Nonprofit works to exonerate those wrongfully convicted in Tennessee
JACKSON, Tenn. — The Tennessee Innocence Project is a nonprofit law firm that started in 2019.
It works throughout the state to exonerate those behind bars that are being held for crimes they did not commit.
“We investigate claims of actual innocence and litigate those claims in court. Before we founded in 2019, there was no other organization statewide in Tennessee. And so we want people all across the state, including in Jackson, West Tennessee, to know that we exist and that there’s help if they know someone that’s been wrongfully convicted,” said Jessica Van Dyke, the Executive Director.
Van Dyke says she and other attorneys across the state co-founded the organization as a full time nonprofit after noticing the lack of funding attorneys would receive when representing a wrongful conviction case.
“You could work on a case for years, and years, and years, and your attorney might get paid a thousand to $2,000 and there was no more payment after that,” Van Dyke said. “There was simply not state funding for it, so we knew that we had to create another avenue, another mechanism for people to get justice.”
Van Dyke says since the founding of the nonprofit, her team has already had four successful exonerations.
She says based on the National Registry of Exonerations, thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted and have collectively spent 27,000 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.
“The total number across the United States since 1989 has been about 3,000. So in Tennessee, we’ve only seen 30 exonerations of 3,000, and I believe that’s because we did not have a full-time organization dedicated to this work,” Van Dyke said.
Van Dyke encourages anyone who may know someone who was wrongfully convicted to apply to have their case looked at to possibly receive representation.
“It’s really important for them to get the justice they deserve,” Van Dyke said. “You can go on our website, look at the types of cases that we would accept, and you can also learn more about wrongful convictions.”
On Sept. 22, the nonprofit will be hosting an event at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, where visitors can learn more about wrongful conviction.
They will also be able to meet Anthony Ray Hinton, who was on Alabama’s death row for 30 years for a crime he did not commit.
For more information on that event or how to apply for representation, click here.
You can find more news from across the state here.
