The Exoneration Initiative (EXI) is a pioneering organization that provides free legal assistance to wrongfully convicted persons in New York. We primarily focus on the most challenging cases, those that lack DNA evidence.
Our mission is simple: To exonerate the actually innocent.
Hundreds of DNA exonerations in the United States over the last 20 years have raised serious concerns about the criminal justice system's failure to protect the innocent from wrongful conviction. But the DNA exonerations are only the tip of the iceberg, representing a mere fraction of the wrongful convictions. However without DNA evidence, very few lawyers and organizations have the expertise and the resources to effectively handle these extremely difficult non-DNA cases. EXI was founded to take on this important work.
Expanding on the efforts of DNA-based organizations such as the Innocence Project, EXI is taking the Innocence Movement to the next level. When selecting our cases we apply the lessons learned from the DNA exonerations to non-DNA cases, focusing on the problems proven to cause wrongful conviction. We then approach prosecutors and Courts urging them to take a second look at convictions and undo injustices.
The Initiative comes at a time when Courts are becoming receptive to non-DNA cases. Confronted with the reality that intolerable numbers of innocent people are languishing in jail, Courts are now considering the merits of innocence claims, looking beyond overly formalistic barriers which have prevented review for decades.
EXI's staff of highly experienced lawyers and our alliances with law schools and premier New York law firms committed to pro bono innocence work, enable us to pool the legal talent and resources needed to sustain complex litigation and give the forgotten, non-DNA population the best chance of success for exoneration.
download our Case Evaluation Form08 May 2013
Exoneration Initiative client Devon Ayers was released from prison on January 23, 2013, after serving more than 17 years behind bars for two 1995 Bronx homicides he did not commit: the murder of a Federal Express executive in her apartment, and the felony murder of a livery driver in his cab two days later and four blocks away. There was no physical evidence tying the murders to Ayers or to one another - they were connected only by the prosecution's witnesses who claimed that Ayers and his codefendants committed both. Ayers was exonerated of the livery driver's murder in December, based on reliable confessions from the true killers which proved that that the prosecution's only witnesses on both murders were wrong. On January 23, prosecutors finally conceded that Ayers' conviction for the second murder must also fall.
Ayers' release came three months after EXI, in conjunction with attorneys from the Legal Aid Society, filed a motion to exonerate him of both murders. He is thrilled to be reunited with his family, including his 18 year old daughter who was only 4 months old when he went to jail. Had he not been exonerated, Ayers would have had to serve 50 years to life in prison.
Ayers was released with the understanding that the Bronx District Attorney's Office would be given 90 days to decide whether it had any credible evidence to justify re-trying him and his codefendants. But on the 90th day, the Bronx District Attorney's Office announced for the first time its intention to attempt biological testing on evidence recovered in the Federal Express executive's murder. This testing had been requested by Ayers and his codefendants numerous times over the past decade, but the Bronx District Attorney's Office previously opposed these requests, claiming that the evidence was not relevant. It now insists that the charges against Ayers and his codefendants cannot be officially dropped until the testing is completed, further delaying justice for these innocent men and preventing them from moving on with their lives.
ABC Eyewitness News Reports on Ayers' Release
Read More in The New York Times
15 April 2013
On June 20, 2012, the Appellate Division, Second Department reversed Derrick Deacon's 1990 conviction for a Brooklyn murder and ordered a new trial based on newly discovered evidence of innocence: two federal cooperators who were insider gang members knew the real killers, who confessed to them. An eyewitness to the crime also recanted her trial testimony.
EXI investigated the case and filed a motion to vacate the conviction. Attorneys from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, led by Roberto Finzi, conducted the post-conviction hearing and after the motion was denied, successfully argued the appeal in the Second Department. EXI filed an amicus brief in support of Deacons appeal and in an effort to advance doctrinal law in the Second Department - namely, that fairness requires state courts to take a comprehensive, integrated view of the evidence when considering post-conviction newly discovered evidence claims, especially in non-DNA innocence cases.
It is extremely rare that an appellate court will make credibility findings that conflict with the lower court as the Appellate Division did in this case. After finding that the hearing witnesses' testimony was "credible and compelling," the Court held that "the likely cumulative effect of the newly discovered evidence and the recantation testimony established a reasonable probability that the result of a new trial would be a verdict more favorable to the defendant."
Read the Decision
Read More in The New York Times
Read More in The New York Law Journal
The Kings County District Attorney's Office appealed the decision to the New York State Court of Appeals, but EXI successfully moved to dismiss that appeal.
The Kings County District Attorney's Office has now announced its decision to re-try Deacon after 24 years. EXI will be representing Deacon at his retrial, which is currently scheduled for the end of May, 2013.
