Mission
The Innocence Project primarily exonerates people for whom DNA evidence is available to be tested or retested. DNA testing is possible in 5 to 10 percent of criminal cases. Other members of the Innocence Network also help to exonerate those in whose cases DNA testing is not possible.
In addition to working on behalf of those who may have been wrongfully convicted of crimes throughout the United States, those working for the Innocence Project perform research and advocacy related to the causes of wrongful convictions.
Some of the Innocence Project's successes have resulted in rescuing innocent people from death row. The successes of the project have fueled American opposition to the death penalty and have likely been a factor in the decision by some American states to institute moratoria on judicial executions.
In the decision of District Attorney's Office v. Osborne (2009), US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts wrote that post-conviction challenge "poses to our criminal justice systems and our traditional notions of finality better left to elected officials than federal judges." In a court opinion, another justice wrote that forensic science has "serious deficiencies". Roberts expressed a fear that post-conviction DNA testing risks "unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice." The law professor Kevin Jon Heller wrote: "It might lead to a reasonably accurate one."
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Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. Divine Providence has a mission for her children to fulfill; though a mission unrecognized by political economists. There is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the vibrations of the pendulum. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.”
—Lydia M. Child (1802–1880)
“The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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