Cause Project
by THE REPORTERS INC
Project Details
In "Guilty Until Proven Innocent," The Reporters Inc. delves into the causes surrounding wrongful convictions by profiling cases throughout the country. We show how perjured testimony, witness misidentification, faulty medical evidence, coerced confessions, evidence tampering, police misconduct, incompetent counsel, criminal justice lapses, racial injustice, and socioeconomic disparities are just some of the many reasons how, and why, a wrongful conviction can occur.
We show how this life-destroying nightmare could easily happen to YOU, or someone you know or love–no matter how honest, upstanding and law-abiding you think you might be.
The National Registry of Exonerations lists thousands of men and women who’ve been cleared of wrongful convictions in the last 25 years. 47 percent were black and 40 percent had been incarcerated for at least ten years before their exonerations. Leaders of the Registry, a project of the University of Michigan Law School and the most comprehensive collection of exonerations in the U.S., believe the list represents just a sliver of the true number of those falsely accused and still imprisoned.
At the same time, in a 2006 opinion, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated that, at the very most, the number of wrongful felony convictions in America stands at no more than 0.027 percent.
The Reporters Inc. plans to profile at least half a dozen other wrongful conviction cases around the nation in "Guilty Until Proven Innocent."
* Mike Hansen, a Minnesota man who was wrongfully convicted of killing his infant daughter, based mainly on questionable medical expert testimony. Hansen served six years of a 14-year sentence before being exonerated by the Innocence Project. We also interviewed Hansen’s friends and family members who told us how he continues to be affected by his conviction today. Hansen suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of his ordeal.
*Audrey Edmunds, a Wisconsin stay-at-home mom who babysat for neighborhood families. Edmunds was accused of killing a child in her care based on “Shaken Baby Syndrome” theories, sentenced to 18 years, and served nearly 11 of those before the Wisconsin Innocence Project stepped in and presented new information casting doubt on Shaken Baby Syndrome. Edmunds’ conviction was overturned. Today, she’s still putting the pieces of her life back together, after being separated from her own three daughters throughout most of their childhood. Her husband divorced her midway through her prison term.
*Uriah Courtney, a San Diego man who, like Tim Cole, was also wrongfully convicted of a rape he didn’t commit. We headed to California to interview Courtney, his family, and elders of the CA Innocence Project. Courtney’s story, fortunately, has a happier ending than Cole’s because DNA evidence cleared him before he could languish and die in prison.
*The Monfils Six: This case involves a growing movement to free five men who were convicted of killing a co-worker (Tom Monfils) at a paper mill in the early 1990s. A sixth, Mike Piaskowski, was exonerated in 2001 and has been fighting to help free the others (Dale Basten, Mike Hirn, Mike Johnson, Keith Kutska and Rey Moore) ever since. Thanks to an exhaustive investigative effort by two authors who spent seven years writing a book about the convictions (The Monfils Conspiracy), new attorneys are taking a fresh look at the case and are now arguing that Monfils’ death was actually a suicide. Did police and prosecutorial tunnel vision result in the most egregious miscarriage of justice in Wisconsin history? We interviewed the lead detective and chief prosecutor in the case, Piaskowski and his family, family members of Kutska and Moore, the authors of The Monfils Conspiracy, and Tom Monfils’ brother, Cal.
*Lamont McKoy has been behind bars for 27 years in connection with a Fayetteville, North Carolina homicide during a drug deal gone wrong. Serving a life sentence, McKoy is now represented by the Duke University School of Law’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic (in Durham) in his fight to prove his innocence. We sat down for an extensive interview with McKoy inside the Sanford Correctional Center; McKoy, arrested at the age of 18, has never wavered in his claims of innocence, refused to take a plea deal, and today, at the age of 45, still stands by that declaration. Four years after McKoy’s conviction, witnesses, investigators and prosecutors involved with a different drug case in North Carolina presented evidence in federal court indicating that McKoy wasn’t actually responsible for the crime. Yet that information and testimony, which could potentially clear McKoy, has never been allowed into a state court for a hearing. The Reporters Inc. has also interviewed McKoy’s new attorney, as well as his mother, brother, son, ex-wife and others. We retraced the steps of McKoy and the victim on the night in question back in 1990, as well as those of the man federal authorities said is actually responsible for the murder.
For more information, or to see the full project proposal, contact info@thereporters.org.
Donation Deadline
Wednesday, Jan 31, 2024
Project Website
https://www.thereporters.org/project/guiltyuntilproveninnocent/ Project Location
7032 2Nd Ave S, RICHFIELD,
Minnesota 55423-3161
United States.