The Wrongful Conviction of William M. Dean

It Could Happen to You

Imagine waking up one day, a convicted felon rotting in a 6x9 jail cell, and your whole life flashes before your eyes, because you were just convicted of a crime you did not commit. Your loved ones, your worldly possessions, everything you worked for, your entire life is now a thing of the past.

It can happen to you and it has happened to many people. They sit in prison with little or no resources to try to prove their innocence. Basically, once you hit that gate in the NYS prison, life as you knew it vanishes before your eyes, no one cares, and you will choose to give up or fight for your life. The sad reality is, you will serve most, if not all your sentence, before you even get another shot at freedom. If you even do.

Where is the accountability for prosecutors who break the law to get false convictions? Coaxing witnesses, withholding evidence from the defense, fabricating and tapering with evidence, etc. How is it that these government officials basically have immunity for anything they do in the course of their employment? Police officers set people up with the mindset — they've done something, let's get them off the streets — we can get the real criminal next time.

There are currently 256 cases which were overturned in NYS as of April 2018. That is way too many innocent people going to prison. Nothing that is done after can ever make this issue right for those people. You cannot give back the many years of their lives they lost. While these reform provisions are a step in the right direction, they ignore one of the biggest problems — failure to hold prosecutors and police accountable for their role in all of this.