Our School of Theatre is currently producing “The Exonerated” by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen — a play based on the true stories of six exonerated death row inmates.
I saw it tonight – a very powerful and moving performance with outstanding performances by our student actors. I saw it before in New York, but this production still hit me hard.
In conjunction with this production, the hallways are filled with birds — each one representing an exonerated prisoner.
One of the important messages of the play is that it’s easy for people to sit back and delude themselves that this kind of injustice can’t happen, or that it’s not their job to fix… but you can’t do that.
Important stuff.
Is that about the guys who were pardoned in Illinois? I heard some of them interviewed on This American Life (isn’t that an irony?) a few years ago. An incredibly harrowing tale. As you say, it affects all of us, could happen to any of us, and is a disgrace to democracy.
Our criminal justice system is a system alright. Any actual justice dispensed is purely coincidental.
The National Registry of Exonerations is a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.
The Innocence Project
DNA Exonerations Nationwide
California Governor Proposes Massive Prison Expansion
To Avoid Freeing Inmates
‘Relax Your Muscles as Much as Possible’
* What’s The Problem With ‘No-Knock’ Searches?
* Corrections Corporation of America Used in Drug Sweeps
One Drug Arrest Every 19 Seconds
THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR PRISONERS
Slave Labor Means Big Bucks For U.S. Corporations
* Go Directly to Jail
* Louisiana Dungeons are anti-American, anti-Humanity.
27-Year-Old Man Gets “20 Years Hard Labor” for Half an Ounce of Pot
Private Prisons Industry: Increasing Incarcerations,
Maximizing Profits and Corrupting Our Democracy
* Angela Davis on the Prison Abolishment Movement
Wading Into the Morass of a Broken Criminal Justice System
Prison Industrial Complex
Prison Labor as a Business Model
* Herman Wallace Requiescat In Pace
California Cops Are Trained ‘Marijuana Is Not A Medicine’
A recent court case in San Diego has revealed some California police officers are basing their sworn court testimony in medical marijuana cases on badly outdated, legally inaccurate information.