LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The Michigan Department of Attorney General’s Mi (CIU) has received federal grant money to use in post-conviction DNA testing in order to evaluate more than 1,700 post-conviction claims of innocence.

The CIU investigates claims of innocence to determine whether there is clear and convincing new evidence that the convicted defendant was not the person who committed the offense. The CIU is not a court and its work is not governed by court rules of procedure. Its mission is determine if new evidence shows an innocent person has been wrongfully convicted and to recommend steps to rectify the situation.

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$550,000 was awarded to Michigan by the Bureau of Justice Assistance to defray costs associated with post conviction case identification, case review, evidence location and DNA testing for violent felony cases where results could show the innocence of those convicted.

The CIU was launched by Attorney General Dana Nessel in 2019 in partnership with Western Michigan University Cooley Law School in order to review forensic cases. Nessel said, “Law enforcement officers are duty-bound to pursue justice. That duty is especially important when it comes to correcting the failures of our criminal justice
system” and “ensure a rigorous and detailed evaluation that keeps dangerous offenders out of Michigan communities, while providing justice to those wrongly convicted.”

The CIU unit has already exonerated four individuals including Gilbert Poole, Jr. who was convicted of murder in 1989 and released in 2021 due to a mistaken witness ID, false or misleading forensic evidence, perjury or false accusation and official misconduct. DNA evidence played a role in Poole’s exoneration when DNA results showed that he was excluded as a contributor to the bloody evidence collected at the crime scene.

The most recent annual report for the National Registry of Exonerations lists 161 exonerations in 2021 including cases involving homicide, sexual assault and other violent and non-violent crimes with 20 of them solved using DNA.

Overall, there were 1.8 million persons incarcerated in jails and prisons in the United States in 2021 according to the Vera Institute, an organization with advocates, researchers and activists working to end mass incarceration. That gives us a 0.0089% exoneration rate.