SYLVANIA, Ohio — Building on national momentum in examining wrongful conviction claims, Lourdes University revealed its own contribution on Thursday night.
The school’s Criminal & Social Justice Department announced a new program called the Lourdes Initiative for Exoneration, which will be available for seniors. Those seniors will learn how to review cases and then investigate them. If credible evidence is discovered that supports a wrongful conviction claim, the information will be turned over to a local defense attorney to file a legal appeal.
Assistant professor Kristin Blochowski and program director Jessica Ziegler will work with the team.
“The ultimate goal is, one, to shed light on the issue of wrongful convictions in Lucas County and hopefully get people who have been wrongfully convicted out of prison and exonerated," said Ziegler.
The program’s motto is “giving life back to the wrongfully convicted one exoneration at a time.”
There have been 3,386 wrongful convictions in the United States since 1989. Lucas County is one of the few counties in Ohio with no exonerations in that time period. Men have been cleared and released, but not officially exonerated. Compensation cannot be pursued without an exoneration.
Blochowski, a former FBI agent, police officer, and defense attorney, said, “I have seen problems within the system. We are going to focus on knowing what the problems are and work to fix them from the inside.”
Blochowski said she met Kay Anderson, a local advocate for those with wrongful conviction claims and a former private investigator, on a running trail a couple years ago. Just two weeks ago, Anderson, Blochowski and Ziegler met over coffee to figure out how to make the program a reality.
The announcement was revealed in front of about 100 people at the school’s Franciscan Center. During the program, Anderson explained the cases of Hector Alvarado, Eric Babos, Dale Beckett, Wayne Braddy, Karl Willis, Danny Brown, Willie Knighten, Antone Luster, Morgan Miller, Eric Misch, Arthur Richter, and Stoney Thompson. She said she considers each to have been wrongfully convicted.
Braddy, Willis, Knighten, and Richter were in the crowd. Braddy and Willis were released early this year, largely because of WTOL’s 2019 investigation, “Guilty without Proof.”
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