Innocence Week, held from March 26-30 at the Washington College of Law, was a great success.  In the course of the week, MAIP sponsored four lunchtime panel discussions about innocence issues.  On Monday, three Washington College of Law professors spoke about some of the legal obstacles to exonerations.  On Tuesday, we heard from DC Metropolitan Police Department Detective Jim Trainum, who spoke about false confessions and how easy they can be for police officers to obtain.  We also heard from Tim O'Toole, an expert in the causes of misidentifications by eyewitnesses to crimes.  On Wednesday, we were privileged to meet with Kirk Bloodsworth, a former Maryland death row inmate who was freed by DNA testing that proved he did not commit the rape and murder of which he was convicted.  Finally, on Thursday, we heard from Dennis Fritz and Marvin Anderson, two exonerees who shared their stories of what it was like to be convicted of terrible crimes that they did not commit.  The week culminated in two performances of the acclaimed play The Exonerated.  All of the lunchtime panels are available by podcast.  From www.wcl.american.edu/podcasts, click on "Washington College of Law Podcast" and then enter the search term "innocence."  You can then choose to download, stream, or e-mail any of the four presentations.   

Technorati Tags:

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 11:04 am and is filed under MAIP News, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.