We all say things like wrongful incarceration could never happen to us. After all, we don’t break the law, we pay our taxes – we’re good citizens, right? Maybe so; but, when you are in the wrong place at the wrong time it could happen to anyone. Click here to read The Innocence Project report on how eyewitnesses make mistakes.
The Innocence Project Needs Your Help
Could you imagine being wrongly accused of a crime and lose everything – your home, friends, family and freedom? Could you imagine for a moment if it happened to you?
Founded in 1992, The Innocence Project began as a way to assist inmates who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, 261 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release.
The Innocence Project restores hope and makes corrections to a justice system that has erred. It has freed hundreds of innocent people from prison, and led the fight for criminal justice reforms to protect innocent people from wrongful prosecution and imprisonment. Innocent people are continued to be wrongfully convicted and there are many who need our help right now.
Your donations help:
- Pay for DNA testing
- Increase legal services
- Support reform initiatives to address the causes of wrongful convictions
- Evaluate the overwhelming number of requests that they receive
“It’s incumbent on us that we establish procedures that make them [police lineups] more reliable, that law enforcement can count on. If you identify the wrong person, you’re leaving a criminal out there free and you’re potentially convicting an innocent person.”
North Carolina State Rep. Deborah Ross, The Herald-Sun, April 30, 2007
Zooey Deschanel has created a Crowdrise.com fundraiser for The Innocence Project in hopes of reaching a $25k goal. If the goal is met, Mozilla will donate $25k to the team which gets the most donations! Let’s win the $25k for The Innocence Project. Donate today and join Zooey Deschanel’s team!
Also, if you donate $26 right now, you’ll be entered to win an Elf DVD that Zooey Deschanel will sign for you. Contest rules
Now then, if you donate $100 to Zooey’s Innocence Project fundraiser JailGuide.com will give your company a free banner ad for one year on any state inmate search page or in a post of your choosing. Your ad will include a backlink to your site. This offer only available to the first 10 donations. Banner sizes which you can use: 336×250, 300×300, 250×250, 160×600.
I applaud the work of the Innocence Project and really hope you reach your goal! What a great thing you are helping to do Zooey~!
Well Marcos, maybe you missed reading the entire post or failed to do any background info on the story prior to your alarmingly ignorant rant?
This fundraising post is to help The Innocence Project help those who have been wrongly arrested, wrongly tried and ultimately wrongly convicted. These men and women have been sitting in prison waiting for their turn at justice. Some say where there’s smoke there’s fire – but these can’t possibly be the same people who believe that sometimes people can’t afford a lengthy trial or that the powers that be have simply loaded up improperly handled evidence… or that eyewitnesses are often lead…
Realize that when an innocent person is exonerated the case (hopefully) is reopened and the real perpetrator caught. Leaving an innocent person in prison simply closes a case with no merit other than increasing the percentage of closed cases for the department but still leaves a real criminal walking among us. While I feel for the victim and the victims family, without catching the real criminal leaves more chance of increasing the number of victims.. you getting this yet?
I suggest you re-read the story, do your homework to try and prove innocent people have never been sent to prison – then why not come back and tell us what you discovered?
These people are in prison because a jury of their peers put them there. If they were so innocent then they would have never been convicted of a crime nonetheless arrested. I think its a travesty that people are getting out before they are supposed to. What about the poor victims and their families? I say keep these animals behind bars and keep the country safe.
I donated and hope others do as well. Thank you for posting this information
Thanks Brittany and best wishes.