Innocence Week in DC: March 26 - 30, 2007

Next week is "Innocence Week" at American University College of Law, where a series of lectures will provide "An Examination of Wrongful Convictions in America" (PDF). Lecture topics will include Legal Obstacles to Exoneration, where WCL crim profs, including Cynthia Jones and Angela J. Davis, will "take a critical look at the criminal justice process, both pretrial and post‐conviction, and discuss some of the legal barriers that can cause wrongful convictions and effectively prevent the exoneration of the innocent." On Tuesday, Timothy O'Toole from the DC Public Defender Service, along with Detective Jim Trainum from the Metropolitan Police Department, and Shawn Armbrust from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project will discuss the causes of wrongful conviction, including faulty eyewitness identifications and false confessions. Wednesday and Thursday's talks will feature exonerees and their stories of wrongful conviction, including that of Kirk Bloodsworth, Maryland resident who was falsely convicted of rape and later became the first death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA testing.