Here’s a neat YouTube video featuring both the National Registry of Exonerations and the Center for Prosecutor Integrity.
See the YouTube video here.
Editorial comment: The video praises the recent creation of “conviction integrity units” within prosecutors’ offices. These have received much good press in general. We can only applaud the effort and the results so far. After all, the correction of a wrongful conviction is the correction of a wrongful conviction. However, I remain skeptical. My view is that the CIU’s are cherry picking the easy, obvious cases, and what will happen when they start to run out of these? I also believe that the CIU’s are being established driven by political expediency, not some fundamental desire to serve true justice. When the CIU’s start to be dismantled, I suspect there will be very little, if any, publicity about that.
Thank you Phil. I can see the conflict with the high success rate of these programs and the incredibly slow movement towards adopting these programs. Essentially we are tasking the DA’s with self-review and monitoring; admitting error or intentional act. We are working towards legislative reform here in MA. We are just waiting for the draft, now with co-sponsorship to be assigned a bill number and away we go! Stay tuned!