New Date - 17th March at 16:30
Professor Mark Godsey is a leading scholar, attorney and activist in the Innocence Movement
In addition to teaching Criminal Law, Evidence and other courses at UC Law,
Professor Godsey co-founded and directs the Ohio Innocence Project. The OIP is
recognized as one of the most active and successful Innocence Projects in the
country, and to date secured the release of 30 individuals on grounds of innocence
who together served nearly 600 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.
Professor Godsey is also a regular commentator on issues relating to wrongful
conviction in both the local and national press, and has appeared nationally on Larry
King Live, Dateline NBC, CNN, ESPN, BBC, Forensic Files, and NPR among others. He
is frequently quoted in papers and magazines across the country, including The New
York Times, Newsweek, People and the Wall Street Journal. In 2017, Time Magazine
profiled his career. His best-selling 2017 book Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor
Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions is considered a
foundational work in the field of wrongful convictions. In 2019, The Cincinnati Opera
premiered an original opera, Blind Injustice, inspired by the book and the stories of
six of OIP's exonerees.
Professor Godsey and the OIP have also proposed several significant legislative
reforms in Ohio, and worked tirelessly to get them passed into law. In 2010, for
example, Governor Strickland signed Senate Bill 77, a law proposed and
championed by the OIP that has been called "one of the most important pieces of
criminal justice legislation in this state in a century," and a law that makes Ohio a
"national model" on reforms to reduce and prevent the wrongful conviction of the
innocent. In 2018, Governor Kasich signed the OIP's exoneree compensation bill
into law. The OIP currently has a bill pending that would require police to record
interrogations, and plan for a full legislative agenda in future years.
Laurese Glover. When he was 16, Laurese and his two best friends were convicted
of a murder they did not commit. After spending twenty years in prison, the three
men, knowns as the "East Cleveland 3," were exonerated by the Ohio Innocence
Project. In 2019 they were declared innocent by the state of Ohio and compensated
for their wrongful convictions.
