I believe that one of the primary duties of our government is to protect each citizen’s Constitutional right to life and liberty. Part of this responsibility includes ensuring public safety, and so we grant our government the power to take punitive action against citizens who are guilty of committing crimes. Our criminal justice system has broad powers to withhold liberty, including incarcerating individuals for decades – and in thirty-five states, the federal government, and the U.S. military, to take away life altogether.
But with great power comes great responsibility. We grant our government the ability to withhold life and liberty with the understanding and the belief that it will discharge that duty responsibly. Yet we as citizens have not done our part to hold our government accountable for the way it uses that power.
I founded The Justice Project because I believe in the responsibility of citizens to act when the government violates the very same rights they are charged with protecting. And that is precisely what happens each time an innocent person is wrongfully convicted.
Each wrongful conviction marks the failure of our government to protect the Constitutional right to life and liberty. And each time our government convicts the wrong person, the real perpetrator remains free. Thus, the government also fails to ensure public safety. It is a broken system.
Currently, more than one in every one-hundred adults in this country is incarcerated. That figure breaks down to reveal that one in every thirty adult males, or one in every nine African American males are behind bars. We incarcerate people at an alarming rate in this country, and we do so using a criminal justice system that is neither fair nor accurate.
We at The Justice Project have learned that by looking at stories like that of our friend and colleague Kirk Bloodsworth, and the other wrongful convictions that have occurred all over the country, we can understand how and why the system gets it wrong and what steps we can take to make our criminal justice system more fair, more accurate, and more just. As we look at the hundreds of stories of injustice, in which individuals were detained, incarcerated and even sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit, patterns emerge. Eyewitnesses identify the wrong person, defense attorneys are grossly incompetent or unprepared, prosecutors abuse their discretionary powers, or unreliable and inaccurate forensic evidence makes its way into the courtroom and leads directly to an unjust verdict.
Our research has helped guide the formation of our Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform, a program of eight initiatives designed to increase the reliability of the criminal justice system.
Thank you for visiting our website, and please consider joining us in insisting on a more fair, a more accurate, and a more just criminal justice system. The Justice Project’s work is not possible without your support – and we need it now more than ever.
John F. Terzano
