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UT law students seek to help Tenn. inmates, Innocence Clinic investigates claims of innocence
knoxnews.com ^ | 05/08/2010 | knoxnews.com

Posted on 05/08/2010 9:18:06 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour

Students from the University of Tennessee College of Law have just completed their first year of working in a clinical program designed to help free Tennessee inmates who have provable claims of factual innocence.

The Innocence Clinic, operated as an academic clinical program within the college's Legal Clinic, began in fall 2009 and allows third-year law students to work with a supervising attorney to investigate claims of innocence.

"We look at cases where someone's made a claim of innocence, and we determine whether it's viable," said Steve Johnson, a trial attorney and partner with Knoxville firm Ritchie, Dillard, & Davies, P.C.

Students were broken up into groups and spent two semesters working under one of four adjunct professors and supervising attorneys for the Innocence Clinic, which include Johnson, as well as Knoxville attorneys Wade Davies, Gianna Maio and Rob Kurtz.

The clinic has evolved from the Tennessee Innocence Project, which was started in 2001 under the direction of Ken Irvine, a private defense attorney at the time who now is a Knox County assistant district attorney general. It consisted of a network of volunteer lawyers and law students.

SNIP

The first Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck, who gained national prominence during the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. According to their website, there are innocence projects in more than 40 states, including Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Kentucky. About 255 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing - including 17 who served time on death row, according to the website.

(Excerpt) Read more at knoxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Government; US: Tennessee
KEYWORDS: nifong

1 posted on 05/08/2010 9:18:07 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour

I’m completely for this sort of help for inmates, wherever it is feasible.

But, how do you get back your life if found innocent?


2 posted on 05/08/2010 9:29:47 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Hypocrisy: "Animal rightists" who eat meat & pen up pets while accusing hog farmers of cruelty.)
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour

Students from the University of Tennessee College of Law have just completed their first year of working in a clinical program designed to help free Tennessee inmates who have provable claims of factual innocence.

Might be nice if these misguided fools tossed a bit of their legal expertise to the real innocents in many of these cases.......the victims

3 posted on 05/08/2010 9:34:03 PM PDT by Larry381 (Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt)
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To: ConservativeMind
But, how do you get back your life if found innocent?

The years lost can never be given back, but punishment rained down upon those who were involved in wrongfully convicting you can be given.

I believe that if you are found to have been convicted upon false evidence, fraud or lying by either the police, prosecutors or witnesses. Then they all should be jailed and given the same punishment as the crime you were found guilty of.

And the state should be required to compensate you, $1 million dollars for every year you spent in jail.

Until we make the punishment for wrongfully convicting people so painful, that prosecutors and police begin to understand that peoples lives are actual in their hands. And we force them to do their jobs and do them correctly, this will not stop.

I was once for the death penalty. A strong supporter of it.

But now I'm no longer for it just for this very reason. I believe in the sprit of the death penalty, but I just feel that our criminal justice system is not sufficiently evolved enough to apply it correctly. And handle the responsibility that comes with properly investigations such cases.

I'd much rather have to let an innocent man out of prison after 5 or 10 years of incarceration, than to find out we put to death a truly innocent man.

4 posted on 05/08/2010 9:38:55 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
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To: Larry381
Might be nice if these misguided fools tossed a bit of their legal expertise to the real innocents in many of these cases.......the victims

Okay sunshine... you do realize these people are doing the jobs that police should have done before the trial, right?

And these people are finding a shockingly large number of people are in jail for crimes they did not commit, right?

So maybe we need to take a look at the "victims" as you call them and see if maybe they had something to do with an innocent man going to prison?

5 posted on 05/08/2010 9:41:10 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour

“And the state should be required to compensate you, $1 million dollars for every year you spent in jail.”

I agree with you, but the 1 mil per year is a bit much... At that price, people would be gaming the system. A person could get himself convicted and hold back valuable evidence until he made a mil or two. Then prove himself innocent.


6 posted on 05/08/2010 9:45:37 PM PDT by babygene (Figures don't lie, but liars can figure...)
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To: ConservativeMind

But, how do you get back your life if found innocent?

You could get some monet as compensation, but being free if you are innocent id worth much, and you get your name clearou to this studentsed to. all good, and thanky


7 posted on 05/08/2010 9:52:51 PM PDT by munin (Enki did it)
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To: Larry381

Might be nice if these misguided fools tossed a bit of their legal expertise to the real innocents in many of these cases.......the victims

If the convicted person is innocent, he/she are victims


8 posted on 05/08/2010 9:55:17 PM PDT by munin (Enki did it)
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To: Larry381

Thank you Mike Nifong.


9 posted on 05/08/2010 10:03:20 PM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: Larry381

is that you mr. nifong?


10 posted on 05/09/2010 12:02:25 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: babygene

Gaming would be pretty easy to prove.


11 posted on 05/09/2010 12:03:23 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: Larry381
or maybe handling the huge backload of criminal cases lanquishing for lack of time by the overworked prosecutors...

Barry Scheck used the"innocence" project to cover for the disgrace of the Simpson trial, where no dna, no blood splatter,no witnesses, no history of violent behaviour nor motive was ever enough for those b*stards...excuse the french....

12 posted on 05/09/2010 1:43:18 AM PDT by cherry
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour
get a clue...there is not one convicted criminal who will actually admit he's guilty when first arrested and then convicted....most of the people in jail...not including those that plea bargin...still insist on their innocence....

I certainly do believe that police and prosecutors can be stupid,irresponsible,lazy,prejudiced,and deceitful....but so can defense attorneys....a larger majority I would guess....

13 posted on 05/09/2010 1:46:59 AM PDT by cherry
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To: cherry
Wow... you really have no idea or clue how this works do you?

Yet you speak like these guys and gals are somehow turning out criminals guilty of crimes by what means I dunno... You do understand these people are being found NOT GUILTY by way of DNA tests and other exculpatory evidence that, after proper examination by a Judge it is being determined they were WRONGFULLY CONVICTED?

14 posted on 05/09/2010 2:44:30 AM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
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To: cherry
get a clue...there is not one convicted criminal who will actually admit he's guilty when first arrested and then convicted....most of the people in jail...not including those that plea bargin...still insist on their innocence....

Wow... you really have no idea or clue how this works do you?

Yet you speak like these guys and gals are somehow turning out criminals guilty of crimes by what means I dunno... You do understand these people are being found NOT GUILTY by way of DNA tests and other exculpatory evidence that, after proper examination by a Judge it is being determined they were WRONGFULLY CONVICTED?

15 posted on 05/09/2010 2:44:32 AM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
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