A noted exonerator and an exoneree both recounted experiences of eyewitness misidentification leading to wrongful convictions during a discussion held by the Innocence Club last Thursday in Golding. Reporter Dick Lehr, the visiting journalist-in-residence at Brandeis' Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and convicted rapist Neil Miller, who was released from prison after being found innocent, spoke at the information session about wrongful convictions that the club arranged as part of Innocence Week. This was a weeklong series of events the club planned to raise awareness of problems in the justice system.

During the event, Lehr and Miller both pointed out eyewitness misidentification as a problem in cases they have been involved with.

Lehr, who will work at the Schuster Institute until December 2007 and is a consultant for Brandeis' Innocence Project, began reinvestigating a murder case after reading an article on the exoneration of a convicted rapist in October 2003. He spoke last Thursday about the challenges of working as a reporter on such a case.

"I was out at Roxbury, people [were looking] at me like I was a cop," he recalled. "I'm a stranger in this neighborhood, and it's not really a welcoming situation."

Through his investigations, Lehr said he uncovered police intimidation of witnesses, new testimonies and witness recantations.

"You got to keep testing your information," he said. "What you want to guard against is falling in love with your story; . because it's such good stuff, you don't continue to test this information."

Lehr said he discovered that one of the main eyewitnesses in his case had brain cancer at the time. Her condition was never mentioned in court and may have factored into the conviction of the defendant, he said. The district attorney found the defendant to be wrongly convicted, and he was released from prison in 2003 after three witnesses recanted their original testimony.

Neil Miller was sentenced on Dec. 19, 1990 to 26 to 45 years in prison, charged with aggravated rape of a freshman at Simmons College. He served 9 1/2 years in a Massachusetts state prison before the Innocence Project helped to exonerate him.

Miller recounted his experience with police and lawyers. "I was 22 years old, crying and telling them that it's not true," said Miller of his plea with the police officer. Miller said he later realized that he received a biased jury because his lawyer was on bad terms with the judge of the case.

Miller said he has two identifiable markings on his face, and if he had been the perpetrator, the victim should have remembered the markings. After losing his trial, Miller said, "I wasn't angry at the victim. She was being mentally raped by the police officer [investigating the case]."

Miller said he found out about the Innocence Project through a book in the prison library. He was exonerated on May 5, 2000 after forensics testing found that swabs from the bedsheets proved he was not the perpetrator. One-and-a-half months after Miller's exoneration, the real rapist was found in the South Bay area of Boston.

Both speakers said they were grateful that justice can still be carried out through a free press and access to organizations like the Innocence Project.

The Innocence Club, the aim of which it is to raise awareness about wrongful convictions and the importance of investigative journalism in bringing about exonerations, is affiliated with the Innocence Project, an independent nonprofit group that uses DNA testing to exonerate wrongfully convicted people co-founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and lawyer Peter Neufeld at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. So far, the group has been responsible for 208 exonerated cases in the United States, including 15 convicts who served time on death row.

Cindy Kaplan '08, the Innocence Club's publicity director and one of its founders, said she hopes that listening to Miller's and Lehr's stories will help people better relate to the issue of wrongful convictions.

"From hearing firsthand accounts, people will realize that this is an issue that happens to real people," Kaplan said.