A team of Jones Day attorneys recruited by the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project helped a seventeen-year old boy from Ghana who had been forced into involuntary servitude have his sentence vacated July 30th after being held for months for a crime he could not legally be charged for. The boy, whose name is sealed, was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor when he began a relationship with the fifteen-year old daughter of the man with whom he was living.

Twenty-eight years after he was convicted of a pair of rapes he did not commit, Arthur Lee Whitfield continues to wait. He waited in prison for twenty-two years before DNA proved his innocence and he was freed on parole. He had to wait nearly five more years until last April, when VA Gov. Tim Kaine granted him a pardon. Now a free and exonerated man, Whitfield is still waiting for the compensation that will allow him to get his life on track. In the time since he was released, Whitfield has struggled to get by. His job does not provide…

After twenty-three years behind bars for a murder he did not commit, Robert Lee Stinson was exonerated Monday when prosecutors in Milwaukee County, WI decided not to retry him for the 1984 murder of a 62-year-old woman. Stinson was first released from prison in January, when Judge Patricia McMahon vacated his sentence. However, McMahon gave prosecutors six months to retry him for the murder of Ione Cychosz. However, thanks to the work done by the attorneys at the Wisconsin Innocence Project, prosecutors decided not to pursue a new trial. 

Seven exonerees of wrongful convictions and a best-selling legal writer were among the speakers July 15 at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project’s Second Annual Awards Luncheon. John Grisham, whose book The Innocent Man has helped bring light to wrongful convictions, was the keynote speaker at the event after receiving the Champion of Justice Award. Grisham was introduced by Dennis Fritz, whose struggle for freedom was chronicled in Grisham’s book. Grisham’s speech highlighted many of the accomplishments by the innocence movement. He also stressed the need for future action, emphasizing the case of the four convicted sailors known as the Norfolk Four.…

But Will Have Limited Impact, Innocence Project Says (WASHINGTON, DC; June 18, 2009) – Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision denying post-conviction DNA testing to an Alaska prisoner is flawed and disappointing but will have a limited impact on cases across the country, according to the Innocence Project.

Thomas Haynesworth has been maintaining his innocence of a 1984 rape for nearly 25 years, and now it appears DNA may prove his case.

Beverly Monroe spent 11 years trying to prove her innocence after being convicted of a crime she did not commit.  In March of 1992, Monroe found her long time boyfriend dead with a pistol in his hand.  Because prosecutors withheld evidence showing the likely cause of death to be a suicide, Monroe was found guilty of both first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.  Monroe was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Convinced of her mother’s innocence, Monroe’s eldest child, a lawyer, quit her job and spent the next six years trying to find…

A new study published in the Virginia Law Review found that forensic experts gave flawed testimony in the trials of 82 men, including four men convicted in Virginia in the 1980s.  Brandon L. Garnett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Peter Neufeld, cofounder of the Innocence Project, examined the trial transcripts of 137 people during whose trial’s forensic experts had testified on behalf of the prosecution and who were later exonerated through testing of DNA evidence. In these 137 trials, Garnett and Neufeld found that 60 percent contained flawed forensic expert testimony. However, Garnett and…

On July 15, 2008, MAIP hosted its first annual awards luncheon.  The winner of our Champion of Justice award was former Virginia Governor Mark Warner.  MAIP honored Governor Warner for his extraordinary contribution to the cause of justice. [Click here photographs from the event]

The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project (MAIP) commends Governor Tim Kaine on his decision to grant full pardons to Arthur Lee Whitfield and Victor “Bo” Burnette.   “We are relieved that the governor recognized the need to correct the miscarriage of justice that occurred in these two men’s cases,” said Shawn Armbrust, Executive Director of MAIP.