Exonerated in 2010: How DNA and New Evidence Freed 5 Wrongly Accused Black Men

Although the justice system is designed to err on the side of caution,the system is not perfect. That means that for every load of court cases that produce correct verdicts, there is a case which deems an innocent person guilty.  It’s a high cost to pay for those who find their lives and futures victimized by bad lawyering, evidence tampering, false testimony or misled jurors. Studies have reported that between 2.3 percent and 5 percent of all prisoners are innocent and The Innocence Project has made restoring the lives of the wrongly accused its business. The national litigation and public policy organization uses DNA testing to re-open the cases of prisoners who stand by their innocence. To date, they’ve had hundreds of successes. According to their website, there have been 261 post-conviction DNA exonerations in United States history. We turned to the Innocence Project to discover some of the more notable exoneration cases of African Americans in 2010. The following 5 stories represent resilience on the part of the victims and the hope provided by organizations like The Innocence Project in strengthening the justice system.

Continued at The Atlanta Post