INDIANAPOLIS — Inmates who were sentenced in Marion County could get a second look at their cases from a new unit in the Marion County Prosecutor's Office.
The prosecutor's office plans to establish a Conviction Integrity Unit in 2021 that will review wrongful convictions, announced Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears. The CIU will be the first of its kind in Indiana.
“The only person who benefits from a wrongful conviction is the person who committed the crime,” Prosecutor Mears said in a release. “Incarcerating an individual who did not commit the crime undermines the integrity of the judicial system and does not bring justice to victims.”
The CIU will act as an independent unit within the prosecutor's office. Its work will center around the prevention, identification, and remedy of wrongful convictions through fact-based reviews of past convictions.
The unit was created in response to requests made by the community, Prosecutor Mears said, and the results coming out of similar units in other jurisdictions. For example, in August, the exoneration of a Florida man after spending 37 years in prison for murder and attempted rape. An 11-month investigation by the Hillsborough State Attorney's Conviction Review Unit determined the man did not commit the crime in 1983 after finding newly-discovered DNA evidence.
“I wholeheartedly commend Prosecutor Ryan Mears for the creation of a unit devoted to correcting injustices,” Fran Watson, Professor at Indiana University McKinney School of Law, said. “Ensuring accuracy, legitimacy, and integrity of Marion County criminal convictions is a commitment to promoting fairness for all.”
The unit will also train prosecutors and investigators on ways the Marion County Prosecutors Office can operate more efficiently, effectively, and adopt nationally-recognized best practices to refrain from wrongful convictions in the future.
Marion County's CIU will include one attorney, an investigator, and a paralegal. The unit plans to begin accepting requests for review of convictions in early 2021.
“We have to look back and acknowledge if things were not handled in a way that is fair,” Prosecutor Mears stated. “We want to make sure that every conviction that comes out of Marion County is based on fact and applying the law to those facts; and not motivated by any other reason.”
