Nebraska Innocence Project

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The Nebraska Innocence Project was a member organization Nebraska-based chapter of a U.S non-profit organization called the Innocence Project, located in Omaha, Nebraska. [1] In 2019, the Nebraska Innocence Project folded into the Midwest Innocence Project. The Midwest Innocence Project's mission is to educate about, advocate for, and obtain and support the exoneration and release of wrongfully convicted people in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. The Nebraska chapter was founded in 2005 by a group of volunteers who were inspired by the work of Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, founders of the Innocence Project in 1992. The Midwest Innocence Project (MIP) was founded in 2001 through the UMKC School of Law and is also part of the national Innocence Network.

Contents

Founding

A group of volunteers including an Iowa attorney formed the Iowa/Nebraska Innocence Project in 2005 after meeting the founders of the Innocence Project, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, and several exonerated people at a national conference. Their goal was to form a local version of the project. By 2007 the Iowa/Nebraska Innocent Project became the Nebraska Innocence Project. The organization is part of the Innocence Network, which is a group of 40 innocence projects across the nation, all working to provide accessible information, consultation on cases, and media resources pro-bono. [2]

Work

The Nebraska Innocence Project works primarily with cases involving DNA testing. According to the New York Innocence Project, more than 75% of people who have been exonerated in the United States through DNA testing, have served in prison on the basis of faulty eyewitness accounts. [3] Meanwhile, a recent change to Nebraska state law will allow the project to look at cases not involving DNA such as arson cases, Shaken Baby Syndrome, bite marks, and shoe print-analysis. [4] The Nebraska Innocence Project relies on the work of volunteers and essentially works without a budget. A partnership between the Nebraska chapter and the Midwest Innocence Project, which launched in October 2015, allows Nebraska to take advantage of the Midwest Innocence Project's paid administration, which they intend to do by hiring a paid legal director. [5] To exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners, the Nebraska Innocence Project sends requests to the Midwest Innocence Project, based in Kansas City, Missouri who prepares the cases and sends them back to Nebraska for investigation and possible litigation. [4] Legal director, Tricia Bushnell assists the Nebraska chapter by organizing cases and finding experts who could help the case. [4]

Notable Cases

Beatrice 6

Commonly referred to the Beatrice 6, a 1985 case in Gage County involved the rape and murder of 68-year-old woman, Helen Wilson, in her apartment. Six people, three men and three women were found guilty of committing the crime. [6] After surfacing evidence that their conviction was based on coerced confessions and the malpractice of forensics, DNA testing of the original evidence proved their innocence. [7] The DNA evidence was the first to be used as means to exonerate someone in the state of Nebraska. [7] The six were awarded between $35,000-$500,00 by the state of Nebraska for their wrongful conviction under the Wrongful Conviction Act.

Juneal Pratt

In 1975 Juneal Pratt was convicted of rape, sexual assault and robbery of two sisters from Iowa in an Omaha motel. At 19 he was arrested and was picked from a lineup by the two sisters months later despite witnesses who claimed he was at home at the time of the crime. He was sentenced to 32 to 90 years in prison. [3] Pratt has since maintained his innocence and requested DNA testing after a 2001 Nebraska law was passed that allows convicted felons to request DNA testing of preserved evidence if such technology was unavailable during their trial.

Executive Board

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miscarriage of justice</span> Conviction of a person for a crime that they did not commit

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Scheck</span> American attorney and legal scholar (born 1949)

Barry Charles Scheck is an American attorney and legal scholar. He received national media attention while serving on O. J. Simpson's defense team, collectively dubbed the "Dream Team", helping to win an acquittal in the highly publicized murder case. Scheck is the director of the Innocence Project and a professor at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Neufeld</span> American attorney and entrepreneur

Peter J. Neufeld is an American attorney, co-founder, with Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, and a founding partner in the civil rights law firm Neufeld Scheck & Brustin. Starting from his earliest years as an attorney representing clients at New York's Legal Aid Society, and teaching trial advocacy at Fordham School of Law from 1988 to 1991, he has focused on civil rights and the intersection of science and criminal justice.

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Douglas Echols was convicted in a 1986 rape case. In 2002, his charges were finally cleared through DNA testing after he served over five years in prison. In 2005, a resolution was introduced in the Georgia Assembly by Representatives Tom Bordeaux and Chuck Sims requesting $1.6 million as compensation for his incarceration; however, the resolution was not approved.

The Innocence Project is a television drama series created by BBC Northern Ireland and first broadcast on BBC One on 9 November 2006. The series follows the work of Professor Jon Ford, who sets up The Innocence Project, peopled entirely by a hand-picked group of law students. They take on cases pro bono that no one else will handle, or those that have been forgotten or given up on, working for clients that would otherwise have no hope, and who have possibly been wrongly convicted. The series is based on a British version of the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic in the United States.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.

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Cornelius Dupree Jr. is an American who was declared innocent of a 1980 conviction for aggravated robbery, which was alleged to have been committed during a rape in 1979. He was paroled in July 2010 after serving 30 years of a 75-year prison sentence in Texas. Prosecutors cleared him of the crime after a test of his DNA profile did not match traces of semen evidence from the case. Dupree, who was represented by the Innocence Project, spent more time in prison in Texas than any other inmate who was eventually exonerated by DNA evidence.

The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the University of Michigan Law School, Michigan State University College of Law and the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society. The Registry was co-founded in 2012 with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law to provide detailed information about known exonerations in the United States since 1989. As of February 6, 2020, the Registry has 2,551 known exonerations in the United States since 1989. The National Registry does not include more than 1,800 defendants cleared in 15 large-scale police scandals that came to light between 1989 and March 7, 2017, in which officers systematically framed innocent defendants.

Thomas Haynesworth is a resident of Richmond, Virginia, who served 27 years in state prison as a result of four wrongful convictions for crimes for which he was exonerated in 2011.

The Beatrice Six are Joseph White, Thomas Winslow, Ada JoAnn Taylor, Debra Shelden, James Dean and Kathy Gonzalez, who were falsely found guilty in 1989 of the 1985 rape and murder of Helen Wilson in Beatrice, Nebraska and served prison terms before being exonerated in 2009.

The Illinois Innocence Project, a member of the national Innocence Project network, is a non-profit legal organization that works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people and reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Semanchik</span> American wrongful conviction advocate

Michael "Mike" Semanchik is Managing Attorney at the California Innocence Project (CIP). As part of his work with CIP, he has been involved in many cases involving the exoneration of previously convicted prisoners, working closely with the organization's director, Justin Brooks, and also preparing petitions for many of CIP's clients. After working at CIP while still a law student at California Western School of Law, following graduation in 2010 he became an investigator and then a staff attorney there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Clutter</span> American wrongful conviction advocate

Bill Clutter is an American private investigator, wrongful conviction advocate, and author. He is the co-founder of the Illinois Innocence Project and founder of the national wrongful conviction organization Investigating Innocence. His work on the Donaldson v. Central Illinois Public Service Company case led him to write the book Coal Tar: How Corrupt Politics and Corporate Greed Are Killing America's Children, which is the story of an epidemic of neuroblastoma in Taylorville, IL caused by exposure to coal tar.

References

  1. ↑ "Alphabetical listing of all Innocence Network member organizations". The Innocence Network. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
  2. ↑ "Innocence Project". Innocence Project. Nebraska Innocence Project. Retrieved March 16, 2016.
  3. 1 2 Beck, Margery (February 21, 2014). "DNA testing ordered in 40-year-old Omaha rape case". Lincoln Journal Star. Retrieved March 16, 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Pilger, Lori (October 1, 2015). "Nebraska Innocence Project to hire staff attorney". Lincoln Journal Star . Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  5. ↑ Hammel, Paul (15 October 2015). "Nebraska Innocence Project merges with regional group, plans to hire first paid legal director". Omaha.com. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
  6. ↑ Pilger, Lori (January 30, 2014). "Judge grants mistrial in Beatrice 6 case". Lincoln Journal Star . Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  7. 1 2 Kelly, Bill (May 8, 2015). "Beatrice 6 Damage Claim Case Returns to Federal Court". Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) . Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  8. ↑ Duggan, Joe (January 5, 2016). "Nebraska lawmaker wants to standardize practices on police photo lineups". Omaha.com. Retrieved March 16, 2016.
  9. ↑ Zalman, Marvin; Carrano, Julia (2014). Wrongful Conviction and Criminal Justice Reform: Making Justice. New York, NY: Routledge. p. 322. ISBN   978-0-415-81463-8.
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