Announcer: The views and opinions expressed in to the point are those of the hosted, the program and its guests.

They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of WGTE Public media.

Doni: Imagine being charged with a crime that you know you did not commit.

Then imagine spending the next four decades in prison for the commission of that crime.

That's the story of Malcolm Alexander.

Or consider Mohamed Aziz and Khalil Islam, both wrongfully incarcerated for the murder of Malcolm X, both spending more than 60 years in prison.

Mr. Islam died in prison fighting for his freedom.

Since its creation in 2012, the National Registry of Exoneration has been able to document more than 3000 wrongful convictions.

Unthinkable, but true.

Join me as I discuss the topic of wrongful convictions with Kristen Blowchowski and Jennifer Ziegler from Lourdes University today.

Until the point.

Connect with us on our social media pages.

As you know, you can always email me at doni _miller@wgte.org for this episode and other additional extras.

Don't hesitate to go to wgte.org/To the point.

I am excited to talk about an issue today that everyone should be concerned about.

Everyone who is concerned about justice in this country, concerned about the Constitution of the United States, needs to be concerned about the issue of wrongful convictions.

With me this morning are Kristen Blowchowski, who is an assistant professor of criminal and social justice at Lourdes University.

And also Jessica Ziegler, who is the program director of criminal and Social Justice at Lourdes University.

Welcome.

Welcome to both of you.

Welcome back.

Good to see you again.

You know, all the great stuff, I got to tell you, all the great social issues I'm going to call you for.

So I was stunned.

And I consider myself a student of social justice issues and all of those issues that have to do with what's good and fair and honest and true for the rights of human beings on this planet.

And I was absolutely stunned at the numbers related to wrongful convictions.

Tell us a little bit about the problem, Kristen.

Well.

Kristin: We at at Lourdes, since we focus on social justice, along with the criminal justice aspect, the students got very interested in finding the problems in the system and wrongful convictions is one that really isn't talked about very much.

Right.

So when we began looking at the extent of the problem, it's much more severe than you would think.

We when they're freshmen, we talk about, which is worse, letting 100 guilty people go free or having one innocent person in prison.

And the goal is that they say it's worse to have that one innocent person imprisoned because we're all about individual rights.

Doni: What is this country?

Kristin: Interestingly, you know, most of them do sway.

We talk about safety and rights and those are always balanced in our society.

And nine out of ten say the rights and that the one innocent person is worse than 100.

That's a quote by Ben Franklin And Blackstone's ratio.

But yeah, that's that's the the point of our whole system is innocent until proven guilty.

And unfortunately, we prove people guilty who aren't factually guilty quite frequently.

Doni: Yeah.

Why do you think that happens?

Jessica: There are a whole number of reasons why it happens, and I think that's one of the great things about focusing on the issue of wrongful convictions is that it points out all the issues that we have in the justice system as a whole, from investigations to policing to misconduct in the system.

So looking at reasons why this happens.

Some of it is due to things like that.

The individual themselves might not have resources for good representation, so they might live in poverty and not have access to a lawyer that they can pay.

They rely on public defenders who are overworked and underpaid, who can't prepare for their court case.

There are issues with investigations.

We have forensic evidence that's not always up to par, right?

So it can be faulty.

Kristin: But people think that if there is forensic evidence that CSI has shown our society that, you know, that means that they are guilty.

That's right.

And we've only had DNA around since 89, 90.

Right.

And even that is not 100% accurate.

Always so.

Jessica: Right.

Yeah.

We live in a world that the media says, oh, you can just find a footprint and then all of a sudden we know who did this crime and that's not the case.

Kristin: And we don't have standards for our forensics that national standards, national standards for labs.

You know, and there's there's the way that.

Doni: So So let me interrupt.

So the standards vary state by state or county by county.

Kristin: You're basically like, you know how when you go into a restaurant and you have to have a certification of cleanliness?

Yeah, there's no standards set for laboratories as far as different things that have to exist.

So and then also there's something called junk science where we know that, for example, everyone talks about Ted Bundy being convicted and the main evidence was bite mark evidence.

That's I mean, think about it.

How can you really match up a bite mark with someone's teeth?

It just I mean, our teeth are all, you know, pretty.

Pretty, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jessica: Oh, yeah.

You can just look at someone's smile and say, Oh, yeah, right.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of issues with forensic evidence and then, as I mentioned, misconduct.

So things like both at law enforcement levels of policing and then also at the prosecutorial level.

So the prosecutors who are bringing these cases to court.

So for policing, that can involve things like just even pure discrimination particularly and this is an issue for wrongful convictions, but also the criminal justice system as a whole.

We know that black individuals are more likely to be convicted of crimes, more likely to be policed, but they also are overrepresented in terms of wrongful convictions as well.

Kristin: And if the victim is white versus the victim being black, they're more likely to be wrongfully convicted.

Jessica: Mm hmm.

Yeah.

So we have that issue at the policing level, also coercion.

So police are trying to get an individual to confess to a crime.

And so they might use tactics when they are interrogating somebody.

There are cases like even a very famous case, the Central Park five, where they held juveniles, one without their parents present, which they're not supposed to do, but then also held them for hours and hours.

You know, you're sitting there as an individual for, what, 10 hours constantly being questioned, you know, did you do this?

And they're putting all these ideas into your head.

And at some point you just confess because either you're at your breaking point or I just want to go home.

Doni: You just want to go home.

Kristin: And that is how the Central Park five, well, the the exonerated five know how they were feeling was that they really thought that they were going to be able to go home.

Right.

And also a problem in our system is that individuals in our society believe that if you confessed, you did it right.

Jessica: Right.

Kristin: And so the fact that individuals confess quite frequently, right, when they didn't actually commit the crime, people don't believe it because, Well, I would know.

Doni: What would you.

Do?

Kristin: I wouldn't confess to something I didn't do.

Yeah.

So but and there again with that, there are best practices in policing that are not standard.

There's, there's different techniques that you can use for interrogations, and there are things that you should not do.

But they're still done because there's no legal ramifications.

Doni: Yeah, I think, too, that this is sort of an abstract idea to to many, many people, they really don't understand, not because they're not capable of understanding standing, certainly.

But there is there's still such mystery about our criminal justice system.

They really don't understand what it means.

When you were put in jail for something you did not do.

Right.

Imagine being in jail for more than 60 years, and what you get when you walk out is, I'm really sorry.

Kristin: Right?

Doni: Right.

I'm really sorry we did that.

Kristin: Right, right, right.

That is definitely the case.

One of the other issues that we see in these wrongful convictions is the eyewitness testimony.

Doni: I was going to mention that.

Yeah, Yeah.

Obviously unreliable, but giving an awful lot of weight.

Kristin: There is so much research on it showing how unreliable it is, but yet the individual generally has no reason to lie.

So a jury believes them.

And often the individual that is testifying, they really.

Doni: Believe the.

Kristin: Absolute person.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah.

And even sometimes perjury happens, too.

That's another issue.

People getting on the stand in line for personal reasons that might come about or unintentionally.

You know, I know this is the person who did it.

Kristin: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah, that's not true.

Kristin: The one is incentivized informants.

So jailhouse snitches.

I don't like that word, but it's if you have someone who is already facing a charge and then the government comes in and says, well, lessen your charge if you get information on this charge and you testify or there are two co-defendants, one turns on, the other one turns on the other, This could actually be the one that did it.

But they're testifying against this one.

So and juries that really needs to be presented to juries because they don't really understand how much perjury occurs in that type of situation.

Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah, definitely.

And another issue to go back to, misconduct more at the prosecutorial level.

So prosecutors are bringing forth these charges.

They're seeking a conviction.

At the end of the day.

I mean, it is a numbers game, unfortunately.

And they are trying to seek justice.

Right?

They they do want to bring justice to the victims, which is understandable.

But that might force somebody to take a plea.

So you will reduce your sentence if you confess or say you were guilty of that, that crime.

Yeah.

And I want.

Doni: To talk about that a little bit more.

We need to go to break for a minute.

But remember that thought because I think that's particularly intriguing.

Okay.

We'll be right back.

Please stay with us.

Jaden: I'm Jaden Jefferson.

And on this week's edition of On Point, I'm asking people what is the cause of wrongful convictions?

Why do you think wrongful convictions happened?

Jessica: I think wrongful convictions happened because of stereotypes.

I think they also happen because a lot of cases I feel like the police and investigators want to get the job done as quickly as possible.

So I feel like they oversee a lot of the evidence and a lot of new evidence.

I feel like gets passed by because it doesn't fit their predetermined person of interest.

I feel like a lot of the time that it's easier for them.

Michael: You know, in this day and age, you think about someone's means, right?

So, you know, you always hear about the stories of bigger corporations or whatever, having a bunch of money so that they'll have a stronger lawyer team, legal team.

So you just kind of feel like there's inequity going into it, too.

Like, personally, I'm not sure what lawyer I would choose if I was going into some kind of of of here.

You know, I don't even know where to start.

So someone who's already in the know and someone that has the means, I think is a lot more likely to come on.

On the winning side.

Joelle: I think our justice system is broken.

I think that.

Jury selection needs to be handled.

Differently.

Jaden: On point this week, I'm Jaden Jefferson.

Doni: As always, you can connect with us on our social media pages.

You may also email me.

You know where doni _miller@wgte.org.

You'll want to see this episode again, I'm sure.

And there are lots of others that you may want to take a look at, You can find those on wgte.org/To the point, we are talking to Kristen Blowchowski and Jessica Ziegler this morning and we're talking about wrongful convictions.

This is an amazingly complicated but such an important issue.

We were saying when we went to break that prosecutors are trying so hard to it's a numbers game.

And this whole idea of plea taking a plea when in fact, what you're trying to do is to do the best you can for yourself in a system that's not always on your side.

Jessica: Yes, absolutely.

Most people and we were also earlier talking about homeless people don't understand the justice system.

A lot of it's done by doors.

Right.

And so not many people know that most cases don't go to trial.

I think it's upwards.

Anywhere between 94 to 97% of cases are done through plea bargains where you say, yes, I committed this crime and you have a lesson sentence because there's a risk.

If you go to trial and you're convicted, you know you're going to get a harsher punishment.

Kristin: So people are going to blame.

Jessica: You know, they're pressured into it.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't I don't want to go to trial or prosecutors are pushing this to say, okay, well, we'll, you know, make it a lesson sentence.

Doni: Yeah.

And I want to say that again, because I was I was astounded when when I figured that out that sometimes it's called a trial penalty in in you know, among the lawyers.

I mean, nobody says it in a courtroom, but you actually run the risk of having a harsher sentence if you invoke your right for a trial.

Kristin: Exactly.

And as a lawyer, I would have to present that to my clients and say they're offering us this deal.

This is unknown.

And let's say you get one year if we plead guilty to this.

But if we go to trial, this is the charge and you might get five years.

So they might be more willing to say, yes, I am going to plead guilty.

Even if they didn't actually commit the crime.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So plea bargaining.

Well, think about the war on drugs.

When our court system just became too overwhelmed with so many cases and plea bargaining really stepped up during that time, you couldn't take everything to trial.

Doni: So we don't want to leave here today with people thinking that we don't understand that with all of its flaws, this is still the best system on the planet that the our our hearts, we strive as a system and as a group of human beings to do the right thing.

That there are many, many people in the system who are trying to make the system work the way it was intended to work.

All of that is true, but we would also be naive if we didn't say out loud that poverty and race and a zillion other biases affect the way this process works, all of which can result in someone being placed in jail for something they did not do lose.

They can lose their lives to the system for something they didn't do.

Krisitn: Definite.

Doni: One of the things that that I found difficult to get my arms around when I was studying for this show is the actual number of wrongful convictions.

Why is that so hard?

Why is that number so hard to capture?

Kristin: Because of the definition we say wrongful conviction.

But there are so many different processes.

A pardon, for example.

It's not saying you didn't do this.

It's saying we forgive you, we pardon you.

And if a governor, for example, will pardon an individual, they'll get those civil rights back.

But it's still not saying you didn't do this crime.

If if the state says you didn't do this crime, there's going to be monetary issues involved there.

So it doesn't happen very often.

There are things called Integrity unit's.

Jessica: Conviction.

Kristin: Of an investigative unit.

That's right.

And the goal is to have one of those in every prosecutor's office.

We don't have one here in this county.

It would be wonderful if we did that.

They look at past cases where there were some issues and an actual prosecutors investigate them because we don't want people in prison that didn't commit the crime because that also means the person is not in prison who actually did as well.

So there's two things going on there.

Doni: You know, most people in America have gotten their law degrees from Law and Order or CSI.

One of those things.

Right.

Or, you know, they're watching Matlock all day and they you know, they think they know Matlock.

They they figure out they they think they know how the system works.

But in in reality, it's not so easy to have your case reviewed, is it?

Jessica: No, it's incredibly difficult.

And honestly, how many people you're in prison, you have been labeled as a felon.

How many people, when you say I'm innocent, are truly going to believe you in the first place, Right.

Kristin: This everybody innocent, right?

Jessica: Yeah, right.

That's the common joke.

Is everybody in prison innocent, right?

Right.

Because so many people claim that.

So that alone, just that label can make it difficult to bring your case up.

And then again, it goes back to those issues of things like poverty, access to legal representation to get that case brought forward.

Kristin: And even the investigation process.

Our students have this year taken up a case that they are investigating.

And the the the the investigation going back and looking at all the records, it's so complicated.

And then once they're done with their investigation, if they find that they believe there is an issue, they'll hand it off to an attorney who then has to go through all the legal processes.

There's a few organizations like the Ohio Innocence Project.

There's a group of public defenders in Ohio that investigate and a lot of different individ jails that work on these cases.

We're working with a woman named Kay Anderson, who she does this on her own time, does the investigations.

Doni: I was going to ask you about Ms.. Anderson and the Innocence Project as well, because you guys are working with the Innocence Project on a workshop that that is coming up at the time of this taping.

The workshop will.

Krisitn: Be the night before.

Doni: The night before.

But what made you decide that this was the kind of thing that you wanted to focus on with the innocence Project?

Jessica: Yeah.

Well, so I said, It's kind of serendipitous the way all this stuff kind of happened.

I was put into contact with Pierce Reed from the Ohio Innocence Project, who works on outreach, and so they have an organization, IPU, which is student focused.

So bringing student organizations to campus, where students are putting on programs to help educate the community.

And so I was really interested in doing that and getting students involved in this issue because we talk about it a lot in our classes.

And then we we met Cara Wilkerson had met before.

Kristin: In the Metro Park just this summer and said, I want to talk to you about this and this.

That was two years ago.

And just Jessica was doing that with Pierce.

And then K sent me an email and said, Are you still interested in this?

And we have a capstone project, project that our seniors do, like a culminating project, and we were looking at changing it this year.

Well, two weeks before the semester started is K got in touch with me and we thought, Oh my gosh, we can do this.

Doni: We can do.

Kristin: This.

And we changed our capstone so that our students are doing something hands on, bringing all of their criminal law cases, their con law cases, their their classes, I mean cases onto a real case.

And so.

Doni: Amazing.

So that's so good.

And I know that neither of you work with the Innocence Project, so it's fine if you don't know the answer to this.

But are are those folks who are in jail or in prison and who think who know that they have been wrongfully convicted, are they able just to reach out to the Innocence Project and say, I'm here?

Can you help?

Jessica: Yeah.

From what I understand, they can.

And many people who feel they've been wrongfully convicted, there are other places they might reach out.

Sometimes it's also done through friends and family because.

Doni: That's a major issue.

I mean, just the resources to be able to, you know, to call attention to your case in a meaningful way.

Krisitn: With a private investigator.

Doni: Yes.

Yes.

All of those things are expensive and difficult.

Kristin: Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's kind of what our class is going to do, kind of that work of that private investigator.

So, yes, it is expensive.

There are so many people out there in prison that have cases that they want reviewed for procedural issues, all kinds of things.

But and we actually we were concerned that we were going to have, you know, a great influx of people asking us to do cases.

So we we made a separate email from our own so that people can contact us through that email.

So.

Doni: So people are able to contact you?

Kristin: Yes.

It's life, life@lourdes.edu, that it?

Doni: Yeah.

We'll get that on this topic.

We'll put that on the screen for you guys.

Any requirements quickly?

Kristin: Basically, just the reasons why they believe that their their cases is valid.

It can be a family member emailing us.

Doni: I guess.

That is so amazing.

Kristin: So we can only do one case a year though.

Doni: So.

Right.

At least it's one that's one more than you know, was getting done before.

You guys, thank you so much.

And you have got to come back and talk about this again.

This is such important conversation.

Not only does it affect lives, you know, it affects this world.

It affects this planet.

So glad to have you with us.

And we were glad to have you with us as well.

And we will see you next time.

On to the Point.

Announcer: The views and opinions expressed in to the point are those of the host of the program and its guests.

They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of WGTE public media.

This program was made possible in part by viewers like you.