Yesterday, exoneree and GIP Board member Jimmie C. Gardner met with GIP’s most recent exoneree, Kerry Robinson!

Jimmie was exonerated in April 2016 after 27 years of wrongful conviction, and Kerry was just exonerated last week after nearly 18 years of wrongful conviction.

We know their meeting was undoubtedly bittersweet considering their shared experiences as wrongfully convicted men, but we are so excited to welcome Kerry into our exoneree family!

Yesterday, our friends at the Wisconsin Innocence Project and Atlanta colleagues—including GIP Board Member Anna Halsey—argued before the Supreme Court of Georgia in an appeal on behalf of Ashley and Albert Debelbot, two young U.S. Army veterans wrongfully convicted in the 2008 death of their newborn daughter in Columbus, Georgia.

At Tuesday’s oral argument, the Debelbots’ attorney argued ineffective assistance of counsel for the trial lawyers’ failure to present alternate explanations for the child's death, and for failure of counsel to object to the Muscogee County prosecutor’s closing argument that, in order to convict the parents, and that “You (the jury) don’t [even] have to be 51% sure” that the Debelbots’ committed murder to find them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The Debelbots’ current lawyers also argued that the superior court judge wrongly applied legal standards to the medical evidence presented at the motions for new trial hearing, and that the Muscogee County District Attorney’s Office unlawfully suppressed CT scans of the child, which would have been favorable to the Debelbots’.

The Georgia Attorney General's Office through Paula K. Smith and Muscogee County District Attorney Julia Slater represent the State. Ashley and Albert Debelbot are serving life sentences for murder. They have been in prison for 11 years, and counting.

(Photo Courtesy of ALM Media)