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Ain’t Misbehavin
t laith Observer
VolumeXLIV
Number 19
U
43
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • May 7, 2014
Established in 1970
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photo by D onovan M. S mith /T he P ortland O bserver
Janis Kuracal (left) and Aliza Kaplan are taking their years of criminal justice experience and putting it to work at liberating innocent prisoners. The attorneys are two
of the co-founders of the Oregon Innocence Project. Oregon is the last of the 50 states to adopt a project solely focused on reversing mishandled convictions.
F ightingfor the Innocent
victions cases; a representative o f asylum
seekers; an active member of the Oregon
Justice Resource Center, amongst other ac­
colades, it is safe to say issues around legal
justice are Kaplan’s forte’.
Oregon Innocence Project a lifeline to the wrongly convicted
D onovan M. S mith
T he P ortland O bserver
by
As a jail cell will almost certainly shut on
at least one innocent Oregonian today, work­
ers at the Oregon Innocence Project say they
are hoping to make the lockup of any inmate
wrongly convicted an injustice of the past.
With one full time lawyer, and the rest of
its attorneys and staff working pro bono,
these dedicated experts agree that, “Ulti­
mately w e’re trying to put ourselves out of
business.”
The Innocence Project is a national project
dedicated to helping people who have been
wrongfully found guilty of a crime, and this
is done largely through DNA testing. Or­
egon was the last state to join the movement
when it launched the Oregon Innocence
Project last month.
Oregon’s Federal Public Defender Steve
Was is giving up his position to join the
group as its first legal director.
The group’s simple on paper but hard in
execution mission of getting innocent people
out of jail begins this summer.
The Portland Observer spoke with two of
Oregon Innocence Project’s co-founders,
attorneys Aliza Kaplan and Janis Puracal,
more about their overall mission and how
they plan to tackle this justice issue moving
forward.
“We know that there are innocent people
in jail all over the country. We know that
there are innocent people in Oregon’s jails,”
Kaplan asserts.
As a teacher of legal analysis and writing,
wrongful convictions and public interest
lawyering at Lewis and Clark College; a con­
sultant on death penalty and wrongful con-
Barry C. Sheck and Peter J. Neufeld
launched the Innocence Project in New York
in 1992. That year the number of exonera­
tions for the organization totaled in the low
spectrum of single digits. But since then,
about 1,400people in prison have been given
back their freedom.
In the U.S. A., however, where less than five
percent of the world's population resides, but
where almost a quarter of the world's prisoners
are held, odds are there many more unfairly
continued
on page 4