![\"\"](\"http:\/\/change-production.s3.amazonaws.com\/photos\/wordpress_copies\/criminaljustice\/2009\/12\/marshall1.jpg\" "\\"marshall1\\"")
Two men walked out of prison yesterday across the country from one another, both victims of wrongful convictions. Their cases are quite different, but both shed light on a broken system that continues to incarcerate countless innocent people.<\/p>\nTwo men walked out of prison yesterday across the country from one another, both victims of wrongful convictions. Their cases are quite different, but both shed light on a broken system that continues to incarcerate countless innocent people.<\/p>\n
Donald Eugene Gates was freed in Arizona yesterday<\/a> after 28 years in federal prisons for a 1981 Washington, D.C., murder that DNA now shows he didn’t commit. He was convicted based largely on the testimony of an FBI forensic analyst whose work was later discredited. The analyst testified that hairs from the crime scene were “microscopically indistinguishable” from Gates’ hairs — a gross exaggeration of the possibilities of hair science.<\/p>\n In Georgia, Michael Marshall was freed yesterday<\/a> after serving two years in prison for a 2007 carjacking, based on DNA tests obtained by the Georgia Innocence Project showing that items left by the perpetrator did not belong to Marshall. The most disturbing part of Marshall’s case is that the items that now proved his innocence were available before his conviction, but nobody chose to test them. He pled guilty to the crime he didn’t commit “out of being scared,” he wrote to the Georgia Innocence Project. (Marshall is pictured at left leaving the courthouse yesterday with Georgia Innocence Project Intern Christina Rupp)<\/p>\n These two exonerations are bittersweet — two men are free for the holidays and their wrongful incarcerations have come to an end, but their freedom came with an immense cost. And they aren’t alone.\u00a0 Their exonerations demonstrate exactly why wrongful convictions are so common — and why they’ll continue if we don’t address the causes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gates was convicted based on bad forensics, a cause of more than half<\/a> of the 246 wrongful convictions overturned through DNA testing to date. There is momentum for federal forensic reform<\/a> in 2010, and these measures are absolutely vital to ensure that wrongful convictions based on bad science don’t continue and that labs are using the best technology possible to support our criminal justice system.<\/p>\n Forensic reform may also have prevented Marshall’s wrongful conviction, as better training and increased capacity for forensic tests may have allowed for testing before he was sent to prison. He was also convicted based on highly unreliable eyewitness identification procedures — a composite sketch, a particularly unreliable witness testimony and a suggestive “show up” identification, a type of police procedures in which the victim views the perpetrator in person, often in handcuffs or at the crime scene.<\/p>\n Seven people have been exonerated through DNA testing in Georgia before Marshall, and all seven were convicted based on eyewitness misidentifications. He was convicted in 2007, when we should have known very well the problems with misidentification — all the more reason to conduct DNA tests before his conviction. Reforms to lineup procedures<\/a> are badly needed in Georgia and across the country to prevent more cases like this.<\/p>\n The cases of Gates and Marshall should be a wake-up call for reform. But for now, I’m happy that these two men are home.<\/p>\n Views expressed here are mine only and don’t represent any organization.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two men walked out of prison yesterday across the country from one another, both victims of wrongful convictions. Their cases are quite different, but both shed light on a broken system that continues to incarcerate countless innocent people. Donald Eugene Gates was freed in Arizona yesterday after 28 years in federal prisons for a 1981 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}