Thousands of people have been prosecuted and convicted in the past 32 years of crimes they did not commit, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
“The damage caused by these wrongful convictions is immeasurable,” the May 19 story stated. “Lives have been crushed, families ruined, millions upon millions of dollars in compensation paid out. Often the real culprit is never pursued.”
“There have been at least 2,770 exonerations in the United States since 1989 and more than 25,000 years lost by incarcerated prisoners who were ultimately exonerated,” the article said.
Attorneys general aligned with these cases did not evaluate wrongfulness on the part of their subordinates..
The story reports that the Northern California Innocence Project and Karyn Sinunu-Towery, a retired prosecutor, fought for the exoneration of Rick Walker and Jeremy Puckett.
Growing movement among district attorneys to establish Conviction Integrity Units, examine thousands of cases of wrongful imprisonment
Both men had a witness give false testimony for governmental benefits. In both cases there were governmental errors and faulty medical evidence never investigated.
Walker spent 12 years in prison and Puckett spent 19 years in prison. Both men were Bay Area residents falsely convicted of murder.
Sinunu-Towery stated that faulty medical data, unreadable identification and underhanded deals with a witness convicted an innocent man.
Sacramento County, and many other counties in California, has refused to publicly and internally dissect wrongful convictions, the story said.
The Northern California Innocence Project has assisted in many exonerated cases over the past few decades. Its work has inspired a few elected prosecutors to open conviction integrity units.
Conviction integrity units are similar to innocence project organizations. Their agenda is to examine false imprisonment allegations transparently.
