prisoners

Providing DNA testing and legal assistance to prisoners who may have been wrongly accused of a crime

Lrubenstein — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:07:50 -0500

The Innocence Project involves lawyers, law students, and law schools in assisting prisoners who challenge their convictions based on DNA testing of evidence.

Since the advent of forensic DNA testing in the 1980s it has become possible to draw up a genetic profile of a suspect and, in turn, exonerate wrongly convicted defendants. More than fifty people in the United States have so far been cleared through DNA analysis of their evidence and released. To aid prisoners seeking to challenge their convictions through use of such testing, members of the legal profession founded The Innocence Project, which offers legal aid to those convicted in cases where DNA testing of evidence can yield conclusive proof of innocence

Begun in 1992 at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, The Innocence Project has now been established in clinics and law schools throughout the United States, and there are two Projects in Australia as well. The programs offer free legal assistance to inmates who challenge their convictions based on DNA testing of evidence. Cases are handled primarily by law students, supervised by law school faculty, other attorneys, and clinic staff. Projects are also active in national efforts to pass new laws, implement new policies, and gather research in order to reverse and prevent wrongful convictions.

Individual Projects address other issues as well. The Cardozo program, for instance, is working with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, developing legislation that would provide statutes in every state allowing for easier access to post-conviction DNA testing of evidence when it might provide conclusive proof of innocence. The Innocence Program Northwest, a nonprofit alliance of attorneys, law school faculty, and law students at the University of Washington School of law, provides free representation to inmates who are wrongfully convicted of serious crimes, no longer have a right to counsel, and have a recognizable claim of actual innocence. Activities in the project involved reading inmate letters and questionnaires to select cases for further investigation.

The Wisconsin Innocence Project, at the University of Wisconsin, offers an academic course that explores the procedures and barriers to investigating and litigating post-conviction claims of innocence. It includes classroom sessions and representation of prisoners who have viable claims of innocence. Students examine the common errors or problems that produce wrongful convictions, the process for investigating a claim of innocence, post-conviction discovery rules, the competing interests of finality accuracy in criminal litigation, state and federal post-conviction procedures, the nature and uses of DNA and other scientific evidence, and the rules governing admissibility of such evidence.

Despite the growth of the Project in institutions throughout the country, there are often not enough resources to provide assistance to all who request it. In addition, since clients must usually pay for the DNA testing themselves, those lacking the financial resources often cannot be accepted as clients. And since the Project can at this point only aid in cases where DNA testing is relevant, many inmates are turned away even when their claims of innocence may be valid. The Project has also faced difficulties at a state and national level, encountering a reluctance to embrace DNA testing as a crucial resource in retrying cases, particularly of prisoners on death row.

For a list of Innocence Projects:
http://www.innocenceproject.org/about/other_projects.php#newyork

Making the State Pay

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:08 -0500

Making the State Pay

By Camelia Doru

Download the full notebook below.

In this notebook, we read about the efforts of the ICAR Foundation to mobilize public resources for a socially marginalized group – victims of torture. The Foundation recognized that many citizens had suffered torture during the communist regime, and created an organization to provide treatment and care to the thousands of torture survivors. While there was international support, the Foundation knew that provision of this care was actually the responsibility of the state itself. The notebook outlines ICAR’s effort to pressure the Romanian government to pay for rehabilitation of torture survivors even though it was not willing to officially assume responsibility for past abuses. In effect, ICAR forced the state to begin to fulfill its moral and legal responsibilities as laid out in international and national laws. ICAR’s story provides ideas about how to pressure a state to carry out its obligations to a socially marginalized group and compel it to take a step toward justice.

In October 1991 the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) invited me to Budapest to take part in the first inter-national symposium in Eastern Europe on "Doctors, Ethics and Torture." During this symposium I met people from all over the world, people engaged in providing medical rehabilitation to victims of torture under many different circumstances and often in politically adverse conditions. This experience, along with the support I received from IRCT colleagues, encouraged me to create a non-governmental organization in Romania to address the terrible problem of torture. I knew there would be po-litical resistance, but I also saw that I could count on professional international training, management and financial support. The ICAR Foundation was registered in April 1992. Its name commemorates the Greek mythological figure Icarus, who needed help after successfully escaping from long imprisonment and finding that his wings did not survive the heat of the sun. Our logo contains the wings as a symbolic representation of the Icarus.

We began to search for resources that would allow us to provide services for the thousands of torture survivors in Romania.Throughout the subsequent decade of work, we have found our international colleagues and donors to be crucial. The treatment and care of torture survivors, however, should not depend on the interna-tional community. We believe that this work is the moral and political responsibility of the state itself. What I will describe in this notebook is our long-term strategy to pressure and persuade Romanian local and central governments to start accepting this responsibility.

We opened our first center in 1993 with only three doctors, two supporting staff, and a budget of US$20,000. We saw 85 clients, and our private and international supporters covered all expenses. In 1994 and 1995 our attempts to mobilize public resources began to succeed as we convinced local government officials to provide premises for our operations; we now estimate the value of this local government contribution at over US$100,000 per year. More recently we also obtained government support in prescribing free medicines for our clients – a public contribution worth over US$150,000 per year. By 2002, the ICAR Foundation had grown to three centers with a staff of more than 50. We provide services for 2,000 clients and receive annual international contributions of US$300,000.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

International Monitoring Bodies

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:05 -0500

International Monitoring Bodies

by Paul Mageean

Download full notebook below.

In this notebook, we discover how the Committee on the Administration of Justice succeeded in raising the issue of human rights abuses in Northern Ireland at the international level and, by doing so, brought about significant improvements in human rights conditions. This was accomplished through CAJ’s utilisation of the Committee Against Torture–one of the mechanisms available through the United Nations for monitoring governments that have signed international conventions. In order to use these international mechanisms effectively, a number of supporting tactics were necessary, including writing submissions to the Committee, lobbying in Geneva and monitoring the implementation and impact that the reports and recommendations of Committee Against Torture have had on Northern Ireland in terms of actually improving the human rights situation on the ground. International mechanisms can be a powerful and effective tool for human rights organisations to leverage for change, especially when they have encountered significant obstacles and opposition at the local and national level.

There has been a violent political conflict in Northern Ireland since 1969. The conflict involves three sets of protagonists: the Irish Republican Army and other republican groups that want Northern Ireland to unite with the rest of Ireland; loyalist groups that want Northern Ireland to remain within the UK; and the state. From the beginning of the conflict the forces of the state have been involved in human rights abuses. A key aspect of the human rights abuse has involved allegations of ill-treatment of those in custody. This notebook will outline how the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) was able to successfully utilise the United Nations Committee Against Torture to pressure the UK not only to address the allegations of ill-treatment of those in custody but also to establish mechanisms and standards ensuring protection for the accused and accountability of state actors.

The Committee on the Administration of Justice, the foremost human rights organisation operating in Northern Ireland, had long been concerned with the rights of those in detention. Concerns about the use and abuse of emergency law gave rise to our establishment in 1981. We had devised a set of recommendations to guarantee the rights of those arrested by the police and particularly those held in the detention centres. These proposals included suggestions that interviews be recorded electronically, that lawyers be permitted to be present during the interviews, that there be an independent system of monitoring the detention process, that those detained be brought before a judge or released after a shorter period than seven days and that there be independent investigation of complaints of ill-treatment. These proposals were strongly resisted by the government and the police, who maintained that the exceptional powers granted by the emergency legislation were necessary to deal effectively with those suspected of paramilitary activity. Both the government and police denied that any abuse was taking place even though those who alleged ill-treatment and were released without charge by the police often successfully sued for damages. In addition, it was difficult to get media coverage of the issue because at the height of the conflict much of the media was reluctant to give extensive coverage to allegations of this nature.

We needed to devise a response to this problem that would be effective in terms of improving the situation of those arrested under the emergency laws but would also trigger such a significant news story that the media could not avoid covering it. It became increasingly clear that this response could not be generated internally in Northern Ireland. Although we were still a relatively young NGO (having hired our first staff members in 1985), we had begun to think in terms of the boomerang theory. We were therefore increasingly alive to the possibility of exposing what was going on in the detention centres before an international audience to shed light on the situation from outside the country, which would demand accountability and a response from the government. It was clear to us that, on our own, we were not going to achieve our goal of ending the ill-treatment. We were not able to cultivate media interest in the issue–certainly not in Britain, where the key policy-makers were based. It was also the case that many simply disbelieved what we were saying. It is, of course, often the case that in a society in conflict human rights activists are disbelieved and dismissed as being partisan.

This was a phenomenon not exclusive to Northern Ireland, but it did create problems for the credibility of what we were alleging and weakened our chances of creating the necessary momentum to improve the situation. We therefore needed to find a tactic that would address these weaknesses by raising the profile of the issue both internationally and domestically, also lending credibility to what we, as a small NGO in Northern Ireland, were saying. We were fortunate to have a number of academic lawyers familiar with United Nations mechanisms on our executive committee. One of them suggested the use of the Committee Against Torture or CAT (referred to as "the Committee" for the remainder of this notebook). At this stage, we had not accessed any of the international mechanisms at the UN level designed to protect human rights.

The UK signed the Convention Against Torture in 1985 and ratified it in 1988, becoming thereafter subject to the reporting procedures of the Committee Against Torture. Essentially, this meant that the UK had to report periodically to the Committee about the extent to which the Convention was being respected in the UK. The UK must submit each report in written form to the Committee, which then holds a hearing on matters addressed in the report and questions UK representatives. The hearings take place in Geneva. Generally the Committee runs on a three-year cycle, but fortuitously for us, the UK was to be examined by the Committee for the first time in 1991. We consulted with our colleagues in international NGOs to assist us in using this UN mechanism when the UK had to appear before the Committee. We have subsequently been able to utilise such UN mechanisms with increasing success and the Committee Against Torture has been particularly instrumental in pressuring the state to implement actions long-recommended by CAJ.

These examinations by the Committee would have occurred with or without interventions from us. However, the Committee, like other UN human rights mechanisms, tends to rely on NGOs and others to provide it with credible information on which to base its questioning of the country involved. The previous recommendations from the Committee tend to set the parameters for each subsequent examination, so it was important for us to persuade the Committee to pay attention to the issues we wanted highlighted. This was particularly the case in 1991, as it was the first time that the UK had been examined. Increasingly, and certainly in 1998, the Committee would start the session by asking for information on what the state had done to meet the concerns highlighted by the Committee on the previous occasion. The UK has not been examined since 1998, although we anticipate an examination will be forthcoming again in the near future.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.