Shame on the Wisconsin Innocence Project
The Wisconsin Innocence Project touts itself as an organization that will help a convicted felon, having already exhausted his or her appeals, hold out hope for proof of innocence. The project apparently holds itself to a higher standard than the mere good judgment of police officers, district attorneys, nine jurors and various judges. On its website, the group explains:
The Wisconsin Innocence Project represents prison inmates who claim to be actually innocent of the crimes for which they are incarcerated.
...
The defendant must have been convicted and all direct appeals must be exhausted or the time for filing a direct appeal must have passed. If a prisoner still has time to file a direct appeal, he or she should exercise the right to appointed counsel through the courts of the public defender system.
But the Wisconsin Innocence Project, having freed the lowly scum formally known as Steven Avery, apparently now has a double standard of sorts. With Mr. Avery facing some rather gruesome murder charges and a mountain of evidence, the organization seems to have done a complete turnabout. Indeed, the Innocence Project seems content convicting Mr. Avery before a jury even does, this time around.
According to the AP, the Wisconsin organization removed a photo of the alleged rapist and killer from its website today. And a spokesman had this to say:
"We had left references to Avery on the Web site because we thought it was a historic account and it was an honorable thing to not try to disguise what happened in that case," said Keith Findley, co-director of the project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison law school.
"But because of these recent allegations and the emotional response, we have taken those photos down."
It is the Wisconsin Innocence Project that worked so hard to let this monster out of jail; it is the Wisconsin Innocence Project that now has blood on its hands and, as of today, it is the Wisconsin Innocence Project that has brought a whole new level of hypocrisy to the legal community.
3 Comments:
What mystical abilities did the police employ to determine that Avery would commit a crime 20 years in the future and that therefore they should wrongly convict him of rape and assault charges?
I wonder if being wrongly imprisoned for a crime you did not commit and losing your job, your wife, your children and your life for twenty years makes you in any way more likely to become criminally insane?
The Wisconsin Innocence Project did exactly what they were supposed to do: they helped Avery be exonerated for cimes he DID NOT commit. Although it is incredibly sad that he is now accused of committing another heinous crime, we should never scold WIP for doing what they are there to do: free people wrongfully covicted and that is what they did. and blame can never be placed on WIP for Avery's actions...how were they to predict the future?
I have to agree, and I hate doing so. Steven Avery had a rap sheet, but did not commit the rape of which he had accused. Had he not been falsely convicted, he'd likely have gone on to commit more crimes, and might have even been in prison on some other charge in October 2005 when Teresa was brutally murdered. Is he a monster? Yes. But he didn't commit the rape that had him imprisoned for all those years. I just wish that he'd been somewhere else when Teresa Halbach came to take those photos. My heart breaks at the details of that case. That poor woman, and I can't even imagine what goes through the mind of her family. Pray for the family. And hate Steven Avery, but hate him for the crimes he did commit, not the ones he did not.
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