How Attorneys Can Utilize Social Workers in Exonerating a Wrongly Convicted Person
Since 1989, 390 people have been exonerated in Texas; 356 in Illinois; 307 in New York; 229 in California; and a total of 2,754 in the entire country, say Christine M. Sarteschi, associate professor of social work and criminology at Chatham University, and Daniel Pollack, attorney and professor at Yeshiva University's School of Social Work.
March 31, 2021 at 11:28 PM
5 minute read
Thanks to some high-profile cases—Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the Central Park Five, Steven Avery (Netflix original documentary series, "Making a Murderer")—the term "exonerated" is now a well-known expression. Since 1989, 390 people have been exonerated in Texas; 356 in Illinois; 307 in New York; 229 in California; and a total of 2,754 in the entire country.
Being accused of a crime is humiliating. Being wrongfully convicted and incarcerated, often for years, is incomparably worse. From a legal perspective, to be exonerated is to be completely cleared of the charges for which a person was convicted. Often this is accomplished by using DNA profiling of biological material obtained at crime scenes and matching those samples against a DNA database overseen by the government. Now a widespread forensic practice in many jurisdictions, such DNA testing has helped many wrongly convicted people prove their innocence and allowed them to seek exoneration. The Innocence Project and other organizations assist people who may have been wrongfully convicted by using DNA and other evidence.
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