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hundreds of cases, that people who have 
few resources and who are scared after 
being arrested will confess if enough 
pressure is put on them, even if they are 
innocent. 
As an example, he cited Harris County, 
Texas, which includes Houston, where 
45 defendants were exonerated months 
or years after their convictions on drug 
charges when lab tests showed nothing 
illegal in the materials seized from them. 
Most probably couldn’t make bail after 
they were arrested and agreed to a “take 
it or leave it” offer promising lighter sen-
tences if they confessed, Gross said.
Finding cases of wrongful conviction 
isn’t always easy, he said. Our legal system 
is fractured, with different rules and pro-
cedures in every state. Most cases are tried 
at the county level, and few states keep 
centralized records.
Most of the documented exonerations 
are in homicide cases, which attract more 
interest because the consequences are so 
severe: often lengthy prison terms, includ-
ing life, or the death penalty. Cases involv-
ing sexual assault, child abuse and drugs 
are also common.
Thanks to DNA evidence, the num-
ber of wrongful convictions for rape has 
declined significantly. If cases even go to 
trial, DNA evidence usually overrides eye-
witness accounts, Gross said.
In a country with millions of criminal 
convictions every year and more than 2 
million people in prison, a wrongful con-
viction rate of even 1 percent amounts to 
tens of thousands of errors, he said.
The registry also highlights disparities 
in sentencing. African Americans, for 
example, make up 13.6% of the U.S. popu-
lation but accounted for 53% of the 3,200 
wrongful convictions in the registry’s 
latest report. That disparity holds across 
all crime categories except white-collar 
crime, Gross said.

THE LEGAL ADVOCATE: 
VALERIE NEWMAN
Defense attorneys don’t often take jobs 
in the country prosecutor’s office, but for 
Valerie Newman, an offer from Wayne 
County Prosecutor Kym Worthy was 
one she couldn’t refuse. In 2017, she 
spearheaded the development of the 
Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit, 
designed to get innocent people released 

from prison. The office opened in 2018, 
and its work has resulted in dozens of 
exonerations.
Of about 2,500 prosecutors’ offices in 
the United States, only about 100 have 
similar units, Newman said.
When Newman walked into her new 
office for the first time, she had a stack 
of letters already waiting for her from 
prisoners claiming to be innocent. More 
letters arrive daily.
She reads every letter, but they don’t get 
equal attention. She dismisses any “affir-
mative” defenses, where convicts claim 
self-defense, or lack of intent, or 
(in cases of sexual assault) 
consent; cases where 
convicts claim their 
sentence was unduly 
harsh; and cases of 
people convicted in 
a county other than 
Wayne. To everyone 
else, she sends an 
application request-
ing details and giving 
an overview of her unit, 
so the applicant will under-
stand what to expect.
Newman works closely with defense 
attorneys representing convicts, which is 
unusual for a member of the prosecutor’s 
office. She examines all the evidence in 
the case, starting with the original police 
report. She sometimes interviews co- 
defendants. “The whole point of the unit 
is that there are no secrets. Everything is 
transparent,” she said.
Applications that have merit go into a 
queue, and Newman and her staff — one 
full-time and three part-time attorneys, 
two detectives and an administrative assis-

tant — start collecting information about 
the cases. When she feels she has enough 
information to warrant an exoneration, 
she presents the case to Worthy, who can 
petition a court to set aside the convic-
tion. The state’s Wrongful Imprisonment 
Compensation Act says the state will pay 
those who qualify $50,000 for every year 
they spent wrongfully imprisoned.
Requests to overturn murder convic-
tions are the most common, but Newman 
also handles cases of convictions for 
armed robbery and criminal sexual con-
duct. She’ll consider cases where the con-
vict has already been released from 
prison, so that he or she can 
avoid the ongoing stigma of 
being labeled a felon. 
She says her first case 
was one of her most 
memorable. Richard 
Phillips was 71 when 
he was freed after 
having served 45 years 
in prison for a murder 
he did not commit. In 
early 2018, the Michigan 
Innocence Clinic won him a 
new trial. Newman’s unit uncov-
ered some evidence involving false trial 
testimony that exculpated Phillips. No one 
else had that information, not even the 
Innocence Clinic.
Another unforgettable case did not end 
happily. A 60-year-old man was deported 
to Italy — where he’d been born but had 
no connections — after a wrongful con-
viction in a drug case. His son uncovered 
DNA information via a genetic testing 
service that identified the man’s brother, 
long dead, as the perpetrator. Worthy 
agreed to an exoneration, but the man 

Valerie 
Newman

