Thank you for supporting the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project’s Second Annual Awards Luncheon.  Your help enables us to more effectively provide critical investigative and legal services to prisoners in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia who otherwise would have no one to help them prove their innocence. In the near future we will mail you an acknowledgment letter thanking you for your donation.  This letter can be used as a receipt for tax purposes. Thank you again for your invaluable financial support.  I know the prisoners who write to us every day are as grateful for your generosity as we…

The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project (MAIP) has lent its support to the District of Columbia’s proposed Eyewitness Identification and Procedures Act of 2008. The act, which is intended to help prevent wrongful convictions, would require DC Police to use double-blind, sequential identification procedures. Under these procedures, photo arrays and live lineups are conducted by police officers who do not know which participant is the suspect under investigation. In addition, potential suspects are shown to the witness one at a time, rather than grouped together. "The existing safeguards, [such as] tenacious defense attorneys, careful prosecutors, [and] thorough courts…are not sufficient to prevent…

On October 16, 2008, James L. Owens became the seventh man in Maryland history to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Owens served more than 20 years for the brutal stabbing and strangling of a 24-year-old woman from Southeast Baltimore. At his 1988 trial, the prosecution alleged that Owens and another man, James Thompson, had attempted to burglarize the home of victim Colleen Williar. Thompson testified that he was present when Owens raped and murdered Williar in her bed. While Owens was never found guilty of rape, he was convicted of the murder. He became the first man to be sentenced under Maryland’s life…

Dr. Gary Wells, a distinguished Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University, is a leading researcher in the field of eyewitness memory.  Dr. Wells has authored over 170 articles and chapters and two books, with most of his work focused on the reliability of eyewitness identification.  Much of his research has been focused specifically on police procedures that affect the reliability of eyewitness identifications. Below is Dr. Wells' testimony in support of an Eyewitness Identification Bill proposed to the DC City Council in 2004.  The hearing took place on November 15, 2004, and the entire hearing is available here, in…

            Many of you attended our First Annual Awards Luncheon and heard exonoree Marvin Anderson and former Virginia Governor Mark Warner speak about the ongoing project in Virginia to perform post-conviction DNA testing in nearly 1,000 old cases.  During Warner's tenure in office, five innocent men were cleared of rape charges based on DNA evidence that had unexpectedly been saved in files kept by the Virginia Department of Forensic Science (DFS).  In 2005, Gov. Warner made history when he ordered DFS to perform post-conviction DNA testing in every case in which such evidence had been saved.              Since that time,…

MAIP is proud to announce that on August 5, 2008, Aaron Michael Howard walked out of prison as a free man for the first time in nearly twenty years.  New evidence uncovered by Howard's attorneys – led by MAIP Board Member Seth Rosenthal – disproved the eyewitness testimony used to convict Howard at trial and established Howard's innocence of the 1988 murder of Bobby Parker in the District of Columbia.  With the pro bono resources of Rosenthal's firm, Venable LLP, and additional financial support from MAIP, Rosenthal obtained affidavits from Howard's co-defendants that cleared him of any blame.  The new…