There’s so much that’s memorable about it. You get this kind of an assignment, and of course you start reading the transcripts and the case and you think, ‘This can’t be happening. There must be something more here.’ And then you go and you meet the person, and you don’t know what to expect. In our case, we got to meet Mr. Bell, and any preconception I had was just right out the window. He was a very open and motivated and positive person after being in jail for 19 years, and he still had a real belief in people in a wonderfully human way.

The more we learned and the more we knew, we not only wanted to get involved but we felt we had to get involved. We worked on the case for over a year, almost a year and a half. And it was incredibly fulfilling and a very powerful experience. But it’s also a very weighty responsibility, knowing that it’s a real person in there, and that they’re counting on you—and that’s very important. You care more because it’s a real person’s freedom. It’s not about money; it’s not about a claim. It’s about someone’s freedom. It’s about someone’s life.

The system is set up so that there are going to be mistakes. Everyone thinks everyone is guilty. But I don’t want to get into blaming people or anything like that—everyone is working as fast and as hard as they can. And I think it’s important to say that I saw a lot of people trying hard to do the right thing. That said, there are gaps, there are holes, and we have to acknowledge that as well. You can see it in Mr. Bell’s case. This is somebody that from the beginning pled his innocence, and it was a case that relied on just one eyewitness. And as we know, eyewitness testimony is often questionable, or at least should be questioned.

The system has to be willing to look and say, ‘Ok, some mistakes do happen,’ but it’s hard—what do you do? I just think you have to ask yourself, ‘Is that ok?’ And if it is ok, let’s create some relief valves so for those cases where it looks like some mistake was made.
I also recognize that we don’t want to have a zillion appeals and there will be people who throw up appeal after appeal who are guilty, but how do you create some manner where you can open this up? We had over a year to read transcripts, let them sit with us, talk to people, and put the pieces together, and then go back, and for the first time, really create a full picture, and one things leads to the next, leads to the next. But if you don’t have a lot of resources and a lot of time, that’s a very hard thing to do. How many Mr. Bells are there who aren’t so lucky? If it was you, you’d want some way of being heard.

There are ways [to fix the system] but you’re talking about a fundamental shift in the system where there’s more time and resources put into defense work at the beginning so people can look into things. From the other side, the police, the prosecutors, everyone’s working fast; everyone’s got a big workload and everyone’s moving with the belief that we’re getting it right most of the time, the vast majority of the time. The system speeds itself, but there are those who get wrapped in that that shouldn’t be, and don’t have the money or the resources to fix it.

As I say to everyone, if you have a business and you have a 90 to 95 percent success rate, you think, ‘Wow, I’m doing great.’ But when you’re talking about criminal law, and people have been wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted, anything less than 100 percent isn’t enough.