Spring Break
Exoneree discusses wrongful conviction
by Rae Schindler
News | 5/1/07
Posted online at 10:22 PM EST on 4/30/07
/ Last updated at 7:37 PM EST on 4/30/07
CORRECTIONS APPENDED AT BOTTOM:
A man who spent nearly 20 years in jail due to a wrongful conviction joined his prosecutor, with whom he is now friendly, at a panel discussion sponsored by the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project last Tuesday.
In 1984 Dennis Maher was convicted of rape, but the New England Innocence Project used DNA evidence to prove his innocence.
"I consigned myself to dying in prison," Maher said, "but I always had hope that DNA would exonerate me."
The discussion's participants also included Bernard "Bee" Baran, whose guilty verdict for child molestation was overturned; his attorney John Swomley; Robert Feldman, a New England Innocence Project attorney; and J.W. Carney, Maher's prosecutor. The talk followed a screening of the documentary After Innocence, which shows the reentry into society of seven wrongfully convicted individuals who were freed through DNA evidence.
Many of the panelists expressed surprise that Maher was not angry about the time he spent in jail.
Anger would not have gotten him anywhere, he responded. "I learned I had to be strong to survive."
Swomley expressed more passion and outrage than his client.
"Baran is my age. He went off to prison when I went off to law school," he said of Baran's missed opportunities.
The lawyers discussed the two cases in detail, using them to illustrate flaws in the American legal system. Feldman cited two of its common pitfalls: bad lawyers and mistaken eyewitness accounts.
Baran said his first attorney was incompetent, often was drunk in court and did not investigate the case sufficiently.
"His crime was being a gay teenager and working in a day care center in a blue collar town in the 1980s," Swomley said. "He was victimized as certainly as the other children in this drama by a system that went so out of control that the truth became whatever the believers believed it was."
Brandeis' Innocence Project is the third investigative program through a journalism program, and not a legal institution. Most innocence projects only review cases in which DNA evidence is available, but the project here uses investigative journalism methods.
According to flyers distributed at the event, only 10-to-20 percent of potential wrongful conviction cases have any DNA material to test. The other 80-to-90 percent require hands-on investigative reporting.
Florence Graves, the director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, said she hopes people have learned from the event that wrongful convictions are far more common than many people think; "The criminal justice system is in dire need of reform on many levels," she said.
The Justice Brandeis Innocence Project is currently researching the case of a Massachusetts man who was convicted for murder, a case referred to them by the New England Innocence Project.
"You're thrown right into the case. Everyone watches SVU and Law and Order, but it's really hard to believe [a prisoner's] life [could be] in the hands of students. This is experiential learning at its best," said Shakiva Wade '07, an intern at the project.
Due to a reporting error, the article incorrectly stated that Bernard "Bee" Baran is a convicted child molester. This guilty verdict was overturned. Additionally, the article incorrectly stated that the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project is the only journalism-based innocence project; Brandeis' project is the third.
A man who spent nearly 20 years in jail due to a wrongful conviction joined his prosecutor, with whom he is now friendly, at a panel discussion sponsored by the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project last Tuesday.
In 1984 Dennis Maher was convicted of rape, but the New England Innocence Project used DNA evidence to prove his innocence.
"I consigned myself to dying in prison," Maher said, "but I always had hope that DNA would exonerate me."
The discussion's participants also included Bernard "Bee" Baran, whose guilty verdict for child molestation was overturned; his attorney John Swomley; Robert Feldman, a New England Innocence Project attorney; and J.W. Carney, Maher's prosecutor. The talk followed a screening of the documentary After Innocence, which shows the reentry into society of seven wrongfully convicted individuals who were freed through DNA evidence.
Many of the panelists expressed surprise that Maher was not angry about the time he spent in jail.
Anger would not have gotten him anywhere, he responded. "I learned I had to be strong to survive."
Swomley expressed more passion and outrage than his client.
"Baran is my age. He went off to prison when I went off to law school," he said of Baran's missed opportunities.
The lawyers discussed the two cases in detail, using them to illustrate flaws in the American legal system. Feldman cited two of its common pitfalls: bad lawyers and mistaken eyewitness accounts.
Baran said his first attorney was incompetent, often was drunk in court and did not investigate the case sufficiently.
"His crime was being a gay teenager and working in a day care center in a blue collar town in the 1980s," Swomley said. "He was victimized as certainly as the other children in this drama by a system that went so out of control that the truth became whatever the believers believed it was."
Brandeis' Innocence Project is the third investigative program through a journalism program, and not a legal institution. Most innocence projects only review cases in which DNA evidence is available, but the project here uses investigative journalism methods.
According to flyers distributed at the event, only 10-to-20 percent of potential wrongful conviction cases have any DNA material to test. The other 80-to-90 percent require hands-on investigative reporting.
Florence Graves, the director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, said she hopes people have learned from the event that wrongful convictions are far more common than many people think; "The criminal justice system is in dire need of reform on many levels," she said.
The Justice Brandeis Innocence Project is currently researching the case of a Massachusetts man who was convicted for murder, a case referred to them by the New England Innocence Project.
"You're thrown right into the case. Everyone watches SVU and Law and Order, but it's really hard to believe [a prisoner's] life [could be] in the hands of students. This is experiential learning at its best," said Shakiva Wade '07, an intern at the project.
Due to a reporting error, the article incorrectly stated that Bernard "Bee" Baran is a convicted child molester. This guilty verdict was overturned. Additionally, the article incorrectly stated that the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project is the only journalism-based innocence project; Brandeis' project is the third.
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