University of Wisconsin Law School Professor Keith Findley, co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, was interviewed for an article in the Wisconsin Law Journal, posted online October 20, 2008, discussing the lack of support given to exonerated individuals in Wisconsin after they return to society.
Findley served from 2003 to 2005 on the bipartisan Criminal Justice Reforms Task Force, which spearheaded changes in criminal procedure, such as improving eyewitness identification practices, requiring electronic recording of custodial interrogations in felony cases, and better utilizing DNA technology. These reforms were signed into law in December 2005, but the group did not examine what happens to exonerees after they are released.
Wisconsin is one of 25 states, plus the District of Columbia and the federal government, that offers statutory compensation to exonerees. It is among the lowest in the country of the jurisdictions that offer post-exoneration relief, and its 1979 law has significant defects, Findley says.
To read the full WLJ article online, see "After the Door Opens" by Jane Pribek:
Submitted by on October 23, 2008
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