In my first ninety days as Executive Director of the Innocence Project, I had the privilege of seeing our incredible team successfully fight to free and/or exonerate four of our wrongfully convicted clients: Robert DuBoise, who served 37 years for a wrongful conviction in Florida; Ron Jacobson, who served 30 years in Louisiana; Jaythan Kendrick, who spent 25 years in a New York state prison; and Eddie Lee Howard, who did 28 years on Mississippi’s death row. I am humbled and inspired by the dignity, strength and resilience demonstrated by each of these people, and the work of the Innocence Project team that made it possible.
I am also outraged by the fact that these four innocent people lost 120 years of their lives to wrongful convictions. They can never get that time back. I was in high school when Robert DuBoise went to prison. I graduated from college the year Ron Jacobson was incarcerated. I was dreaming of a law degree when Eddie Lee Howard was arrested. And I was a year away from buying my first car when Jaythan Kendrick was imprisoned. Because I cannot imagine erasing those years of my life, these cases redouble my commitment to preventing such injustices and make me incredibly proud of the work that the Innocence Project does to free the innocent, reform the system responsible for wrongful convictions, and challenge the use of discredited bite mark evidence, incentivized jailhouse informant (“snitch”) testimony, eyewitness misidentification, racial bias and other unreliable evidence.
As you know, these four cases are just the tip of the iceberg. Even though the year is ending, this period is crucial for us as we set budgets and allocate resources for all we hope to accomplish in the new year. And what we raise over the next couple of weeks will directly impact how big we can dream in 2021.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
