Unfortunately, too much of publicized coverage of actual innocence cases – you know those incredulous scenarios where a person has served a lifetime for a crime they did not commit – is focused on the backend of the story. Here you have this person interviewed by the media, strategically staged at the foot of some courthouse steps with tear drenched family members in tow (I love you Mom!), attempting to describe how they feel at the moment. As if thirty or so odd years of wrongful incarceration – having been incarcerated since a 19 year old teenager – could in any civil manner justify being condensed into the requested impromptu reply to the typical newsreporter’s quip: “So, how do you feel?” Ludicrous!

The rate of actual innocence cases that are evidenced in the United States alone has resulted in the evolution of an actual innocence industry. Actual innocence advocates, civil rights movements, and even former prosecutors have formed various actual innocence projects in an attempt to confront the ever spiraling incidents of freeing those innocents who continue to rot away in prisons for crimes they simply did not commit.

Even today we find the practice of overzealous government agencies bent on gaining a criminal conviction at all cost. This irrespective of the fact that the evidence clearly shows no connection between the actual innocent facing trial and the criminal act charged.

In most actual innocence cases you’ll find an identifiable pattern of the flagrant manufacture of fabricated evidence contrived by rogue police and prosecutors alike. Most disturbing of all is that such wretched tactics target minorities, the poor, and generally those destitute members of society. Those without the means to afford the extravagant costs of retaining a lawyer or adequate legal representation.

In this blog series of “The Case of Actual Innocence” I shall share with you various documented cases of individuals actually innocent who are presently fighting for liberation from the throes of wrongful conviction.

As a legal advocate, I’ve successfully won cases within various judicial venues, including the United States Court of Appeals – a very challenging judicial venue to win even a certificate of appealability – of those actually innocent and continue with this crusade.

Yusuf B. McKinney #A468437
P.O. Box 4501
Lima, Ohio 45802-4501
(or found at: inmateblogger.com – Daniel P. McKinney A468437)