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Why Reform Matters

Every year, systemic issues in the justice system lead to wrongful convictions, unfair trials, and a loss of trust in law enforcement and courts. Reform is not just about addressing mistakes; it’s about creating a justice system that works for everyone—fairly, transparently, and equitably.

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Key Areas for Reform

1. Transparency and Accountability:
   • Ensure law enforcement and prosecutors disclose all evidence, following the principles of Brady v. Maryland.
   • Establish independent oversight committees to investigate misconduct.
2. Protecting Defendants’ Rights:
   • Guarantee timely access to all evidence for defense teams.
   • Promote the right to competent legal representation, especially for underrepresented communities.
3. Ending Police and Prosecutorial Misconduct:
   • Mandate the use of body cameras and preserve all footage.
   • Enforce strict penalties for misconduct, such as fabricating or withholding evidence.
4. Fair Sentencing and Rehabilitation:
   • Reform sentencing guidelines to reduce disparities.
   • Emphasize rehabilitation over punitive measures to reduce recidivism.
5. Support for Victims of Wrongful Conviction:
   • Provide financial and emotional resources for exonerees to rebuild their lives.
   • Offer comprehensive support to families affected by injustice.

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How You Can Help

1. Advocate for Policy Changes:
   • Contact your local representatives to support laws promoting transparency, accountability, and fairness in the justice system.
2. Educate Others:
   • Share stories of wrongful convictions and the need for reform to raise awareness.
   • Host community events, panels, or workshops.
3. Support Organizations Leading Change:
   • Volunteer, donate, or partner with groups like The Innocence Project, Equal Justice Initiative, or local advocacy organizations.
4. Get Involved Locally:
   • Join grassroots campaigns aimed at improving justice in your community.
   • Attend city council or court meetings to hold local officials accountable.

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The Path Forward

Justice reform is a long journey, but every step matters. By supporting policies, raising awareness, and demanding accountability, we can transform the system into one that serves and protects everyone equally.

Join the movement for justice reform today. Together, we can create a fairer, more just future for all.

The Hidden Cost of Wrongful Convictions

Wrongful convictions destroy lives, separating families, causing financial ruin, and leaving lasting emotional scars. Meanwhile, real perpetrators remain free, and communities bear the burden of injustice. Beyond individuals, these cases erode trust in the justice system, emphasizing the urgent need for reform.

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Why Do Wrongful Convictions Happen?

• Police Misconduct: Fabricated evidence, biased investigations, and withheld information.
• Prosecutorial Misconduct: Misleading statements, suppression of evidence, and prioritizing convictions over truth.
• Judicial Errors: Failure to ensure fair trials and impartial processes.
• Ineffective Defense Counsel: Overburdened or underprepared attorneys unable to mount strong defenses.

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A Call for Accountability

To build a just system, we must:

• Hold police and prosecutors accountable for misconduct.
• Enforce Brady v. Maryland, ensuring all evidence is disclosed.
• Empower community oversight boards to guarantee impartial investigations.
• Advocate for stronger laws protecting defendants’ rights.

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How You Can Help

1. Educate Yourself and Others: Share stories, articles, and resources to shed light on the issue.
2. Leverage Social Media: Use platforms to amplify voices and spread awareness using hashtags like #JusticeReform and #EndWrongfulConvictions.
3. Support Reform: Back policies that promote transparency, accountability, and systemic change.
4. Engage with Organizations: Partner with groups like The Innocence Project to join the fight for justice.
5. Share Stories: Humanize the issue by spotlighting real cases of resilience and perseverance.

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Join the Fight for Justice

Your voice matters. Whether you’ve been personally affected or want to help build a better system, raising awareness is the first step toward meaningful change. Together, we can create a future where fairness, truth, and accountability define justice.

Let’s ensure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.

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For more information or to get involved, contact us or your local elected officials to take action!

https://report2024.innocenceproject.org

The Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck at Cardozo School of Law, exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing. Since its inception over two decades ago, the Innocence Project has restored liberty to hundreds of innocent people. According to the Innocence Project, mistaken eyewitness testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. More than three-quarters of wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence relied on faulty eyewitness evidence. Overturned cases also confirmed that black people were overwhelmingly more likely to be wrongfully convicted, even when facts and evidence proved they were innocent.

Flashback to 1975, well before the establishment of the Innocence Project. A seventeen-year-old Leslie Vass, a senior in high school and star basketball player, made a routine trip to his neighborhood pharmacy in Baltimore, MD to buy a newspaper for his mother. This simple trip forever altered the course of Leslies life. A delivery driver for the pharmacy identified Leslie as one of the assailants who had robbed him at gunpoint four months earlier. Based on this drivers erroneous identification, Leslie was arrested, charged as an adult, and subsequently convicted of armed robbery at a trial by judge.

In addition to the mistaken identification, Leslie knows without a doubt that he was convicted due to his race and collusion among the judge, prosecutor, and even his attorney. Leslie had the misfortune to get trapped in two of the largest contributors to wrongful convictions—his race and mistaken eyewitness testimony.

Leslie’s aspirations for graduation and a pro basketball career came to a screeching halt. Sentenced to twenty years as a first-time offender, with no prior criminal record, he was placed in the Maryland State Penitentiary, a maximum security facility. He was thrown into an environment where predators prowled for weak, unaware individuals.

Like all wrongfully convicted comrades, he never envisioned being imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. While he woke up every day to the reality of being in prison, he would not let himself fall into the prison mentality. Leslie knew he did not belong there; he had not committed the act he was accused of. He was sickened to hear other inmates brag about their crimes. He earned his high school diploma through the GED course, and enrolled in the prison’s college program, working toward a sociology degree.

Attorneys failed Leslie, and there were not yet any innocence projects or other advocacy groups for the wrongfully convicted, so it became clear to him that the only way to regain his freedom was to understand the system and laws that had robbed him of that precious freedom. His fate was in his own hands. Leslie took the paralegal training course offered at the Maryland State Penitentiary, obtained the pertinent case records concerning his case, and began to research, prepare, and submit his post-conviction motions. He became well known within the prison community as learned in law. He was instrumental in starting a legal clinic in the prison, applying his developing legal skills to assist other inmates and even prison staff.

Leslie knew that each meeting with the parole commission was futile; in order to be granted parole he would have to admit guilt and express remorse. Like so many other innocent prisoners, Leslie fell into the parole paradox—either compromise his principles and admit to a crime he didn’t do to obtain parole, or stand by his innocence and be denied parole. Leslie refused to accept responsibility for a crime he did not commit; therefore, parole was never granted.

In 1982, after seven years of imprisonment, a witness came forward with evidence that Leslie was not the robber. Leslie obtained a photo of the person actually responsible for the robbery. A ray of hope surfaced for Leslie; he sent this photo to the Baltimore Public Defenders’office in hopes of getting a new trial. Two more years passed. Finally, the delivery driver, after being shown the photo of the actual perpetrator, admitted that he wrongly identified Leslie. It boggles the mind to imagine the guilt of the delivery driver, knowing Leslie served time for almost 10 years based on his erroneous identification.

THE PARDON!

Leslie was released from prison in 1984. Then-Governor Harry Hughes wrote him a letter in August, approving his application for pardon and urging him to seek compensation for his time served. “I would like to express my sincere regret for the terrible injustice you have suffered. It must have been devastating to spend ten precious years in jail for a crime which you did not commit.” Acknowledgement of the miscarriage of justice was appreciated, but the governors words were hollow at best. At a time when Leslie should have been making connections, contributing to society, and learning valuable life lessons, he was stuck in prison, fighting for the freedom that most people take for granted.

Leslie was the first Maryland exoneree to petition the state for compensation for his years spent wrongfully imprisoned. He received $250,000 from the State of Maryland in 1987 (far less than his requested $5 million), paid in installments over eight years.

Had Leslie been released on parole, he would have qualified for support in areas such as job training, counseling, and housing assistance. Since he was released after an overturned conviction, however, there was no such support. Leslie may have been age 28 upon release from prison, but essentially he was still 17, having had ten years of a critical life phase stolen. Suspended in the adolescence mindset and trying to make up for lost years, Leslie squandered his money. Add to that a denied opportunity to learn fiscal skills, plus a lack of guidance on reentry into the world, and it was no surprise that his payout did not last.

But, at least, with a pardon from the governor and his record expunged, Leslie would be able to move on with his life, obtain employment, and reintegrate himself into society, right?

25 YEARS AND STILL NO EXPUNGMENT OF RECORD

The armed robbery conviction became a barnacle, an unwelcome parasite attached permanently to Leslie. Despite promises that the record would be expunged, the state failed to erase the erroneous conviction. Potential employers discovered this conviction during background checks, concluded that Leslie was a violent ex-con, and refused to hire him. As a result, Leslie struggled to find and keep steady employment.

Talk about adding insult to injury. Not only was Leslie wronged by the robbery conviction, but the failure of the state to rid his record was perhaps the real crime, lingering and challenging Leslie’s attempts to reclaim his life. He has carried this burden for years, fighting all the while to prove the conviction did not apply. In 1999, Leslie filed and won a lawsuit against the state of Maryland for its non-compliance in expunging his record. He received an award of $50,000, but, lo and behold, the conviction records remained, haunting Leslie to this day.

A devastating effect of this non-expungement occurred in 2004, after Leslie had made strides to reestablish his life, obtain meaningful employment, secure housing, and start a family. His estranged wife accused Leslie of stabbing her. The judge used the erroneous criminal record to deny bail, despite Leslie’s presentation of Governor Hughes’ letter and orders of expungement. Although acquitted of this stabbing charge, Leslie lost another 16 months of his life in jail pending trial. His home and possessions were gone, and his young children were forced into foster care.

“It still impacts my life. It is really hard, at my age now, to have my criminal record pop up when I try to find employment in positions for which I am trained. It is traumatic that from the age of 17 on I am still dealing with the same situation from an unlawful imprisonment case.”

ADVOCATE FOR JUSTICE

The criminal justice system failed Leslie at every turn. He was innocent, yet unable to escape the system. Despite these hurdles, Leslie refuses to let the negative experiences define his life. His goal now is to help young people avoid the life that he spent behind bars. He particularly wants the state of Maryland to stop the prosecution of youth as adults. “My passion is to have Marylands law that automatically charges juveniles as adults changed, which is what happened to me. An arrest and conviction as a juvenile will follow you for the rest of your life. I am tired of seeing youth get charged as adults when they have never had a life.”

Leslie, now age 60, refers to himself as the “Grandfather of Exonerees.” He welcomes the opportunity to convey his story, eager to help others avoid similar situations. No one could fault him for feeling angry and resentful about the injustices he has endured, but he has risen above those acrimonious emotions, using his experience as a springboard to help others. He is an activist and speaker on wrongful imprisonment with Life After Exoneration and the Mid-Atlantic Innocent Project. “I’m not bitter. I would like my case to be a stepping stone to help others. I was wronged, but my message is to stay as focused as possible. You can still achieve what you set out to do.” Exemplary thoughts from a man who has worked hard to overcome his obstacles. One only has to imagine the route his life would have taken absent his wrongful conviction.