Collective Learning to Fight a Leading Cause of Wrongful Convictions
On May 12, 2023, the New England Innocence Project and the CPCS Innocence Program hosted their first-ever Systemic Misconduct Summit, envisioned to be the first of a series, using space donated by Goodwin Law. This first meeting was designed to gather people who work in the criminal defense and post-conviction space to discuss systemic misconduct committed by police, prosecutors, and other state actors, but also to share ideas and successful strategies, as well as brainstorm new approaches to litigate systemic misconduct going forward. There were 100 spots available at the Summit and the event was fully sold out.
Event speakers included people who have litigated or are currently litigating systemic misconduct in Massachusetts, including NEIP Executive Director, Radha Natarajan, Luke Ryan who litigated cases related to the drug lab scandal, Rebecca Jacobstein of CPCS’s Strategic Litigation Unit and Matt Segal from the ACLU who are litigating police and prosecutorial misconduct in Springfield, and Ira Gant from CPCS who has been involved in the breathalyzer litigation.
The Summit was premised on the understanding that government misconduct is a major cause of wrongful convictions and because it involves systemic actors, it is almost never isolated behavior or limited to one case in the criminal system. A part of the discussion focused on the need for global remedies for misconduct cases involving prosecutors and police, including mass exonerations. As we know, Massachusetts is no stranger to mass exonerations — nearly 40,000 drug cases were dismissed in the wake of the recent drug lab scandals. It is fundamentally unfair to place the burden on individuals to overturn convictions that are based in part on actions of people with a known history of misconduct. At NEIP, we are uniquely situated to understand how extraordinarily difficult it can be to do so— especially given that post-conviction counsel are regularly denied access to records of professional misconduct.
Finally, the attorneys attending the Summit were fortunate to hear from two exonerees — past and current NEIP board members, Sean Ellis and Robert Foxworth (pictured right) — whose remarks illustrated the human impact of concealing evidence of misconduct. People impacted by government misconduct are our greatest resource for information about the depth and breadth of misconduct in our community. In their keynote address, Sean and Robert each gave moving accounts of losing decades of their lives to wrongful conviction based, in large part, on instances of police and prosecutors hiding exculpatory evidence, lying, and presenting false evidence in support of their convictions. Their words were a reminder of all that is at stake in this work.
We look forward to continuing the Systemic Misconduct Summit series in the coming months, as well as enacting strategies and sharing key learnings to help make freedom possible for people wrongfully convicted due to government misconduct.