Bernard Webster, who was released from prison last week after serving 20 years for a Baltimore County rape he did not commit, was probably not the only innocent person trapped behind the walls of Maryland's prisons, his attorneys say.
Michele Nethercott, Webster's lawyer and the head of the Maryland public defender's Innocence Project, which attempts to identify and free those wrongly convicted, said she has seen DNA test results showing other inmates' innocence.
"We expect there will be more," she said, but declined to elaborate.
The number of people freed by new DNA evidence is rising - Webster brought the number nationally to 115.
Two years ago, Illinois Gov. George H. Ryan imposed a moratorium on his state's death penalty because so many inmates, including 13 on death row, were exonerated. He is currently holding clemency hearings for at least 140 death-row inmates. The Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University helped free some of those inmates.
Other high-profile cases, such as last month's exoneration of Jimmy Ray Bromgard, who served almost 16 years in a Montana prison after being wrongly convicted of raping an 8-year-old girl, have stunned lawmakers and lawyers alike.
Now, states are beginning to examine the way they deal with inmates claiming innocence, and the way they treat the exonerated.
As Webster's case shows, in Maryland, as in much of the country, there are scant resources for the wrongly convicted.
The Maryland General Assembly passed a law last year giving some inmates the right to DNA testing, but left gaps in terms of who qualifies, what laboratories can be used and how evidence should be maintained. Moreover, as Webster's case makes clear, the law provides no compensation - monetary or otherwise - for someone returning to freedom after years of wrongful incarceration.
Innocence Project
Nethercott and two other attorneys make up the staff of the public defender's recently created Innocence Project. Alone, they are involved in the arduous process of evaluating 25 cases - finding out if old DNA evidence still exists, tracking it down, scouring transcripts and court papers, determining whether the DNA, if they could test it, could prove innocence. The 2001 law did not give Nethercott's office funding for that mission and the hours required.
