Law Commons^™

Ethical Issues For Innocence Projects: An Initial Primer, Ellen Y. Suni

Faculty Works

While the advent of DNA has led to more than 100 exonerations in the United States, few of them would have been possible without the existence of innocence projects around the country that have undertaken the often difficult work of exonerating the wrongfully convicted. More than thirty projects are now in operation, with several more in the planning stages.

As these projects have developed, issues have emerged regarding the professional responsibility obligations of attorneys and others engaged in this post-conviction work. These issues were the subject of discussion at national innocence conferences in 2000 and 2002, but that discussion, while …

Introduction To The Symposium On Wrongful Convictions: Issues Of Science, Evidence, And Innocence, Ellen Y. Suni

Faculty Works

t is hard to imagine an injustice greater than the incarceration or, worse yet, execution of an innocent. Especially in our system of justice, which purports to accept as a basic premise that it is better that ten guilty go free than that one innocent person be imprisoned, the incarceration of an innocent is simply intolerable. Yet it happens--and much more often than we would like to believe. Questions abound as to why and what can be done about it. The problem of wrongful convictions has been discussed for some time, but it has often been rejected or downplayed. It …