Over the past 15 years more than 50 innocence projects have been founded in the United States. Projects have also started in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, and Ireland. These projects involve lawyers, law students, and activists investigating cases of innocent people being held wrongfully in prison and seeking their release. The collective work of innocence projects around the globe has led to the release of hundreds of innocent people, as well as significant judicial reforms.
The innocence project movement is coming to Latin America through Red Inocente. Currently there are efforts to establish projects in Argentina, Chile and Peru. The inaugural Inter-American conference on pnnocence projects, was held on June 6, 2012 in Santiago de Chile. With 80 people in attendance from all over the region, new projects were launched as was a network to promote these projects. This first-ever conference brought together legal educators, public and private defenders office lawyers, defensores del pueblo, and justice activists, who are starting innocence projects in their respective countries. The next conference for Red Inocente shall be in Buenos Aires in 2013.
Red Inocente es un programa de educación y abogacía pública sin fines de lucro, dedicado a la liberación de personas condenadas injustamente y a la reforma de leyes que llevan a una condena injusta.
Red Inocente está orientado a trabajar en toda América Latina mediante cursos de capacitación y materiales de apoyo para el abogado defensor. Este programa toma como modelo los éxitos de California Innocence Project.
California Western School of Law Professors James M. Cooper and Justin P. Brooks coordinated the first annual conference for innocence projects around Latin America in Santiago, Chile last week and helped launch Red inocente, an Innocence Network in Latin America.
Modeled on the success of the California Innocence Project, Redinocente is a public education and advocacy program dedicated to the release of wrongly convictedpeople and reform of laws that lead to wrongful conviction in Latin America. The launch of Redinocente coincided with the first annual conference for innocence projects in Latin America. The conference was attended by more than 70 representatives from seven different countries, including the former president of Bolivia and the National Public Defender of Chile. Cooper and Brooks will also help to establish innocence projects in Argentina, Chile, and Peru later this year.
“This past weekend we took a major leap forward with the tremendous success of the first Conferencia Redinocente [Latin American Innocence Network Conference],” said Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project. “The event made national headlines and we had outstanding speakers, and reports from representatives from throughout the region about innocence efforts underway in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Puerto Rico. These programs are going to help many people get out of prison and will be at the center of law reform within their jurisdictions.”
While in Santiago, Cooper and Brooks also organized a film premiere for El Rati Horror Show, by Argentine filmmaker Enrique Piñeyro. The documentary tells the story of Ariel Fernando Carrera, wrongfully convicted of the high-profile murder of three people, and recently released by the Argentine Supreme Court after spending seven years in prison. The film details Carrera’s time in prison and the reasons behind his wrongful conviction: manipulation and alteration of evidence at the crime scene, questionable tactics used by police investigating the crime, and a lack of key witnesses called to testify during the trial.
“The recent exoneration of Fernando Carrera, and the publicity surrounding that case is an important step towards the development of innocence projects around Latin America,” said Professor James M. Cooper, director of California Western’s Proyecto ACCESO
Over the last 15 years, the Proyecto ACCESO program has taken a leading role in helping to create legal reform throughout Latin America, and to help the public better understand its legal rights. The launch of the Latin American Innocence Project and the recent film premiere of El Rati Horror Show are two of the law school’s latest efforts to help facilitate legal reforms that will improve human and civil rights in Latin America.
