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Two sides of the Innocence Project speak about their respective trials
by Julie Zong
News | 11/20/07
Posted online at 9:46 PM EST on 11/19/07
/ Last updated at 2:30 AM EST on 11/19/07
A noted exonerator and an exoneree both recounted experiences of eyewitness misidentification leading to wrongful convictions during a discussion held by the Innocence Club last Thursday in Golding.
Reporter Dick Lehr, the visiting journalist-in-residence at Brandeis' Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and convicted rapist Neil Miller, who was released from prison after being found innocent, spoke at the information session about wrongful convictions that the club arranged as part of Innocence Week. This was a weeklong series of events the club planned to raise awareness of problems in the justice system.
During the event, Lehr and Miller both pointed out eyewitness misidentification as a problem in cases they have been involved with.
Lehr, who will work at the Schuster Institute until December 2007 and is a consultant for Brandeis' Innocence Project, began reinvestigating a murder case after reading an article on the exoneration of a convicted rapist in October 2003. He spoke last Thursday about the challenges of working as a reporter on such a case.
"I was out at Roxbury, people [were looking] at me like I was a cop," he recalled. "I'm a stranger in this neighborhood, and it's not really a welcoming situation."
Through his investigations, Lehr said he uncovered police intimidation of witnesses, new testimonies and witness recantations.
"You got to keep testing your information," he said. "What you want to guard against is falling in love with your story; … because it's such good stuff, you don't continue to test this information."
Lehr said he discovered that one of the main eyewitnesses in his case had brain cancer at the time. Her condition was never mentioned in court and may have factored into the conviction of the defendant, he said. The district attorney found the defendant to be wrongly convicted, and he was released from prison in 2003 after three witnesses recanted their original testimony.
Reporter Dick Lehr, the visiting journalist-in-residence at Brandeis' Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and convicted rapist Neil Miller, who was released from prison after being found innocent, spoke at the information session about wrongful convictions that the club arranged as part of Innocence Week. This was a weeklong series of events the club planned to raise awareness of problems in the justice system.
During the event, Lehr and Miller both pointed out eyewitness misidentification as a problem in cases they have been involved with.
Lehr, who will work at the Schuster Institute until December 2007 and is a consultant for Brandeis' Innocence Project, began reinvestigating a murder case after reading an article on the exoneration of a convicted rapist in October 2003. He spoke last Thursday about the challenges of working as a reporter on such a case.
"I was out at Roxbury, people [were looking] at me like I was a cop," he recalled. "I'm a stranger in this neighborhood, and it's not really a welcoming situation."
Through his investigations, Lehr said he uncovered police intimidation of witnesses, new testimonies and witness recantations.
"You got to keep testing your information," he said. "What you want to guard against is falling in love with your story; … because it's such good stuff, you don't continue to test this information."
Lehr said he discovered that one of the main eyewitnesses in his case had brain cancer at the time. Her condition was never mentioned in court and may have factored into the conviction of the defendant, he said. The district attorney found the defendant to be wrongly convicted, and he was released from prison in 2003 after three witnesses recanted their original testimony.
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Judge Rufus Peckham
posted 11/20/07 @ 9:08 AM EST
Bravo to the Innocence Project! Their work vividly illustrates the old maxim that it is better that 100 guilty men go free than to allow one innocent man to be convicted. (Continued…)
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