The Frank J. Remington Center

Wisconsin Innocence Project Files Motion for New Trial in Michigan Man's Murder Conviction

The Wisconsin Innocence Project has filed a motion for a new trial based on powerful new evidence of a Michigan man's innocence. Scott Baldwin was convicted in 2001 of first degree murder after investigators re-opened a 12 year-old investigation in the 1988 murder of Kalamazoo bicycle shop owner Earl O'Byrne. The main evidence against Baldwin was a statement from a jilted ex-girlfriend who failed a polygraph and was dismissed as not credible during the initial investigation. When Cold Case investigators re-opened the case 12 years later, the girlfriend's statement grew from 3 pages to 42 pages, and her testimony led to Baldwin's convictions. But Baldwin's new attorneys believe that dramatic new evidence requires a new trial, or, at the very least, DNA testing that could conclusively prove whether Baldwin or an alternate suspect committed the crime.
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Wisconsin Innocence Project Awarded National Institute of Justice Grant

The Frank J. Remington Center's Wisconsin Innocence Project was recently notified that they are the recipient of a grant from the National Institution of Justice. Working in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Justice, the Office of Justice Assistance, the State Public Defender and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, the Wisconsin Innocence Project will use grant funds to launch a new postconviction DNA testing program. Under the grant, the Wisconsin Innocence Project will undertake an 18-month, proactive effort to identify all individuals in the Wisconsin Prison System serving time for rape and murder conviction that would benefit from postconviction DNA testing in an effort to determine if any were wrongly convicted.

The State Crime Laboratory and the Office of Justice Assistance will also receive a potion of the grant to assist in covering costs related to DNA testing and administration.

New Book Explains Why People Confess to Crimes They Did Not Commit

In True Stories of False Confessions, Rob Warden and Steve Drizin of the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University have gathered articles about some of the most critical accounts of false confessions from acclaimed authors, including Alex Kotlowitz and John Grisham. The profiles in this book include the case of former Wisconsin Innocence Project client and exoneree Christopher Ochoa, who was coerced into a false confession to rape and murder in 1988 and was exonerated by postconviction DNA testing in 2001. More information about the books is available at http://falseconfessionsbook.com

About the Wisconsin Innocence Project

The revelation of wrongful convictions has shaken up the criminal justice system. Nationwide, law students in innocence projects across the country have worked to free hundreds of wrongly convicted inmates, giving them their lives back after years of unjust incarceration. Law students in the Wisconsin Innocence Project have worked to free nine people, relying in some cases on cutting-edge DNA technology, in other cases on old-fashioned investigation.

Through their work on these cases, the students learn about the operation of the criminal justice system, and how our system, often touted as the best in the world, can sometimes go awry. In proving innocence years after a conviction, the students gain insight into how a wrongful conviction can occur, and how it might have been prevented.

Mission Statement

The Wisconsin Innocence Project has three core missions: 1) to investigate and litigate wrongful convictions, 2) to educate law students through closely supervised work on possible wrongful convictions, and 3) to remedy the causes of wrongful convictions through scholarship, education and collaboration with governmental and criminal justice agencies.