And effective Death Penalty reform act which made it nearly impossible to use habeas corpus to free innocent prisoners. Despite all of the setbacks come 2002 was a blockbuster year for the Innocence Movement. 25 people were exonerated by dna testing. Still the highest number of dna exonerations in any one year to date. Teenage exonerations became part of the public consciousness and people starte are starting to understand that the system made mistakes. It also is a big year for mike mcalister. People have forgotten about him, but his mom wrote to frank green, reporter at the Richmond Times dispatch who began writing about his case. A new lawyer also signed on to help mike and defiled a partners petition within Virginia Governor mike warner. Virginia was no stranger to the problem of wrongful convictions and had seen its share of eyewitnesses but in 2003, mikes petition was denied. The governors staff said they would be one thing if my cat dna evidence, but he didnt. From 20032013, 187
Congratulations to the class of 2016. Today is your day of celebration and youve earned it. The voices crying for peace and light, because your choices will make all the difference to you and to all of us. Dont be afraid to take on cases or a new job or a new issue that really stretches your boundary. You spend your summer abroad real ships rather than internships, and the specter of living in your parents basement after this Graduation Day is not likely to be of greatest conce concern. Watch commencement the streets to the class of 2016 in their entirety from colleges and universities around the country by business leaders, politicians and white house officials. On cspan. Antenna on cspan2 take a live to a forum on Community Organizing and civic mobilization. 17 citizen groups will be speaking today and will be hearing opening and Closing Remarks from ralph nader, author, activist and former president ial candidate, this is being hosted by the center for the study of responsive law at
Itself issues. Texas a quand m, university of texas at austin, the university of houston, other institutions, these arell public universities. And these individuals, these students, pay tuition to go to these public universities. And in response, theyre issued identification vehicles. Identification cards. But the state of texas has seen fit to say, thats not valid in order to vote. And i think that one example, and weve heard several others, basically exposes the fact that the movement to impose voter identification requirements is a fraud itself. Its a sham. The whole argument behind it is that were trying to protect the integrity of the Voting System. Heres the problem. Youre protecting the integrity of the Voting System by imposing a solution in search of a problem. Because none of these individuals in any of these states has been able to produce a scintilla of evidence of fraud. In fact, there are studies that have shown that there have been over a billion instances of americans e