Remembering Sam Sommers, Whose Research on Race Supported the Fight for Freedom
for Wrongfully Convicted People
Dr. Sam Sommers lent his expertise to support the wrongfully convicted
Overturning even one wrongful conviction requires an enormous effort; it takes a team and a community. At the New England Innocence Project (NEIP), our legal efforts rely on collaborations with pro bono attorneys, investigators, forensic analysts, and social scientists, among others. This week, NEIP mourns the loss of Dr. Sam Sommers, a psychology professor and director of the Racial Diversity and Equity Lab at Tufts University, who lent his expertise to support the wrongfully convicted–including our client, Edward Wright–and bring them home to their families.
Sam was an experimental social psychologist whose research focused on race, social perception and judgment, and the psychology of intergroup relations and racial bias. Over the course of his career, he shared his expertise on the impact of race in the criminal legal system, including exposing its staggering racial disparities. He was generous with his time and supported NEIP clients who had been misidentified by a cross-racial eyewitness identification or who were convicted based on racial stereotypes at trial or during jury deliberations.
Sam’s focus on race was essential to our work and to understanding the stories of our clients. Based on National Registry of Exonerations data, Black people are far more likely to be convicted of crimes they did not commit than white people. For example, innocent Black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white people. And although Black people make up less than 14% of the U.S. population, they account for nearly half of all exonerations.
Sam’s most recent collaboration with NEIP involved a careful examination of the role of race in Edward Wright’s wrongful conviction out of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1985. Eddie, a Black man, was tried before an overwhelmingly white jury after the prosecutor challenged every potential Black male juror in the courtroom before the trial began. Eddie was prosecuted for the murder of a white woman, who was his friend, and the prosecutor repeatedly and gratuitously emphasized the victim’s race and used racialized language in questioning witnesses and addressing the jury. Eddie was also seated away from his attorney for the duration of the trial. In an expert report that was submitted to the court in support of Eddie’s Motion for New Trial, Dr. Sommers concluded that “the staging of the trial, including where Mr. Wright was seated, would have risked activating longstanding stereotypes of Black men and danger.” Our fight to overturn Eddie’s wrongful conviction is ongoing as we await a decision on his Motion for New Trial, and we are saddened that Sam cannot be here to see the impact of his contributions.
Sam’s commitment to racial justice was unwavering. We are forever grateful for his invaluable assistance–in Eddie’s case and so many others. His voice, wisdom, and expertise will be sorely missed, but his legacy lives on in the families he helped reunite and the ongoing fight for freedom.