"...Louisiana has the fourth-highest rate of DNA exonerations in the country, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to freeing the wrongfully convicted.
Emily Maw, director of the New Orleans Innocence Project, said this is largely due to the state having the highest incarceration rate in the world as well as a broken indigent defense system.
The unwillingness of prosecutors to reconsider convictions despite mountains of contrary evidence is also a leading factor, she said.
Despite a confession from the guilty party, witnesses who backed Jackson’s claim that he was in Mississippi at the time of the crime, handwriting and medical experts who testified to his innocence, it wasn’t until the introduction of DNA evidence in 2005 that the courts and the Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick relented."
New Orleans CityBusiness, June 11, 2007
Full article: http://www.neworleanscitybusiness.com/viewStory.cfm?recID=19291
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