This week’s guest post is presented by Anne Driscoll of the Innocence Project. The Innocence project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people.
For most people it would be unfathomable to be arrested, convicted and sentenced for a crime you didn’t commit. And yet, that is the reality for far too many people in Ireland. The Irish Innocence Project hopes to change that reality.
The Irish Innocence Project was founded in 2009 at Griffith College by Dean of Law, David Langwallner, in order to correct these miscarriages of justice. The Irish Innocence Project has 21 law and journalism students from Griffith College, Trinity, Dublin City University and University of Limerick who are working on 25 cases of presumed innocence under the supervision of eight pro bono lawyers. The Project currently has three cases very close to exoneration. All innocence and investigative services are provided free to those accepted to the Project.
“This is about finding the truth. It is about pursuing justice where there has been none. And it’s about freeing people who are factually innocent of the crimes they’ve been convicted of,” says David Langwallner.
The Irish Innocence Project will be hosting ‘The Irish Innocence Project International Conference on Wrongful Convictions, Human Rights and the Student Learning Experience’ on 26 June 2015, followed by the International Wrongful Conviction Film Festival on 27 June 2015. The conference will be the first of its kind, with Innocence Project members, journalism professionals, along with exonerees and students all invited to the same forum. Invitations have been extended to former Irish President Mary Robinson and Gareth Peirce who represented the Guildford Four. The Conference will be followed by the first ever wrongful conviction film festival, including the closing capstone event: a special screening of In the Name of the Father with director Jim Sheridan, Gerry Conlon's family. The festival will be accompanied by the presentation of the inaugural Gerry Conlon Memorial Law and Journalism Justice Student Scholarship Award. Both days will be hosted at Griffith College Dublin, home to the Irish Innocence Project, at a historic campus located at a 200-year-old former prison where at least one man, Joseph Poole, was wrongfully convicted and hanged, and is buried in an unmarked grave on the campus.
The three goals the Irish Innocence Project has for these two days are to:
In order to subsidize students attendance at the conference and film festival, the Irish Innocence Project is hosting a ‘Be the Key’: Set an Innocent Free crowd funding campaign to launch on the 1st of December on Indiegogo. The journalism students working on the Irish Innocence Project have put together this student-centered, student-driven campaign. For updates, visit our Facebook page or twitter feed.
The reality is that each of us can be the key - to truth, to justice and to freeing the innocent. On behalf those wrongly convicted whose lives have been upended by injustice, the Irish Innocence Project asks that you please consider donating and sharing the ‘Be the Key’: Set an Innocent Free campaign with your networks.