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post by Drum Major Institute fellow Ezekiel Edwards on DMI's next event Oct 29
New York: The State That Never Sleeps (except when it comes to wrongful convictions)
New York State has often been at the forefront of social justice and progressive reform. But when it comes to preventing wrongful convictions, New York inexplicably and inexcusably has dragged its feet, standing by idly while other states have taken great strides in embracing systemic reform.
Of the 208 people who have been exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing, 23 were in New York, the third most of any state in the country. Yet the 260 years that those 23 innocent people spent in prison has not been tragic enough to move our policymakers into action.
The Innocence Project issued a report last week titled "Lessons Not Learned", calling upon the Empire State to advance both justice and safety by enacting reforms to remedy problems in the criminal justice system. According to the report, since 2000, 17 wrongfully convicted people in New York have been exonerated with DNA evidence; seven of the 17 were wrongfully convicted of murder. In 13 of the 23 wrongful convictions, eyewitness misidentification was a contributing factor; in 10 of the cases, innocent people falsely confessed or admitted to crimes that DNA later proved they did not commit; in 10 cases, a role was played by unreliable forensic science; and four cases involved informants or snitches.
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