On March 13th, as Georgia was undertaking dramatic steps to stem the tide of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Georgia Supreme Court issued an excellent decision affirming that GIP/SCHR client Johnny Lee Gates is entitled to a new trial after 43 years in prison (26 on death row). Now, with prison transport all but canceled […]
Thanks for Coach Pierce and the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks! Atlanta Hawks Head Coach Lloyd Pierce is passionate about correcting and preventing wrongful convictions. So he and the Atlanta Hawks have partnered with Georgia Innocence Project to raise awareness about wrongful convictions in Georgia. They’ve created co-branded Hawks-GIP merchandise to help spread the word and financially […]
TODAY, Wednesday, October 2nd, is Wrongful Conviction Day – the annual international observance dedicated to ending wrongful convictions and highlighting the plight of those convicted of crimes they did not commit. Georgia Innocence Project and the Innocence Network urge you to help raise awareness about the causes and consequences of wrongful convictions on this important […]
Thanks for TEN. Because of your wonderful generosity, GIP now has TEN employees – including two new staff attorneys and an investigator! And just this week, we welcomed TEN new members onto our Board of Directors. We are a strong and dedicated team fighting to free the imprisoned innocent. Thanks for appellate review and fair […]
To most Americans, the scene is a familiar one: a person walks down the austere stone steps of a courthouse or through the gates of a prison, flanked by a team of triumphant attorneys, met by a scrum of reporters. These people have just been exonerated of crimes that they did not commit, crimes for […]
When The State Loses Or Destroys Key Evidence… This week’s Undisclosed episode – “Mix Tape” – focuses on lost evidence in the case of GIP client Dennis Perry. Susan and Colin describe the litany of evidence the State apparently lost in the fifteen years between the original investigation and Dennis Perry’s trial: original, never-transcribed audio […]
What did you learn about wrongful convictions and innocence work throughout the course of your Spring 2018 internship at GIP? I learned that the process of freeing an innocent person takes a long time and DNA technology has come a long way. Now, we have DNA testing that can help jurors reach accurate verdicts at trial. […]
RACE AND WRONGFUL CONVICTION Muscogee County prosecutor’s tally of jurors’ race in late 1970s death penalty trial.
Today, October 2nd is Wrongful Conviction Day, a day to spread awareness about the causes of false convictions and to honor the innocent men and women who have lost years behind bars on crimes they did not commit. WHAT CAUSES WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS? Studies estimate that there are a minimum of 2,500 innocent men and […]
From inadvertent error to reckless conduct to outright disregard for the defendant’s due process rights, prosecutorial misconduct permeates our criminal justice system to an alarming degree. The National Registry of Exonerations recently pointed to a record high number of cases involving government misconduct in 2016 (70 out of 166, or 42%), the most common of […]