"In the hoopla of the Innocence Project patting itself on the back and turning Avery into a noble hero for his years of suffering for a crime he truly did not commit, people kind of forgot his "lesser," proven convictions for other antisocial acts, like burglary, and perhaps even more significant, animal abuse."
Yup. I don't think people realize how many of these wrongly convicted guys have long, long criminal histories. It's usually not that the cops got an innocent guy; it's that they got the wrong scumbag in a particular case. The truly innocent person wrongly convicted is thankfully a rarity.
Btw, this wouldn't be the first time the Innocence Project helped get a guy out of jail who went on to commit another crime. They got a guy in CT out years back on the basis of a DNA test. The victim still swears he was the perp - he broke into her house and raped her, then went back again months later and did it again and she saw his face both times. Anyway, he was freed and went right out and raped a woman, only this time he tried to wash the DNA out of her after he attacked her. Didn't work.
Oops. I got the state wrong. It was actually NY.