14 | MARCH 9 • 2023 

OUR COMMUNITY

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ON THE COVER

died of COVID in Italy before his family 
could bring him home. 
Newman, who lives in Huntington 
Woods, meets monthly with a group of 
exonerees to provide support and help 
them with problems they might be having 
reintegrating into society. Mental health 
and substance abuse problems are com-
mon, but most exonerees avoid further 
legal trouble. 
Newman’s office has helped connect the 
exonerees with other community organi-
zations that can help them. Wayne State 
University, for example, provides free tui-
tion to exonerees.
Among similar units nationwide, 
Newman says her office has a reputation 
as one of the most productive. In the five 
years since she started, the unit’s work has 
led to 34 exonerations.
Newman credits her Jewish upbringing 
— her family were longtime members of 
Congregation Beth Shalom — with giving 
her an early sense of justice. Learning 
about the myriad historical injustices 
against the Jews has resonated with her, 
she said, and she keeps a framed poster of 
a quote from Deuteronomy on her office 
wall: “Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue.”

THE EDUCATOR: MARVIN ZALMAN
Marvin Zalman, Ph.D., didn’t plan to 
go into criminal law, but when he and 
his wife, Greta, newly minted attorneys, 
joined the Peace Corps in the mid-1960s, 
he was assigned to teach criminal law 
at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, 
Nigeria. 
Back in the United States in 1969, he 
saw that criminal justice was becoming 
an academic field of study, and he was 
intrigued. He earned a master’s and then 
a doctorate in criminal justice at the State 
University of New York in Albany, the 
first such program in the country. From 
1971 to 1980, he taught in Michigan 
State’s new School of Criminal Justice and 
then moved to Wayne State as chair of its 
new Criminology and Criminal Justice 
Department.
Throughout his career, he has tried 
to understand the relationship between 
criminal justice and political control. 
And he became intrigued by cases of 

wrongful conviction. There was a teen in 
Connecticut who came home and found 
his mother slashed to death. Although 
there was not a drop of blood on him, the 
police questioned him unremittingly until 
he falsely confessed. The conviction was 
eventually overturned.
Zalman, who lives in Huntington 
Woods, began teaching courses in wrong-
ful conviction soon after. He has taught 
on the subject just about every year since, 
on both undergraduate and graduate lev-
els. He has written dozens of arti-
cles for scholarly journals 
and edited an anthology 
looking at policies 
connected to wrong-
ful convictions.
Some of 
Zalman’s students 
plan to work in 
law enforcement 
or go to law 
school. Others are 
considering careers 
in counseling or social 
work within the criminal 
justice system.
With the number of prisoners 
in the United States quintupled since 
1972, the number of wrongful convictions 
is also burgeoning. The horror of a totally 
innocent person being convicted is obvi-
ous to everyone, Zalman said.
 “The emotional power of wrongful 
convictions is so strong that it can be a 
lever to look into the overall criminal 
justice system,” he said. As a result, some 
weaknesses of the system are becoming 
exposed. 
A report from Yeshiva University’s 
Innocence Project, showed that reasons 
for wrongful convictions fall into five 
general categories: mistaken identifica-
tion, false confessions, falsified evidence, 
mistaken evidence and prosecutorial mis-
conduct. 
Wrongful conviction cases are often 
covered by news media and have been 
frequent topics of books and movies. As 
a teacher, Zalman wants to move from 
focusing on particular cases to under-
standing wrongful conviction as a system-
ic problem. 

Just as airlines’ extensive safety checks 
have reduced the number of air crashes 
and hospitals’ morbidity and mortality 
reviews have reduced medical errors, so 
reviews of wrongful convictions may be 
able to improve the criminal justice sys-
tem, he said. 
Changes in criminal procedure can 
reduce the number of wrongful convic-
tions, he said, including modifications 
in the way suspect identifications are 
handled. Many police departments now 
have lineups supervised by officers 
who were not involved in 
the arrest, to avoid even 
unconsciously biasing 
the witness. Lineups 
are recorded, and 
witnesses are given 
a limited time to 
make an identifica-
tion. Hardball psy-
chological pressure 
during interviews 
is starting to be dis-
couraged, he said. A few 
enlightened police depart-
ments forbid lying to suspects 
(which is not prohibited by law). 
Prosecutors are also starting to realize that 
some forensic evidence, including fin-
gerprints and hair analysis, is less reliable 
than DNA, and that “experts” interpreting 
such evidence can easily make mistakes. 
His main lesson for his students, he 
says, is “it’s complicated — but there are 
solutions.”

THE LISTENER: ZIEVA KONVISSER
Zieva Konvisser, Ph.D., has made a spe-
cialty of working with survivors of terror-
ism in Israel. Her particular perspective 
is the possibility of positive change after 
trauma.
In late 2006, Kovnisser, who lives in 
Orchard Lake, spoke about her research 
on trauma at Congregation Beth Shalom. 
Wayne State University criminal justice 
professor Marvin Zalman was in the 
audience and realized that much of what 
she had learned could be used to help 
exonerees.
“He quickly made the connection to 
survivors of wrongful conviction and 

Marvin 
Zalman

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