Free at last: the Innocence Project hits 200.

• Author: Balko, Radley
• Position: Citings - Brief article

IN 1982 Jerry Miller, then 22, was convicted of kidnapping, robbing, and raping a woman in Chicago. He was imprisoned until 2006, when he was released but required to register as a sex offender and wear an electronic monitoring device. In April 2007, DNA tests demonstrated that semen preserved from the rape couldn't have been Miller's.

Miller is the 200th wrongfully convicted person to be exonerated with the help of the Innocence Project, an organization founded by attorneys Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law in 1992. The group reports that in the cases where it has helped win exonerations, eyewitness testimony contributed to 77 percent of the wrongful convictions, while forensics errors, such as lab mistakes and testimony by frauds posing...