HENNEPIN COUNTY, Minn. — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty is announcing the launch of a Conviction Integrity Unit she says could identify and rectify mistakes made in past prosecutions.
The unit aims to "investigate past convictions where there is a credible basis to suspect that a wrongful conviction or some other serious injustice may have occurred," Moriarty said Monday in a press conference at the Hennepin County Government Center.
"Prosecutors make mistakes, law enforcement makes mistakes and so do public defenders," she said. "We have to have the humility to recognize that the things that we might have done many, many years ago - while they looked like the right thing to do at the time - are not now, and that we need to correct those."
This comes after Moriarty's Office in December held a press conference to announce the exoneration and release of Marvin Haynes, who spent nearly 2 decades in prison for a murder conviction even though there wasn't any forensic or video evidence connecting him to the crime. The HCAO ultimately agreed Haynes proved his Constitutional rights were violated during a 2005 trial.
Today, the wrongfully convicted man has his own place and a job to pay the bills. He's also spending time with his mother, who he says isn't doing well these days. Sunday, he stepped out for some fun at a local lake.
"I've just been doing new things every day," Haynes told the press Monday. "I've just been enjoying my life and just making up for the 20 years that I was incarcerated."
Moriarty didn't say how many more cases will be investigated through the new unit, but says an application system is being developed for those who are incarcerated.
"We will be looking at cases where a person did not receive a fair trial," she said. "That doesn't necessarily mean that they're innocent."
Attorney Andrew Markquart represented Haynes while working for the Great North Innocence Project, a nonprofit. He will now lead the county unit, which is part of the Division of Professional Standards that Moriarty launched in May last year.
"You may have forensic methods or scientific techniques that were believed to be reliable at one point in time and science marches forward and all of a sudden they're not quite as reliable," Markquart said.
"And this is an important distinction here: our Court of Appeals and our Minnesota Supreme Court, when they review a case, are only reviewing the paper or the transcript from the trial," she said. "So sometimes our appellate courts will confirm a conviction and they just don't have the access to all the information that's in the file, which we will have."
Moriarty says the Hennepin County Board approved funding for the Conviction Integrity Unit, but that it won't be fully staffed right away and additional resources may be needed. She also says the new unit will help free-up the Minnesota attorney general's statewide Conviction Review Unit to focus on areas outside Hennepin County.
"If something like this existed years ago maybe I would have gotten justice sooner," Haynes said.
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