California's Innocence Projects Free Two Wrongfully Convicted Men in One Week

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of California’s Innocence Projects, two California men were found innocent and freed in one week in February after years in prison for crimes they did not commit. These new exonerations come almost a year after California’s largest gathering of wrongfully convicted people, the Faces of Wrongful Conviction Conference, sponsored by the ACLU-NC, the Innocence Projects, and others.  More than two dozen of California’s wrongfully convicted stood together at the conference’s opening session, somberly reciting the number of years stolen from them by the State of California and stating, “I am free, but countless more innocent men and women
remain in prison.”

Now, two more join the ranks of California’s exonerated.

On Monday, Feb. 5, the District Attorney in Santa Clara County dismissed charges against Jessie Rodriguez, who served six years of a potential life sentence in prison for a robbery he did not commit. The jury hung at Rodriguez's  first trial, but convicted him at his second.  The 6th District Court of Appeal, however, overturned his conviction based on inadequate defense by his attorney, who limited his efforts in the second trial after the family ran out of money.  In preparing for a third trial, the newly assigned Deputy District Attorney re-investigated the testimony of an eyewitness and the forensic evidence. The DA found that eyewitness was no longer confident and that the original forensic analysis was wrong. Learn more about the Rodriquez case.

Just four days after Rodriquez was freed, Timothy Atkins of Los Angeles was also freed after a Superior Court judge reversed his wrongful conviction for being an accomplice to murder. Atkins was convicted based on flawed eyewitness identification, the testimony of a jailhouse informant, and the now- recanted testimony of another witness who claimed Atkins had confessed to her. Atkins walked into the arms of his family members on Friday, Feb. 9, after being in prison for more than 20 years for a crime he did not commit. Learn more about the Atkins case.

Two exonerations in one week is too many for California.

It is this capacity for error in California’s criminal justice system that led the California State Senate to create the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, charged with reviewing the causes of wrongful conviction and wrongful execution in California. The commission issued three interim reports recommending legislative changes to prevent the most common causes of wrongful conviction in California: mistaken eyewitness identification, false confessions, and the use of jailhouse informants. The commission also issued an “emergency report,” calling for immediate increases in funding to crime labs, and most recently a report on professional accountability and responsibility for prosecution and defense counsels. 

Three bills were introduced in the 2007 legislative session to implement the c ommission’s recommended reforms:

-   Senate Bill 511, sponsored by Sen. Elaine K. Alquist (D-San Jose), would have required the electronic recording of police interrogation in cases involving homicides and other serious felonies. 

-   Senate Bill 756, sponsored by Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), would have required the appointment of a task force to draft mandatory guidelines for the conduct of police lineups and photo arrays to increase the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. 

-   Senate Bill 609, sponsored by Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), would have required the corroboration of testimony by jailhouse informants. 

The commission’s recommended reforms were praised as effective law enforcement tools within California and across the country by every law enforcement agency that has adopted them. 

Update: Unfortunately, though all 3 bills passed both houses of the legislature, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the reforms.

By continuing to speak out against the failures of the criminal justice system generally and the death penalty in particular, we are able to give a voice to the voiceless: the unknown number of innocent men and women languishing in California’s prisons and on its death row.

-     Learn more: A variety of resources are now available to help you learn more and educate others, including videos and podcasts of wrongfully convicted people telling their stories. Click here to learn more.

-    Educate and advocate: Use the Faces of Wrongful Conviction Toolkit to bring wrongfully convicted people to your community to speak.