John,

Under current state law and through court precedent, New Yorkers who pleaded guilty to a crime can only challenge their conviction with new evidence of innocence if the evidence was derived from DNA testing.

At the Innocence Project, which I co-founded in 1992, we have litigated hundreds of wrongful conviction cases, leading to the release and exoneration of more than 200 people. And after 31 years of this work, we know that it’s not uncommon for innocent people to plead guilty. In fact, according to the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE), of the more than 3,000 exonerations of innocent people which have been identified nationally since 1989, 24% pleaded guilty. And among the 347 exonerations in New York State, NRE data shows that DNA played a role in only 54 of those cases.

So the prohibition against proving innocence through non-DNA evidence is not only unfair and arbitrary, but the data shows it keeps an intolerable number of innocent people in New York prisons with no way to challenge their wrongful convictions.

But Governor Kathy Hochul has a chance to fix this by signing the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act into law.

Please take a moment to read my latest piece on the Innocence Project site and learn more about how passing the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act would help innocent New Yorkers get the justice they deserve.

Thank you so much for your support,

Barry Scheck
Co-Founder
Innocence Project