(UMich) Law students to work on freeing innocent inmates

[Bozita]

Source: Detroit Free Press


Law students to work on freeing innocent inmates
BY JOE SWICKARD • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • AUGUST 10, 2008

The odds will be steep, the clients reviled and the long path ahead is already marked by rejection and failure.

But that's just fine when the potential payoff is freedom and justice, said University of Michigan law professors David Moran and Bridget McCormack.

Moran and McCormack are spending the summer setting up the Michigan Innocence Clinic, a student law clinic to challenge what they believe are wrongful convictions of innocent people. They plan to be fully under way by the winter semester, and in the fall they plan to select student participants and begin reviewing potential cases.

Their model is the famed Innocence Project founded by Barry Scheck, part of O.J. Simpson's legal dream team, but with a crucial difference: Their appeals will not be based on DNA or similar scientific material. Instead, they will go after jailhouse snitches, lazy lawyers, shady cops and overlooked evidence.

Read more: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080810/NEWS06/808100403

[BlooInBloo]

1. Those with the least pull trying to help those with the least pull....

It'd be nice if those with the most pull would give it a shot.

But still, kudos to those kids.

[FreakinDJ]

2. Project Innocents over turned over 30%

of Rape cases based on DNA evidence. Many of the convicted were on "Death Row" for crimes (proven by DNA evidence) they did not commit

[Spangle]

4. What??

The DNA evidence said they weere guilty, yet they were innocent??

Please explain a little more.

[Tempest]

5. In most of the cases DNA testing wasn't available or used

Most of the Innocence Project cases were from the 1980s and early 1990s, when DNA testing wasn't widespread.

Subsequent testing proved their innocence.

www.innocenceproject.org/Content/530.php
goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-3890414_ITM

[jjr5]

3. interesting . . n/t