Do you ever wonder to yourself what it would be like to be convicted of a crime you didn't commit? That feeling that you have knowing that you did no wrongdoing yet sent to jail for something you didn't do. Families broken, time lost, and all things that happened to innocent people that can't be undone. You did all you could to clear your name and convince the judge, but in reality, there is nothing more you could do but to maintain your innocence. Because of this there are groups out there to help give a voice to the innocent people to let them know they aren't forgotten in prison. ¨And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with
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¨Use of DNA didn't even exist until the mid-1980s, when a scientist, Dr. Alec Jeffreys, discovered that certain areas of the DNA strand contain patterns that repeat many times. The number of these repetitions varies between individuals except if they are twins. Dr. Jeffreys developed a test to measure the variation in length of these repetitions. Using this test, Dr. Jeffreys found that he was able to identify individuals by comparing samples of their DNA. This test that Dr. Jeffreys developed became known as restriction fragment length polymorphism¨ (Cromie …show more content…
Eduardo Velasquez was convicted by a jury of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and aggravated rape. His conviction was reached a guilty verdict on August 12, 1991. ¨Eduardo Velasquez’s case was accepted by the Innocence Project in February 1998. The Innocence Project and Sam Silverman, Velasquez’s attorney and long-time advocate, filed a motion to gain access to the evidence for DNA testing. The results excluded Velasquez, who was exonerated and released on August 15, 2001 (¨More than 2,000 wrongfully convicted people exonerated in 23 years, researchers say¨). The Innocence Project has done wonders for the innocent people. The group has documented 289 post-conviction DNA exonerations (¨More than 2,000 wrongfully convicted people exonerated in 23 years, researchers
¨Use of DNA didn't even exist until the mid-1980s, when a scientist, Dr. Alec Jeffreys, discovered that certain areas of the DNA strand contain patterns that repeat many times. The number of these repetitions varies between individuals except if they are twins. Dr. Jeffreys developed a test to measure the variation in length of these repetitions. Using this test, Dr. Jeffreys found that he was able to identify individuals by comparing samples of their DNA. This test that Dr. Jeffreys developed became known as restriction fragment length polymorphism¨ (Cromie …show more content…
Eduardo Velasquez was convicted by a jury of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and aggravated rape. His conviction was reached a guilty verdict on August 12, 1991. ¨Eduardo Velasquez’s case was accepted by the Innocence Project in February 1998. The Innocence Project and Sam Silverman, Velasquez’s attorney and long-time advocate, filed a motion to gain access to the evidence for DNA testing. The results excluded Velasquez, who was exonerated and released on August 15, 2001 (¨More than 2,000 wrongfully convicted people exonerated in 23 years, researchers say¨). The Innocence Project has done wonders for the innocent people. The group has documented 289 post-conviction DNA exonerations (¨More than 2,000 wrongfully convicted people exonerated in 23 years, researchers