but DNA testing did not find sperm on her underwear. Banks was exonerated after the alleged victim was video recorded denying that any crime had taken place.

As a collegiate prospect with a verbal commitment to play at the University of Southern California, Banks was forced to set aside his dreams in 2002 when he took a plea deal to avoid trial and the risk of a lengthy prison sentence. After a five-year stint in prison he was forced to register as a sex offender and wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Following his release last May, Banks, who was represented by the California Innocence Project, received calls from several professional football teams and was invited for workouts and tryouts.

Watch Banks and California Innocence Project Director Justin Brooks talk more about Banks' story and what it means to go pro on MSNBC's Politics Now.

The troubled Hinton State Crime Lab in Massachusetts fares poorly in a recent inspection, Ohio fires the same criminalist twice, and New York City police are turning to social media platforms to solve crimes. Here is this week's roundup of news:

Massachusetts' state investigators working for the Inspector General found several scattered drug samples during a recent inspection of the shuttered Hinton State Crime Lab. As a result of the inspection, investigators are now questioning many of the 190,000 cases processed, and not just the ones completed by Annie Dookhan, a chemist indicted for falsifying drug evidence.

After being fired last May and then reinstated in October, Michael Short, a criminalist at the Canton-Stark County Crime Lab in Ohio, was recently fired again for the second time when additional accusations of falsifying lab reports and insubordination were raised. Short's attorney says the claims have no basis since the "crime lab is in utter disarray."

Ken Martin, a Massachusetts state police lieutenant who ran crime scene analysis for the state crime lab, has been removed from his post after it was discovered he acted as a consultant for the defense on a case. Prosecutors might review Martin's role in the defense's case and possibly call him as a witness for the prosecution.

New York City police are using facial recognition technology to develop investigative leads from matching photographs from surveillance footage, mug shots, and social media platforms. The facial recognition technology is not without error, and matching photographs without other evidence does not allow police to directly make an arrest.

Researchers from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and Sam Houston State University found that forensic psychologists and psychiatrists are not always impartial and can provide expert opinions that favor those who hire them. Researchers discuss how the adversarial nature of the justice system could reduce objectivity in experts and lead to a bias referred to as the allegiance effect.

Louis Taylor, wrongfully convicted of setting a 1970 Arizona fire that claimed the lives of 29 people, was finally released this week after 42 years in prison on a no-contest plea. The Pioneer International Hotel fire is the worst in Arizona's history, though arson experts now believe that it wasn't intentionally set.

The New York Times reports on Taylor's release:

"It's two tragedies," he said during a brief stop by the prison's gates. "The Pioneer Hotel fire, and me being convicted."

Mr. Taylor, 58, who did not even know how to drive when he went to prison at the age of 16, is facing a bleak future in an entirely unfamiliar world. His case is among several in recent years to call into question some of the scientific principles that once guided fire investigations - including the idea that multiple and independent points of a fire's origin were proof of arson, a decisive element of Mr. Taylor's prosecution.

Taylor is represented by the Arizona Justice Project. Additionally troubling is the racial bias that contributed to his wrongful conviction. Taylor was found guilty-and narrowly escaped the death penalty-by an all-white jury. One of the fire investigators who testified at his original trial offered a profile of the perpetrator as a young black man.

Despite the new scientific evidence challenging the finding of arson, prosecutorial misconduct, and other evidence of Taylor's innocence, he has not been exonerated. Instead, he was forced to accept a no-contest plea in order to be released. The plea allows him to continue maintaining his innocence but the plea will almost certainly bar him from seeking civil remedies. Arizona is one of 23 states that does not provide exoneree compensation.

In another recent case, Ed Graf, of Texas, will receive a new trial based on doubts about the arson evidence that led to his 1986 murder conviction. Graf's case was identified by the Innocence Project of Texas in response to a review of old arson cases that arose out of a multiple year investigation by the Texas Forensic Science Commission.

Read the full article.

Read the Innocence Project's press release about the case.

A new ProPublica special report that analyzed more than a decade's worth of state and federal court rulings found more than two dozen instances in which New York judges explicitly concluded there had been prosecutorial misconduct. And in nearly every instance, despite convictions being overturned, appellate court disciplinary committees never took action against the prosecutors for their costly errors.

The investigation uncovered only one prosecutor, former Queens assistant district attorney Claude Stuart, who was disciplined for his actions and eventually lost his job after several abuses including withholding evidence from the defense, manipulating evidence and lying to a trial judge. In two of those cases the convictions were overturned.

"It's an insidious system," said Marvin Schechter, a defense attorney and chairman of the criminal justice section of the New York State Bar Association. "Prosecutors engage in misconduct because they know they can get away with it." (Schechter said he was expressing his own opinion, not that of his bar section.)

New York City's district attorneys disagree and call these errors limited in scope. But in response to those isolated instances, some have gone a step further by establishing internal units that examine claims of abuse. But as long as the abuse goes unchecked, academics and defense lawyers say prosecutors will continue doing what they're doing.

"If you're in the Olympics and you're in a race and you win and then it's found that you took steroids, they take your medal away," said Larry Goldman, a former Manhattan prosecutor who is now a defense attorney. "No one says, 'Oh well, it doesn't matter if you took steroids, you would've won anyway.'"

The obligation to disclose potentially important evidence to defense lawyers has long been a vital part of the criminal justice system, yet the new analysis showed that violations involving withholding evidence were the most common form of serious misconduct by city prosecutors.

The New York State Bar Association has recently taken on the issue of how to define prosecutorial misconduct and what should be done about it as part of a larger initiative to address wrongful convictions. And while state legislators have introduced several bills incorporating the bar association's ideas, none have gained much traction. The state's District Attorneys Association has outright opposed them, and other city district attorneys have said they could adversely affect public safety and are unnecessary in light of their own efforts to improve training and oversight.

Join ProPublica's live chat Thursday at noon EST to discuss its latest investigation into prosecutorial misconduct. You can tweet questions with #PolicingProsecutors.

Read the full article.

For more background on this issue, download the Northern California Innocence Project report on prosecutorial misconduct.

You can also read the Innocence Project's report: Court Findings of Prosecutorial Misconduct Claims in Post-Conviction Appeals and Civil Suits Among the First 255 DNA Exoneration Cases

Eric Wilson, one of four Navy sailors who was wrongfully convicted of a 1997 Norfolk, Virginia, rape and murder based almost exclusively own false confessions was released years ago, but he is still fighting to clear his name.

Wilson's three co-defendants in the "Norfolk Four" case were released in 2009 when the Governor granted conditional pardons based on serious questions about their guilt. DNA tests have pointed to the involvement of another man, who had no prior acquaintance with the four men and says that he committed the crime alone. Wilson, however, gained nothing from the pardons. He was already out on parole with a standing rape conviction and forced to register as a sex offender.

Wilson is ineligible for jobs on many government sites and is prevented from applying for a passport, adopting his young stepson, or attending any of his school functions. Although a divided three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, recently said that it's too late to review his case since he is no longer in custody, Wilson is now requesting a hearing before the Supreme Court on his challenge to his conviction, reported The New York Times.

In a concurrence, Judge Andre M. Davis said the court's precedents required him to vote against Mr. Wilson. But the judge said Mr. Wilson's case was compelling. "Morally and legally, he is clearly entitled, in my judgment, to a judicial forum," Judge Davis wrote.

That was the concurrence. In dissent, Judge James A. Wynn Jr., wrote that he was "deeply troubled that our legal system would be construed to prevent a person with compelling evidence of his actual innocence and wrongful conviction from accessing a forum in which to clear his name."

"This court has the authority - indeed, the moral imperative - to grant Wilson the hearing that he seeks," Judge Wynn wrote.

When Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli didn't file a response, the Supreme Court instructed him last week to file a brief by April 25.

Read the full article.

Sunday night's episode of CBS' 60 Minutes featured a segment on Louis Taylor, a man who was wrongfully convicted of setting the 1970 Pioneer Hotel fire in Tucson, Arizona which took the lives of 29 people.

Taylor, who is represented by the Arizona Justice Project, has maintained his innocence for more than 40 years. On the night of the fire, 16-year-old Taylor arrived at the hotel to attend a Christmas party. He was arrested shortly after by police who claimed he had set the fire as a distraction so he could burglarize hotel rooms.

The fire science that was used by investigators in 1970 that led them to label the fire as arson has changed significantly. The Arizona Justice Project continues to focus on the flawed fire science at the heart of the case. In the episode, fire science expert John Lentini explains the limitations of fire investigation to 60 Minutes.

"It has been very common for people to start with the proposition that the fire is set. If they can't find an innocent cause for it, they say, well somebody must have set it. That presumes that we're good enough fire investigators that we can find the cause of every fire and that's simply not true."

Watch the full episode.

A BBC article on the problems of using informants focuses on US practice, but has implications for other countries. This includes Singapore, where those who are facing drug trafficking charges can escape the death penalty by providing police with information.

Phil Locke, science and technology advisor to the Ohio Innocence Project and Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic, blogs about the phenomenon of "trial by website" in the Amanda Knox case.

The Innocence Network UK held their spring conference on March 22 in London. Scientific and legal experts gave presentations on innocence-related topics while representatives from Innocence Projects from around the UK gave updates on their cases.

Miscarriages of Justice UK launched a website to highlight wrongful convictions in the United Kingdom.

By Audrey Levitin, Director of Development and External Affairs

In Jewish tradition, the holiday of Passover retells the story of the Jewish people's exodus to freedom after bondage. The holiday calls us to reflect on ideas that are closely aligned with the spirit of our work at the Innocence Project. In many ways, each exoneration is a modern story of redemption.

Since 1989, 305 innocent people have walked out of prison as a result of post-conviction DNA testing. With their families reunited and their names cleared, hundreds of people have had the chance to move forward and rebuild their lives. Like the Israelites during their journey to freedom, the exonerees have experienced profound injustice, followed by a series of unpredictable and miraculous events, and ultimately liberation.

Recently, three exonerees spoke to us here at the Innocence Project. Their testimony inspires our staff, our clinic students and supporters to continue our efforts on behalf of others who have been wrongfully convicted. Each of their stories is unique-but without fail, the exonerees move us with their courage, tenacity and generosity of spirit.

• Damon Thibodeaux of Louisiana spoke to Innocence Project supporters via teleconference from Minneapolis, where he now lives and works. He was exonerated in September 2012, making him the 300th DNA exoneree in the U.S. since 1989. He had spent 15 years on death row for a crime he did not commit-the rape and murder of his teenaged cousin.
  
  Damon is soft-spoken and tells his harrowing story in a disarmingly understated manner. Most of his years on death row were spent in solitary confinement where he was allowed just one hour per day in the prison yard. He usually exercised in his cell. Reading also helped get him through the ordeal-one of his favorite books is Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
  
  After leaving prison, he moved to Minneapolis, where now he works at the law firm of one of his attorneys, Fredrikson & Byron. He earned his GED and plans to continue his education. When asked why he isn't angry about his experience, Damon explained that anger would only prevent him from realizing his goals.
  
  
• Marvin Anderson of Virginia recently joined the Board of Directors of the Innocence Project. He spoke to the IP's staff and students while in New York for a board meeting.
  
  When Marvin was 18 years old, he was wrongfully convicted of rape due to eyewitness misidentification and poor defense representation. He spent 15 years in prison and four years on parole, before he was cleared by DNA testing.
  
  As is the case in nearly half of the exonerations, DNA testing both revealed a wrongful conviction and identified the crime's true perpetrator-who was in fact the person originally suspected by members of the community where Marvin had lived.
  
  A coalition of civil rights groups and church leaders fought for Marvin's freedom. They were led by his mother, a fierce advocate for her son's innocence. Marvin was exonerated in 2002 after serving 15 years in prison.
  
  Before his arrest at 18 years of age, Marvin's dream had been to become a firefighter. Today Marvin serves as Chief of the Hanover, Virginia Fire Department, where he oversees a team of 30 people.
  
  
• Michael Morton of Texas was wrongfully convicted of the murder of his wife and spent 25 years in prison. As in Marvin Anderson's case, the same DNA evidence that exonerated Michael also identified the actual perpetrator.
  
  Michael spoke to IP supporters in New York via video conference from Texas. He described how vividly he experiences life now that he is free: directing everyone's attention to the red wall in our conference room, he explained how beautifully the color appeared to him and how everything in life had taken on an aura of the miraculous.
  
  After years of estrangement from his family, Michael has now been reunited with his son and a granddaughter who was born not long after his exoneration. This month, Michael was married to Cynthia Chessman.

As we remember during Passover, freedom from bondage brings new challenges: the exodus from Egypt was followed by decades of hardship in the desert. The stories of the DNA exonerees also reflect the challenges of meeting freedom's demands once it has been attained. Thankfully, the support of our generous donors allows us to aid the exonerated during what is often a difficult transition to freedom.

The incarceration and exoneration of an innocent person and the new challenges that freedom can bring are doubly meaningful to me. They represent a model for spiritual engagement-and an urgent call-to-action for all of us to transform the system that leads to such injustice, so that other innocent people can be freed.

The Baltimore Police Department will soon implement identification reforms in an effort to avoid cases of mistaken identity according to the city's police commissioner Anthony Batts. At a panel discussion at the University of Baltimore Law School, Batts cited research that shows current techniques can lead to mistakes. Baltimore joins a host of other jurisdictions, including Denver and Dallas, where law enforcement has voluntarily adopted thees reforms.

Planned reforms include showing witnesses photos one at a time, as opposed to the traditional lineup, which presents a handful of photos at once. Innocence Project Director of State Policy Reform Rebecca Brown discussed how presenting pictures sequentially rather than simultaneously decreases the rate at which innocent people are identified. Research demonstrates that when viewing several subjects at once, witnesses tend to choose the person who looks the most like - but may not actually be - the perpetrator.

State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein, who participated in the panel, spoke about the importance of getting a correct identification since eyewitness testimony is often the most powerful element at trial. The Baltimore Sun reports:

"If you have a case in which your only evidence ... is one witness identifying a stranger ... I think you have to be very very careful about that kind of case," he said. "When you have that kind of situation ... you need to really look hard and make sure you have corroborating evidence."

Read the full article.

Learn more about reforms to improve eyewitness misidentification.

By Edwin Grimsley, Case Analyst*

For Black History Month, I wrote about five historical cases of African Americans wrongfully convicted in the Jim Crow era. In today's follow up, I'll examine how contemporary wrongful convictions compare. While triumphant present-day innocence stories are all notable successes, and it's always remarkable when an innocent person finally gets his or her day of justice to be released from hollowed prison walls, the majority (63%) of those exonerated through DNA evidence are African American.

The presumption of innocence for African Americans throughout the criminal process is still hard-won. Racially biased harassment in poor neighborhoods is an all too common occurrence for African Americans. As adolescents, such constant police pressure leads to a cycle of criminal arrests. Biases against those with criminal records can often lead to suspicion, stops and interrogations.

Thomas McGowan, for instance, was falsely convicted of rape in Dallas, Texas, and exonerated through DNA testing in 2008. McGowan had prior police contact because of a minor traffic violation. McGowan's mugshot from that arrest was entered into a photo lineup, and he was wrongly identified by the victim. Many Innocence Project clients, having no prior record of committing violent crimes, became suspects because of recurring police contact.

Juvenile African American males are subject to particular scrutiny. In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers aged 14 to 16 were arrested in a racially charged atmosphere, accused in the rape of a white female jogger in New York's Central Park. After 14 to 30 hours of interrogation, without lawyers present, deprived of sleep, four of the five defendants offered inconsistent confessions as to the crime location and their perspective roles in the rape. The juveniles in the Englewood and Dixmoor cases from the Chicago area were strikingly similar injustices. Although DNA testing was done on evidence recovered from the victims before trial in all three cases and did not match to any of the defendants, they were convicted strictly on their confessions and perceived guilt. Post-conviction DNA testing later identified the actual perpetrators. In the end, 14 young black men were wrongfully convicted of crimes committed by only three men.

Some DNA exonerated black men have claimed physical force influenced their confessions. Ronald Jones, who spent eight years on death row and 10 in prison, testified at trial that he asserted his innocence for hours on end and was forced to confess to murder once Chicago police officers started beating him. Dennis Brown testified that one of the police officers pulled out a knife and threatened him as he repeatedly claimed innocence. Brown spent 19 years behind bars.

Inadequate criminal representation also has substantial power to derail justice. Many people of color are forced to rely on public defender services, which are often vastly underfunded. Additionally, spending thousands of dollars on private attorneys is no guarantee of competency. Innocent individuals in the criminal justice system face low odds of proving their innocence.

All-white juries and racial jury biases remain. A 2010 Equal Justice Initiative study on jury discrimination found biases in every state in the United States, particularly in the south. In a number of majority black counties, all-white or almost all-white juries endure. Racially biased use of peremptory strikes to eliminate qualified jurors continues to systematically exclude African Americans and other minorities. Research suggests racially diverse juries bring more balanced views, spend more time deliberating, and are less prone to mistakes.

A mixed black and white jury deadlocked in Julius Ruffin's first two trials. Ruffin, of Norfolk, Virginia, did not match the description of the assailant in a 1980 rape case. However, in his third trial, peremptory strikes eliminated all of the black jurors, and an all-white jury convicted Ruffin after deliberating for seven minutes. Norfolk had a black population of over 35% in 1980. Ruffin is one of at least 14 black men who were convicted by all-white juries and later proven innocent through DNA.

In each of the 14 cases, the defendant was marked guilty because of a cross-racial rape or murder of a white female victim. Similarly, cross-racial eyewitness identifications proven erroneous by DNA testing sent 81 black men to prison.

Wrongful convictions for drug arrests and other non-violent crimes are more difficult to prove than cases involving DNA evidence, but almost certainly no less prevalent. Despite the fact that white people are more likely to use illegal drugs, black people are arrested and incarcerated at much higher rates. Many plea bargain to lesser sentences in spite of innocence. In 1999, 39 African American defendants were arrested in a drug sting in Tulia, Texas. All-white juries, based on a single police informant, convicted 11 defendants to long prison terms. The remaining defendants entered plea deals. None of the accused had any drug dealing backgrounds. Informants in Hearne, Texas, and Mansfield, Ohio, also falsely convicted many other blacks on drug charges.

Finally, prison facilities are rampant with violence, poor medical care and poor diet-conditions that are often aggravated by racism since the majority of guards are white and the majority of prisoners are people of color. Perhaps not coincidentally, both of the DNA exonerated who died in prison were black. Tim Cole, of Texas, died 13 years into his prison sentence of a preventable asthma condition a decade before DNA testing posthumously exonerated him. Frank Lee Smith, who was serving 14 years on Florida's death row, died in prison of cancer in 2000, 11 months before DNA testing posthumously proved his innocence and identified the real perpetrator.

Though times have changed, and racial biases are no longer as overt as they were in the Scottsboro Boys days, the criminal justice system is still marked by racial injustice and the discrimination still manifests itself in similar ways-through racial profiling, police misconduct, indigent defense, jury selection and more. Wrongful conviction cases reveal these biases well- both in individual cases and systemically.

Read Part One of the blog.

* with research assistance from Communications Intern Angel Whitaker

A jailhouse informant recants, an exonerated death row inmate wins a judgment against his prosecutors and new evidence could lead to possible exoneration in a shaken baby syndrome case in Illinois. Those stories and more in this week's Innocence Network Week in Review:

In another encouraging development for North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence client Joseph Sledge, one of two jailhouse informants who testified against him has recanted, saying that he lied to collect reward money and was fed details of the crime by investigators. In December of last year, DNA testing showed that hairs from the crime scene that were used to convict Sledge of two 1976 murders did not belong to him.

Illinois Innocence Project client Anthony Murray, who was freed from prison last year after taking an Alford plea, spoke out for the first time about his wrongful imprisonment. Murray had been through two previous trials, both of which resulted in convictions that were later overturned, and took the plea to avoid the ordeal of a third trial.

The Duke Chronicle ran a feature story this week about LaMonte Armstrong, a client of the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic who was exonerated after serving 17 years of a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit.

Innocence Project of Texas client Ed Graf has won a new trial after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that conclusions of forensic scientists who testified in his trial were based not on science, but "old wives' tales." Graf was convicted of arson and murder in the fire death of his two stepsons.

Nearly nine years after being released from prison, Center on Wrongful Convictions client Gordon "Randy" Steidl has won a second judgment in a long-running wrongful conviction and malicious prosecution case against the State's Attorney and police. Steidl was sentenced to death for a 1986 double murder and served 17 years before being exonerated in 2004.

The attorney for Jennifer Del Prete, a day care worker convicted of murdering a child in her care in a shaken baby syndrome case, has filed a motion to overturn her conviction based on evidence uncovered and published by the Medill Justice Project.

California Innocence Project client Brian Banks, who was exonerated after the woman he was convicted of raping confessed she had made up her story, was featured on 60 Minutes this week. The story covered Banks' struggle to get his life back and his ongoing efforts to play for the NFL.

The recent high-profile exoneration of David Ranta in Brooklyn has brought attention to other national coverage of wrongful convictions. A new ProPublica article highlights the best reporting on these cases, including coverage of several Innocence Project cases. Dating back as early as 1990 up until this month, the ProPublica piece hails more than a dozen stories on subjects ranging from case flaws, DNA evidence and life after exoneration.

Among the highlights are The Washington Post for its coverage of Damon Thibodeaux, The New Yorker for its coverage of Cameron Todd Willingham and Texas Monthly for its coverage of Michael Morton.

Read the full article for the rest.

Texas courts consider cases that may have been tainted by fabricated lab results, an automated DNA processing system reduces case backlogs in Ohio, and a Texas man convicted of arson will get a new trial based on new scientific evidence. Here's this week's round up of forensic news:

In Texas, the Court of Criminal Appeals is hearing cases in which a former Houston Department of Public Safety crime lab worker may have fabricated drug testing results. With over 30 counties affected by these tests, prosecutors are determining the best way to proceed. Numerous cases have already been dismissed.

The authors of Math on Trial: How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom discuss the importance of accurately presenting data in court in a recent Huffington Post blog. Even in DNA identification, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike can easily misinterpret and misrepresent match probabilities.

An overturned California murder conviction based on faulty bite mark analysis raises questions about how many prior convictions are based on outdated forensic disciplines or methods. Such questions underscore the need to develop a stronger scientific foundation within forensics.

A new automated DNA analysis system has allowed an Ohio crime lab to greatly reduce a biological evidence backlog from six months to around four weeks. The new system can process evidence overnight and can repeat the extraction and testing process of DNA evidence without human intervention.

Ed Graf of Texas will get a new trial 25 years after his conviction of killing his two stepsons in a fire. Graf's case was one of several flagged by the Texas State Fire Marshal and the Innocence Project of Texas for outdated arson evidence.

From left to right, Mike Helton, Prentice Harvey, Mike Shea, Linda Smith, Jimmer Dudley, Tim Arnold, Damon Preston, Ed Monahan, Representative Johnny Bell. Not pictured: Senator John Schickel, who was also instrumental in the passage of the initiative.

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear signed a bill Monday that will vastly expand the right of a convicted person to use DNA testing to prove their innocence. Post-conviction DNA testing in Kentucky had previously been limited to those convicted of a capital crime.

HB 41, which was sponsored by Representative Johnny Bell (D-Glasgow), passed unanimously in the Kentucky House and the Senate earlier this month. Prior to the bill's passage, wrongly convicted Kentuckians in non-capital cases were forced to rely on judges and prosecutors to grant access to DNA testing, meaning testing was often granted in an inconsistent manner.

Read an Innocence Project press release about the law.

Find out about your state's DNA access law.

The high-profile exoneration of David Ranta of Brooklyn, last week, has brought new recognition to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit, which helped secure his release after 23 years.

A recent column in the New York Daily News examines the unit, which was created by Brooklyn DA Charles Joe Hynes and is run by former prosecutor John O'Mara, and revisits its beginnings.

"I reached out to the Brooklyn Bar Association, the Legal Aid Society, and to the Brooklyn Defenders Services program and asked them to present us with truly worthwhile cases of possible wrongful convictions," Hynes says. "This is about justice, not wins and losses."

O'Mara was overwhelmed by the response, and he uncovered many cases worthy of reinvestigation, including 14 rape and murder cases from the Innocence Project that involve testing or retesting DNA. Inundated with cases, he brought on a former NYPD cold-case detective, Brooklyn DA Investigator Pat Lanagan. And last year, the team added deputy Taylor Koss who works the field with Lanagan.

Though few, Conviction Integrity Units are springing up across the nation. Among the most celebrated and accomplished is the Dallas County District Attorney's unit, created in 2007, which has helped uncover injustice in a number of cases.

Read the full article.

Read more about the Dallas County Unit.

Watch death row DNA exoneree Kirk Bloodsworth and Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck discuss the danger of executing an innocent person on MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry show. Bloodsworth, the first person to be proven innocent through DNA testing who had served time on death row, speaks of his fight to repeal the death penalty in his home state of Maryland. Scheck weighs in on the type of systemic errors that might cause an innocent person to be sentenced to death.

Maryland voted to repeal the death penalty on March 15, making it the sixth state in six years to do so. Delaware is currently considering passing a similar bill.

Watch the segment.

If you live in Delaware, ask your Senator to vote yes on the death penalty repeal, using our action center.

Read about the Innocence Project's position on the death penalty.

California Innocence Project Director Justin Brooks with exoneree Brian Banks.

Sunday, March 24 at 7:00 p.m. California Innocence Project client Brian Banks will appear on CBS' 60 Minutes to talk about his experience of wrongful conviction and how it derailed his future as an NFL hopeful. Banks spent five years in prison and another five as a registered sex offender after being wrongfully convicted of raping a classmate who eventually admitted that she made up the story.

Banks recorded their conversations and took the evidence to the California Innocence Project. Director Justin Brooks presented prosecutors with the project's findings, and they agreed the case should be dismissed.

For more about the segment.

Read more about the Banks case.

By a vote of 52 - 22, the New Jersey Assembly passed a bill yesterday that would increase compensation for the wrongfully convicted in the Garden State from $20,000 to the federal level of $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration, with annual adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index. The bill will also add clarifying language to ensure that those who falsely confess or plead guilty to avoid a harsher sentence and are later exonerated are not excluded from receiving compensation.

NJToday reports:

"Those who have suffered through wrongful imprisonment deserve reasonable and adequate compensation that is up-to-date with current standards," said Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Mercer/Hunterdon), a sponsor of the bill. "We haven't updated this law in 16 years, so it's past time we do it to ensure we can help these people who endured a real-life nightmare."

The bill was passed earlier by the New Jersey Senate, so now goes to Governor Chris Christie.

Read more.

If you live in New Jersey, send an email to Governor Christie, asking him to sign the bill.

Read about compensation laws in your state.

The Texas State Fire Marshal's Office and the Innocence Project of Texas will begin reviewing questionable arson convictions next month. The review is part of a national movement scrutinizing arson cases to ensure that they're based on credible, scientific evidence. The Texas case of Cameron Todd Willingham-who was executed in 2004 based on unscientific, outdated arson analysis-raised concerns across the country about the integrity of other arson convictions.

State Fire Marshal Chris Connealy spoke with the Associated Press about the review:

"Having been around fire investigations and being in the fire service the last 35 years, I saw where there could be improvements," Connealy said in an interview. "I wanted to try to lead that effort to improving fire investigations. It should be based on science."

If the group finds problems with an arson investigation, its findings will be sent to the authorities with jurisdiction over the case and to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Connealy said. No action will be required, but the report could help someone who is wrongly imprisoned.

One of the cases to be reviewed is that of Ed Graf, convicted of setting a 1988 fire that killed his two stepsons. Graf claims innocence, and fire experts have questioned the arson analysis in his case. Convictions around or before 1992 are particularly suspect since that was the year that the National Fire Protection Association issued is first set of guidelines. Prior to 1992, no consistent methodology was used to analyze fires and analysts were often retired firefighters with no scientific background.

Read the full article.

Read about other disputed arson cases.