Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent
The Role of Prosecutors, Police and Other Law Enforcement
Page vii • National Registry of Exonerations • September 1, 2020
Acknowledgements
We didn’t do this on our own. Not nearly. It took a couple of villages and a lot of friends.
This report was produced by the National Registry of Exonerations. The editors of the Registry
were essential: Barbara O’Brien, Editor in Chief; Simon Cole, Associate Editor and Director; and
Catherine Grosso, Managing Editor. They read drafts, classified cases and thought through the
project with us. The Registry staff—Ken Otterbourg, Jessica Weinstock Paredes, Meghan
Cousino, and Eva Nagao who left us this June—were equally essential. They identify the cases on
which our work is based; research, code and write them up; and maintain the website through
which the work of the Registry is available to the world. We also received invaluable support and
advice from our Advisory Board, especially Denise Foderaro, Barry Scheck, and Rob Warden,
co-founder of the Registry.
The core work of our work—researching, coding, checking and recoding information on official
misconduct in the 2,400 cases in our database—was mostly done by a dedicated group of
research assistants—some of whom also did legal research, wrote memoranda, commented on
and corrected partial drafts, and provided advice at many stages. Most were students at the
University of Michigan Law School—Christine Adams, Zachary Adorno, Claudia Arno, Jennifer
Chun, Michael Darling, Lauren Flamang, Max Greenwald, Griffin Hardy, Caroline Howe,
Connor Lang, Ginny Lee, James Millikan, Amanda Rauh-Bieri, Amanda Stephens, Jenny Stone,
Julia Xin and Eric Yff—or at the Michigan State University College of Law: Nadine Kassem and
Alison Swain. In addition, we received excellent contributions from two young lawyers, Marc
Allen and Eli Wykell, and careful statistical analyses from Josue Guevara, starting when he was
a student at Michigan, German Marquez Alcala, who works for the University of Michigan Law
Library, and Valerie King, as graduate student at the Univesity of California, Irvine, and after
she completed her degree.
The staff at the University of Michigan Law School was as skillful and helpful as always. In
particular, Cheri Fidh corrected more errors in content and format than we can count, while
Alex Lee and Richard Savitski are responsible, respectively, for the appearance and the contents
of the data we are making available online with this report. At a distance, Julie Smith designed
the appearance of the report, and Margot Friedman worked tirelessly to present it to the world.
The staff of the Innocence Project was unfailingly helpful, including especially Barry Scheck and
Rebecca Brown, who answered questions, provided information, read drafts, and suggested
additions. Elizabeth Webster, formerly of the Innocence Project, spent a summer helping us
devise our initial coding system. And our dear friends in Ann Arbor, Phoebe Ellsworth and
Alexandra Gross, read partial and full drafts of this report repeatedly over several years, made
countless corrections and suggestions, and sustained our spirits.
The Registry, and this project in particular, depend on generous financial support from many
individuals and organizations. We are particularly grateful to James and Martha Newkirk, and
to Denise Foderaro and Frank Quattrone, who encouraged and supported our work since its
inception, in many ways.