Women Criminal Defense Attorneys: Thankful for Lawyers Who Never Give Up

This week, two men who were wrongly convicted of murder were released after serving 39 years in an Ohio prison. The men were convicted based solely on the eyewitness testimony of a young child who testified that he observed the murder. Years later the now-adult witness recanted and testified that he in fact never witnessed the murder, and that he was threatened by the detectives that his parents would be arrested if he didn’t testify against the men.

One of the men released was Ricky Jackson, who was 19 at the time of the conviction, and was sentenced to death with two other men charged for the murder, the Bridgeman brothers. Jackson is now 57 and has spent all of his adult life behind bars for a crime that he didn’t commit. When he walked out of prison he said “there aren’t words in the English dictionary to describe how I feel.” The Ohio Innocence Project took up the case and said that Jackson was the longest held U.S. prisoner to be exonerated. Jackson was originally sentenced to death but the death sentence was vacated due to a paperwork error. The co-defendants, the Bridgeman brothers, remained on death row until Ohio declared the death penalty unconstitutional. One came within 20 days of being executed.

It is so easy in this job to feel defeated. But reading a story like this gives me hope. It reminds me why we do what we do. It reminds me there are people counting on us to fight for them against all odds. It reminds me that we have a responsibility to stay vigilant for the people whose futures we are privileged to protect. This Thanksgiving, I want to give thanks for the Innocence Project and for lawyers all across the country who keep fighting against all odds when everyone else has given up.