About this item
A powerful argument for adopting a model of restorative justice in wrongful conviction cases as part of legislative efforts towards criminal justice reform and community healing At the age of seventeen, Thomas Haynesworth was arrested on multiple rape charges in Virginia. Despite his pleas of innocence, five rape victims, including 20 year-old Janet Burke, ID'ed him as the offender. Only after over two decades of legal wrangling was he exonerated by DNA evidence. Conventional wisdom points to an exoneration as a happy ending to tragic tales of injustice like Haynesworth's. However, even when the physical shackles are left behind, invisible ones can be profoundly more difficult to unlock.In Rectify, former innocence project director and journalist Lara Bazelon takes stock of the massive damage inflicted by wrongful convictions.
About the Author
Lara Bazelon is a writer, an attorney, and the director of the Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She is the former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent and worked as a public defender in Los Angeles for seven years. Bazelon's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, Politico, and Slate, where she is a contributing editor and has a long-running series about wrongful conviction cases.Author photo: Nick Brown
