PRESUMED INNOCENT

PRESUMED INNOCENT

I love reading John Grisham books. I’ve actually read all but one of his novels, but his latest non-fiction book, The Innocent Man, really got me to rethinking our justice system and especially the enactment of our flawed death penalty.




Grisham wrote about the case of Dennis Fritz, giving it various twists and turns in an effort to awaken the conscience of a nation bent on the death penalty. Whether you agree or disagree with the death penalty, the book is very thought provoking and one can hardly disagree that DNA evidence is conclusively proving that more than likely, some on death row are innocent.

Fritz was a high school science teacher living near Ada, Oklahoma in 1982. On Dec. 8 of that year a waitress was found raped and murdered in her apartment. Glen Core, a witness said that a man named Williamson was bothering the waitress in a bar. By association Fritz was also implicated.

Six years later Fritz and Williamson were found guilty and Williamson was sent to death row, while Fritz was sentenced to life in prison. Both men were exonerated and released in 1999. It turns out that Glen Core was the guilty man all along. DNA evidenced proved his guilt.



Oct. 4, 2011 another innocent man was freed from prison. This was a truly tragic case. Michael Morton had been wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and spent 25 years in prison. DNA evidence pointed to a convicted felon.



Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project said, “This tragic miscarriage of justice must be fully investigated and steps must be taken to hold police and prosecutors accountable.”

Along with the conclusive DNA evidence that Morton was not the murderer, the courts had not allowed as evidence a taped interview of the couple’s three-year-old child who witnessed the murder and said she watched a man who was not her father beat her mother to death.

According to the Innocence Project the first DNA exoneration took place in 1989. A total of 273 persons have been cleared, 17 of whom were on death row. Although that’s only one of such statistics, each number is a person whose life has been turned upside down and in most cases ruined forever.



Amanda Knox, whom the courts said was wrongfully imprisoned for killing her roommate in Italy, was released a few weeks ago bringing national attention to the plight of an innocent person. Just prior to Amanda’s release the famous West Memphis 3 were also in the spotlight.




The three men in the West Memphis case, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, were convicted of killing three 8 year-old Cub Scouts in Arkansas in 1994. Through a legal maneuver that allows them to maintain their innocence, they were released. The men will continue to work to clear their names.

The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld as part of the Cardozo School of Law of the Yeshiva University in NYC. The private university has six campuses in New York and one in Israel.



Yeshiva U was founded in 1886 and has its roots in the Etz Chaim Yeshiva, a Jewish elementary school. It was founded by Eastern European immigrants that offered studies in the Talmud, the central text of mainstream Judaism.

As more and more innocent people are freed through the work of the Innocence Project, I’m evermore grateful for another court date ahead of me…the day when I stand before God and am also declared innocent. In my case, I’m guilty as sin. I’ve broken every law before a Holy God, but because of the One who died in my place, I will be set free.

I am more than ‘presumed’ guilty. I am guilty. I have nothing to boast of, nowhere to hide, no one to put the blame upon. I’m grateful for God’s Innocence Project. The innocent Lamb of God has taken away the sin of the world. (John 1:29). Who would knowingly reject this exoneration?