then, that was obama's list of countries and people thought that was a horrible thing but reat was obama's list of things. children of the border, that was obama's policy. i think that how people communicate it in the media and people just kind of understand and i just don't know of any outright lies but i'm happy to address them if he wants to send them to me one-on-one. >> host: matta politics keeping your sanity in a world gone crazy, doctor gina loudon, the foreword by sean hannity.

good evening. this is a very well supported both an absolutely wonderful one. my name is mary and i am a cofounder of an organization called the innocence project which has been around for 26 years and is in the business of organizing efforts to exonerate people who didn't commit crimes, but one part of our mission is to also do our very best to try to take care of those who are victims of the crimes as well as our clients who are certainly victims of the criminal justice system.

we are pleased to talk with lara bazelon was writte who's writtes fantastic book entitled "rectify the power of restorative justice after wrongful conviction." this goes over booktv. the best starting point for this first of all you started off doing what? >> guest: i was a public defender and after seven years i joined a smaller innocence project is a satellite. they started at the innocence movement and as a result, many other projects loomed all over

the country where i was employed to be the director. so we are connected because our client, the main client on the represented when i was there was a man named cache register who was my client and ther it was an experience we went through of exonerating him without dna and that it is. changed my life in a number of ways, one of which was to think hard not just about the damaged task which was profound because he was convicted in 1979 and released in 2013 which means i was in kindergarten when he was convicted and my son was in kindergarten when he was released but also to the victim's family who never got justice because as you know we got the bad guy and put him away

but the story isn't true. before you came in and represented the civil suit there was collateral damage to sort through. his mom had two sons, they were all over the spectrum with the name game. >> one thing i should say it's not really in the book, but your cross-examination that led to the exoneration was terrific and any of you that have ever done this work can take a look at the record of working civil-rights lawsuits and you are waiting for the lawyer that can actually ask

the questions and control the witnesses and get to the point. >> it was the cleanest transcript he ever had. what's interesting about todd and the experience i think you can also relate to this is that we are trained in this mindset we see it in black-and-white. it's about challenging and dismantling because they are rigid and they may have made a mistake. to get through the direct examination in the pain experienced much less than the

victim had experienced and then i had this crazy encounter where the victim's family because it is a murder victim and so the daughter and her cousins, the whole family showed up and as a public defender i ignored them and i didn't and then one day i went to the bathroom and a step in the back of the line and they were all in the front of the line and one of them turned around and saw me and he said to the other family members something stinks in here and then they all turned around and left and i was alone and i realized for the first time the agony that they were going through believing my client was guilty and they were being dragged through the worst of their life for the second time. so i want to acknowledge the victim's family is here and

start by acknowledging their pain and that is sort of my first step in seeing there is another side to this. >> to put a fine point on the case, he did 34. the reason that the city of los angeles gave him more money and the largest compensation of any one is he went before the parole board i can't remember how many times but we had tapes of it and the reason i'm going to mention it is it has to do with the main theme of your book restorative justice. when you played the tape of an innocent man that refuses even though he can walk out the door

they look at him and say that's nelson mandela and he has that kind of temperament. he comes across exactly the way he is which is a steadfast person and a quote that hangs in my eye and a mistake has been made and no one wants to correct it. in this book you do a wonderful job that is very cleverly structured. they begin to educate people about the causes of the wrongful convictions you are sort of setting it up for the restorative justice moments between the wrongfully convicted

and the victims. maybe you can share what that is. >> host: basically it is a different way of thinking about harm and reparations. so we ask three basic questions what crime has been committed and what punishment did it deserve? the restorative system asks who was harmed, what are their needs and whose obligation is it to meet those needs so repairing the harm and rather than fixing blame in this world that we live in in our traditional adversaries.

>> to testify against some of it is wrongfully convicted and their transformation and the guilt they suffer. >> this is something that was so fascinated toomey would think no one would have less in common than somebody wrongfully convicted and the person who testified against them. what's interesting is they shared this 360-degree view of the system that they were branded as a perpetrator and revealed to be a victim. it was led in a series of procedures and good faith that made them feel ultimately like a perpetrator because they contributed to somebody being sent away so they can both see it from the same sides and opposite sides and in a weird way they are the only person in the whole world can understand the catastrophe.

>> there is a great book written about this that people in the audience might have seen, picking cotton which is the story of jennifer thompson got this book really takes it to a step up and some of it the work jennifer does with katie álvar . you picked the one that right now i could ask you to put it up so many of them. maybe the haynesworth story would be a good one. >> this young woman, and it's pretty close to my heart because i literally just came from an event where she was there and now what happened to her husband in 1984 but she was working a daycare center at a church somebody broke in, she was white and african-american man and he

raped her at knife point. she was determined to make an identification and this within weeks have gone on to assault other women. they saw this young man coming 18 on the street and he was literally on an errand from his mom's to buy sweet potatoes for dinner. he'd never been in trouble and his life. she identified him and he was taken into custody. police said we have someone in custody and we want to know if you can make an identification and in her mind what happened was she thought okay the person is where i just have to find them. when you look at the mugshots and the rapist they are pretty similar but she wasn't shown their greatest photograph. she picked thomas and so did all of the other women since he was charged in all of the cases and convicted back to back to back

by separate people and sentenced to 74 years in prison. janet's case had gone first because she was considered the most credible victim and she began to divide the whole time but believe she was doing the right thing. she felt a measure of relief and then it turned out after he was placed in custody, 12 more women were attacked in a similar manner in the same area and then they arrested another man and the attacks stopped. the police showed up at her house we ran these results and there isn't one chance to rapist is anyone other than this guy.

>> she was left to figure out what am i supposed to do now. she decided i'm going to do everything i can to get him out. there was an effort to engage how unjust this whole thing was. he ended up being an advocate going to the press saying i made a horrible mistake. >> there've been other cases

like this it's very strange. they were all similar and the uk testing postconviction on a whole bunch of them and what was striking about the case you should share with them. what happens is sometimes prosecutors take the position you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and in some places they do capitulate but not so quickly in this case. >> there are some prosecutors who dig down and be my innocence and come up with these theories

for how the person is still guilty and in this case the attorney general and the state is this guy who was a teen party darling doesn't believe in climate change, you name a conservative position and the officers who had presided over the convictions went to him without a lot of hope thinking he would shut them down they had never taken that their testimony. there was no dna. he's guilty and instead he spent weeks and months and concluded it had to be the same person.

he's all that kind of clinched it for him so that was interesting he went before the court of appeals and said you're not even representing the state what am i doing here and because it is virginia is a real lesson in how they can be here and even more heroes like in the intervening time he was a registered sex offender and the response was to hire him in the office to work as a registered sex offender which as you could imagine caused a huge amount of pushback and his feeling was i think he's innocent why wouldn't he get his life back

>> one other detail i ask you to talk about with the victim herself what i think you do so well for her and the others in the book is describing the sexual assaults did to her and her life and how that's so typical to deal with and how that was part of her whole journey. >> it's interesting because she was just talking about this today and said that for years she felt responsible because if she hadn't reacted quickly enough that the fact that they were being broken into and she hadn't escaped quickly enough and all the things that go through your mind they said he's not even that big why don't you fight back and for years she sort of claimed herself and once she was responsible for getting

this guilty verdict she felt more confident she had done the right thing and all of that was undone when she was pulled after everything that happened and she describes this loss of faith in herself and faith and religion and faith in her own judgment and then she talks about how when they have this amazing moment together when they are both at a place that could psychologically happen for both of them he says i it's not that i can forgive you but god's love is perfect and god can forgive you so i can forgive you for that and she felt this sort of moment of spiritual transcendence that's a very close relationship with a talk every day has given her the reason to believe again that it's almost like a spiritual journey. it's one of the places i earmarked right away.

they are not screaming and yelling and anger and then the answer is in order to survive the have to forgive and find some kind of transcendence. but here it is and you may want to read some of this because i have the same quote from haynesworth who's pretty extraordinary. >> this is the meeting when they finally meet each other and it was brokered by the attorney this remarkable woman.

she could absorb in response to him a moment and when it was his turn to speak he said the truth yes it was deeply press trading and painful to know he was locked away for almost three decades but it was an honest mistake that was made. she had come to see janet as a victim twice over. haynesworth explained the philosophy infused by his religious faith and a shortage and that he harbored no ill will or desire for vengeance and said i have to let go to be free. you can sit here an and the madd you want and be better all day long but it's not going to change the situation and the the has been done being a devout christian meant i can forgive with god's love. my love is not perfect but god's love is perfect and i can forgive with that.

>> there are so many stories like this and they are told so well and you write them so well. i would like to ask you to describe a little bit more about what jennifer thompson and katie monro, she's somebody that like so many working in the innocence movement, describe what they put together and these retreats. >> jennifer thompson was someone who had been raped the and it wa misidentification very similar and come to find out she was mistaken and then she and the expiry.

they testified where we passed the reform jennifer believed her story was somewhat unique and was more of an accident of nature and when picking coffin became the best seller she met all these people who reached out to her all of these crimes are bikers and economies who told her this is my story and she realized in retrospect what they had done was restorative justice and that they could replicate the model and start a nonprofit and bring the people in to basically develop the kind of

relationships. she was wrongfully convicted of murder and that was a huge inspiration for me. they said in a circle and they talk through the harm and everybody gets to tell their story it is kind of a tune by handholding thing. there were these bonds that form between everyone who wen went ad they last and people say this is the most healing thing that's happened to me in all the years after.

>> and what i am so glad you put in this book -- jennifer thompson has gone around the country with the innocence organizations all the time testified, and she tells her story. every time i watch it, i cry and iciness like 60 times. she is reliving it, and i'm always feeling guilty like how can we put her through this? you get to the bottom of that and also darrell brand. >> that is tricky for people in the movement because they want to get as many people as possible and educate the public that this is a serious problem. in 2016, three innocent people were exonerated and so a huge

part of the work is getting that message out an and there's no oe who's a more powerful messenger dan is an pathetic victim who turned out to be completely wrong and so for somebody like jennifer, it is a natural thing to ask can you come and speak to this audience or that audience because there's nothing more convincing them that. it's exhausting from the perspective of the victim and to some degree they feel or can feel exploited or unused and there is a whole other piece to make such is their victimization and that is a tricky thing for the advocates of the movement because at the end of the day we have to be there for our clients and there are this other segment victimized in a different way. >> you do that so beautifully here but going back to the

restorative justice, did you give the contrast between? you mentioned this restorative justice. tell us a little bit about the application of these restorative justice principles not just to the crime victims who made mistaken identification for families even of the victims but how it is being used in other places and how it's being used in the united states and with the success of it is. >> it's interesting it's on the forefront with restorative justice for so-called guilty

people, so basically it is being used a lot especially as an alternative to the juvenile justice system which as we know can be punitive & kids of color down the spiral to the school to prison pipeline so instead of doing that, oakland has mandated 100% or the restorative justice coordinator and a program in place by 2020. right now over 50% have it so when they have the cases come up, i watched one where a young man had come to school with a loaded gun in his pocket and he fired at the ceiling accidentally, but as you can imagine normally he would end up going straight to the criminal justice system. they brought in his mom, his biological dad, step dad, school psychologist, principals and members of the community and they sat in a circle for like three hours talking about why this happened and the sum of the root causes that led him to have

a loaded gun. in the beginning he didn't want to be part of it and he very much resisted opening up in any way but then by the end, he was very emotional when talking about how it's moving, but he felt that he needed to create this and so having the story unfold in instead of unfolding in front of a judge to send them away it was people that promised to be there to support him and at the end of this he made up a plan for him and who was going to be there for him at such and such a time and then he graduated from high school and has a decent job. i'm not saying everybody ends up like frederick but it is a story about how you can use an alternative and i think they are trying to do that more and more. one final thing i will say that's interesting there's a federal judge in boston he is trained to do the restorative

justice for adults that goes into the fiscal system and a buy-in from the u.s. attorney's office to pull them out and put them through this 18 months restorative justice program at the graduation rate is pretty good at the numbers are low for the judges to set up in a courtroom. >> we are blessed with a uniquely informed audience of people from the criminal justice section and the bar association and there's plenty of people here that kno now an enormous amount, but i want to make sure that people heard that because you make the case so well on a personal level you told the story and get into the underlining scrimmage of issues,

but the restorative justice to discredit its not like it'll come by, it's very hard headed and people are going to do something about the mess and preservation in this country it's not because we are just going to get rid of all of the low-level people. somebody's got to deal with crimes of the islands. we are not serious unless we do that. you make the case it's an avenue people ought to be viewed and it's a nice thing to think about the climate of what's going on in this country of people not understanding each other. i just love this book. thank you. questions.

this has been a wonderful discussion. you mentioned the experience in the virginia case that three people per week were exonerated. if they are atypical of the representatives -- >> he's pretty atypical and part of the reason he was able to do what he did is that he was such a law and order guy it was like bring it on whatever you want to say about me. what i found in these middle-of-the-road democratics that are the most frightened as having made a mistake when i was

at loyola and i don't mean to undermine anybody in the office but we meant nothing but resistance. in the case from the beginning, middle to end it was nothing but resistance even though there was no space left and that's been true to the success of litigation but that said, there is a movement to reform prosecutors and the best example is in philadelphia and houston and these prosecutors running on a platform running on a lot of things, they were running on this idea of wrongful conviction and he's been elected in philadelphia it's gone from a complete and utter joke to exonerating i think three or four people and so i feel like

as yo to get the progressive mid candidate you can make a change and i hope that we are moving in that direction. >> not just because her mother was in the audience and your friend had a lot to do with some of the transformation in philadelphia because the woman running the unit among the best is somebody that we found in the case in texas which was an exoneration that led to changes over the state of texas. a lot of traditional criminal defense lawyers who are part

[inaudible] i am one of those people by nature i'm very adversarial and i tend to see things in black-and-white and get caught up in my own version of the truth and when i started looking into that i was pretty skeptical about it but i was also looking for these answers in part because what was thing to happen i really wanted to know and then i started thinking about it more and thought why are we doing this in our own ways and so often in our personal and professional relationships we see ourselves as the victims into perpetrators and usually it is just far more complicated

than that and also rather than writing people off and seeing them as people who could sit down and have a conversation with and understand as a healthier way of existing and i think the mentality that you're talking about that i have is exhausting and it's not a good way to live your life. you run out of energy and a lot of things and i think at the end of the day recognizing that there is a possibility is a healthier way to exist in the world. >> i'vextend the context of the restorative justice for the

court system's honorees to say frotuesdayfrom the conservativen somebody wasn't guilty of the crime but apart from enrolling at the edges and from the brother is agreeing that is the real avenue very and battled in the message that we need to be tougher indiana and because ultimately the public will [inaudible] >> we are a long way of someone being charged with murdering the prosecutor saying we need to step away and have a restorative justice circle and then we will all go on our way, but we are not there. what has happened and i was just

watching a wrongful conviction movie. when you listen to the sound bites from nixon, ronald reagan and clinton, they are indistinguishable. it could be the same man talking about the larger sentences and i do believe that we are swinging back. we have local jurisdictions that they are facing with mass incarceration and nothing working. i don't think that jerry brown is a bleeding heart liberal, he's a cheapskate who wants to save money. you can spend a college tuition or try this other thing and we can tell you it has an 85% success rate he will take a chance on that and in some jurisdictions there is a momentum to embrace that it's only from the standpoint of the fiscal conservatism and this just makes sense but also

appeals is the religious component and it isn't inherently but a lot of the people go through it and describe it as a religious experience and not the idea of redemption and godlike intervention at transformation that resonates with a lot of people that are more conservative. >> the short answer to it is read this book. >> in the year 2,000 we had a book called actual innocence which was kind of a primer for setting up the network of innocence project but the concept was among others and i will never forget the publisher saying this just look through

walk in the shoes of the person wrongfully convicted and see that and then all of a sudden as all of these exonerations happen, people across the country began to think something is wrong with the criminal justice system lets work on reforming it because they see it from the plaintiff view of the person wrongfully convicted. the book begins to show us everything from the point of view of all the victims, as the one that is the victim and what you call the earthquake so that's what i thought was so spectacular because it does open up the political space for people to start thinking of restorative justice and the hardest cases.

i don't with victims of serious crimes [inaudible] how much do they play in this process? >> there is no restorative justice it just can't happen and in the case i was talking about the lawyer was saying it takes to write a summary and victim at the right time so it really can't work unless that is what the victims want and that's such

an important thing to emphasize its not like where we have a process in place and you follow with restorative justice those people have to come together voluntarily to do this work. [inaudible] i followed a couple of people and they all had to plead guilty before they went through the restorative justice process and one of them was bobby fitzgerald whose family had been entangled in the mafia whitey bulger.

he spent his whole life caught up in cryan and doing drugs and he was an addict and he always justified it as my crimes are victimless i don't see where they go and i just go home and i get high and the federal court in the program would sit him down with a mother whose son had been killed in a robbery over drugs whose downstream had come from this organization and who had overdosed so he was confronted with the consequences and it was in a direct way he had to account for his own behavior and i think that was ignited with him in a way that nothing else did so just the confrontation between what you've done with your denial and the consequences for a lot of people dislike this

transformative moment and if you can get the person to that point and get the victim to come in and speak it often has these profound consequences and there was another woman whose son was murdered and she went to see the two men who killed him in prison and sent down and said i know you are getting out in six or eight years. you took my only child away from me and you owe me. i want a promise that you are going to live a law-abiding life and you'll never take anybody also free from their mother and when she got out based upon the grave together and promised her they were going to live a law-abiding life and they both did so it depends on the cases you have these moments like these out of body experiences that change people. >> does that make any sense to you? >> guest: to be a

>> restorative justice is the guilty and the victim to discuss the consequences of the act. now what do you do? >> i think it depends on the case. in the cases i'm talking about, these men had served a certain amount of time and then they made a promise. it's about whose obligation is asked to meet the needs she said with her needs were and i'm holding you to account i expect you to meet them for the rest of my life and they promised to spend the rest of their lives doing that so that's what was next for them in that particular case so what was tricky about

the restorative justice was specific and it doesn't always work. >> what's good about these stories is that there is something liberating about the act of forgiveness. it's funny because when you see it on the person that is convicted and imprisoned, they have this transcendence and it's not always religious. they stop hating the people that put them there and once they do that, they are liberated even though they are behind bars and what is so fascinating about this book is that you show us the other side which is the victims of crime and it was so

striking for me to read your descriptions of the victims and the family members of the victims and how cryan destroys lives for everybody else in the family and you call it the earthquake here are all these people that have it happening to them and just hitting the person that did this to you isn't necessarily good for the person to whom it happened and so that is what comes home from this we talk about examples but i think you can also downsize it to your own life and think about what's

the relationship that went wrong in your life that caused you all kinds of pain and damage to life and make you angry. you think about that relationship and how it went wrong and broke and then you reconceive the narrative and what is much but complicated and nuanced with regards to who did what to whom you come to a place of forgiveness and there is such a relief even in our own small way of letting go of our own personal dynamics and then if you bring that out in a bigger space i'm not saying every horrible crime but there are many crimes were the victim as acknowledgment and accountability they want for the person to say i did this and what can i do to make amends more than the death penalty i

think that there are other ways for the victims to come to the point of reconciliation and this freedom in your heart to forgive them what is happening for those 18 months? >> they have to get a job, go to school, reports constantly, drug test, but then they have to do these workshops on a fairly regular basis where they sit in a circle often times with surrogate victims so that i was describing they bring in the victims of drugs and gun crimes and they have to listen to the stories and engage with their own behaviors. what he had to do is deal with the fact he came from not just a

family of mobsters but addicts and how his father had abandoned him and he abandoned his son and deal with these fundamental things and the one thing that turned him around was they put him in a living facility and he couldn't drink or do drugs but also he decided he was going to take custody of his son and he took on as that on as a respony as basically having abandoned him and that relationship became a motivating factor not just as a sober but to convince everyone that he shouldn't go to prison even though he was facing all this time. so that was his particular experience and in that federal program that is extremely rigorous.

most were ambiguous so they may be guilty of something that's not what they were charged with but these are all models. >> i will say that the place where i see this happening in a lot of these cases is where you have been incredibly ambiguous facts. for my clinic we represent students in these circumstances and in every single one what i find is at the end of the day everybody's life is basically ruined through a process that is adversarial and awful and what i think every time is what if we tried restorative justice.

i feel like that is one of the factual situations where it actually could work to the benefit of both parties. i just went to court for a client and at the end of the day after the trial the judge basically says this is one of the most descriptive things i've seen and people are so damaged and make the finding not have any joy because there's no evidence to support it by that standard and i just wish none of us had to be here. it was painful to. to follow up on that i agree with you and as far as mediation on-campus is concerned, i think the obama administration saying it is a problem but i wanted to

ask before you raise a question in the cases i've seen where they use restorative justice on campus there's a little bit of distortion and that it's based on him saying yes i did what you said rite aid and there is an interesting example broadcast where there was a kind of mediator and you describe the situation it was ambiguous both of them just remember what happened so there was no clear story that mediator at the end turned and said isn't it time you used the word t words to sat you are and he says yes i'm a racist and i think that could be terribly concerning in a situation where you have someone in this administrative setting

being forced to admit to a crime in order not to go through a title ix process. >> we were talking about this basically just so he could get out after 30 years and it's a similar thing you want to get out and say something that's not true and unfortunately the problem is schools are not good at implementing so that justice programs that fail is because people don't really know what they are doing so what you're describing is someone who doesn't know what they are doing because that isn't what restorative justice is. you have to have people confident on the ground. >> that is with our clients it's so horrendous to see somebody

exonerated had to go before the parole board and deny and then finally got everybody in the family to write letters and say yes i was a crack addict and that's why i committed the crime when nothing could have been further from the truth. you are so right about the fact situation. you're talking abouyou were tale that were coerced into making a confession [inaudible]

is impossible to imagine and then on the same note how they can be held accountable. >> this is a good segue t the ce that sprung to mind in philadelphia this was a violent crime in elderly woman was murdered in her home in philadelphia and her niece was a police officer and there was a push to get this person game and they arrest this guy because of the culture pin place they were trained to beat an out of setbacks particularly whose lives they saw as being disposable and they said we will

prove your eyes out and skullfuck you and he explained he was going to get the death penalty but after hours he signed a statement that they had written out for him and that was a statement that was used to convict him and condemn him and it's those kind of processes we see them in chicago under the sortable by i think finally died with thibut this idea that a wat to the truth as to beat people or threaten them to the point they think they are going to die and extract these conditions and say to the jury no reasonable person would admit to murdering and raping a 70-year-old woman. obviously they are guilty. in this case the victims grand niece ultimately after reading about the case realized he was coerced and she said in this letter she wrote which is so moving she could have been my nephenephew i have a nephew thas 20, african-american and i could

see him in this position so easily doing this, and it was a way of getting to the point she had been one of the people advocating and was able to come around to the plaintiff view it's okay for the police to be so coercive but for most it is a foreign concept if you say you did something that horrible, you likely did it. >> i think barry can testify to this experience i don't think people realize how common the false confessions are and they don't necessarily have to be [inaudible] if you give me enough time and resources i can get anyone of you or anybody else in this room to confess to being a martian invader. it's not that hard if you know what you are doing and you have enough time and resources.

>> the kids are incredibly susceptible. on what universe were you going to go home. >> is designed to make them come to that point. >> talking about exoneration and getting to the been a daily practice it doesn't necessarily translate ask your going forward this could be a false confessi confession. if you hadn't yet another case he said i didn't do that then you are really going to believe him and it's a longer

conversation and we are teaching people the same things to the same great measure. so other than the new prosecutors which we are giving a new good job of what is your reaction to this? >> that is a great question because i think i've been in that boat of your clients saying isn'it isn't true, or sean actuy asked the attorney said it was giving the presentation thomas told her a story that he'd been in jail but the real rapist and when he was charged in the subsequent crime he called thomas and said will you come to court and sits next to me because we look so much alike that they won't be able to figure it out, you've already gone down from your life is over and i can still get out. she said she was writing it down and wrote a note to herself obviously not true.

she went and interviewed leon davis's lawyer and sure enough that is what happened. we learned this lesson likely get really jaded to hear clients say they didn't do it and evidence is overwhelming that they did with prosecutors dropped the case and they are told what it's good for and they have every reason to believe that and it's hard not to get jaded i think. >> that is one of the great challenges we have to revert the rules to protect against cognitive bias. if you play by the rules and try to keep an open mind and investigations whether the prosecutor or defense lawyer, it helps. this is a critical fault because my relatives and friends would kill me for saying it about if i

had a clinic in the united states, i would give people their tuition money back if they worked two years for a prosecutor and then worked the next two years as a defense lawyer and vice versa because i don't think -- i think too much of this is tribal and within my limited life in the law i've seen defenders and prosecutors get into these jobs and stay there and they don't go out on the other side and i don't think that is good for the profession or generally speaking good for the way people look at things. you and then chris. >> i want to thank you for writing the book and d for the work that you do at the innocence project. i think the one big thing we're missing in all of this is the

impact trial judges can have been hearing the cases if you have the experience and the exposure every judge to read your book and no there are people that are innocent in the courts but to get pulled into a false confession and every investigator isn't the best. if you keep your mind open and know it can happen because he worked as a former prosecutor or what have you and that you've seen it and know it is possible so you are more open and on alert. we need to educate those that are working in the system but these things are happening daily because people don't know. >> that is really true and one of the things about the case to me that was so affirming is that this judge who got the case, she

has never granted a hideous for 30 years on the bench and it wasn't even we didn't even write it, it was a jailhouse lawyer but it was compelling enough she felt something is wrong and appointed us and that is the whole time i noticed her it wasn't one of those judges that was like checking their e-mail or reading the she was completely focused the entire time and the second day she called us to the bench and said to the prosecutor do you think he's got the end the prosecutors had told people said he was in 1979 and she said that's not what i'm asking you. for me that is when i knew that it was over, she signaled there is no way am going to uphold his conviction. she made an effort to re- educate herself and i felt that happening because she was very interactive and it was clear she was reading and thinking about things and she set the model

instance for me someone i wasn't wasn't inclined to avoid any of that and it felt like something isn't right and going to educate myself and then was very brave i think in her ruling. >> and at the end she made a ruling and i was there the day she made a ruling that he was innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. when you get to the pros. we have a number of innovations.

we watched working on the body cameras. i don't think people understand that the degree of relationship it isn't a rubber stamp and it's more contentious than people understand. i am sitting here next to kim parker from kansas. we are aware of the potential for innocence and it is for us the greatest tragedy that there could be. we have a high burden of proof and it's very difficult for us. a very emotional for us so when i started as a prosecutor i have to thank you for that for bringing this to our attention

but i do think there is a change in the way the prosecutors are looking at their work. >> i do agree with you there are all of these people being elected. it is a misconception people should go back and look at the people in office changing their policies and the way that we are most when it is done correctly is the conviction integrity unit and when it's a different idea because it isn't for everybody they will have a good appellate issue.

it's not just dna testing. when you actually have this process where it is a joint search for the truth you get the entire prosecutors file with all of the work products and certain identifiers and then both sides sit down and say what is the investigative plan, which witnesses should we talk to and go step by step and either every somebody is innocent or there was a constitutional violation or agree that didn't happen or if you disagree that model is different because it is in the

post conviction context and i do see the this strengthens your view when people go through that they begin to look at cases and look at the different so that's been a very encouraging experience to see that. and it's not just democrats. we have republican prosecutor in jacksonville florida. >> the idea is that you have to change the narrative of what it means to be a good prosecutor said yoprosecutorswould you looe obligations it could be a minister of justice they speak the truth even when it is

inconvenient and too often i think they are penalized for that or they are being told there's this idea that it's political suicide and the more i think we hold people up as cross racial, demographics it doesn't matter they are holding onto the principle i am here for the state of justice i'm not here to hold onto the conviction no matter what. the more i think we will normalize bravery or the idea that it politically attainable. >> i think that this is it this is a great discussion and it's been a wonderful audience and

it's a wonderful book. [applause] >> [inaudible] [inaudible conversations]