May 2018 Bar bulletin
By Rory O’Sullivan
For more than 25 years, the Innocence Project has been shedding light on systemic failures of the U.S. criminal justice system. The authors of the Bill of Rights in the 1780s and 1790s enumerated more than a dozen specific protections for criminal defendants, including the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, the right to confront witnesses, and the right to assistance of counsel. And yet, despite all these protections, more than 2,100 people have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1989 after being wrongly convicted. Advocates at Innocence Project programs around the country have been working...