By Barry Scheck, Innocence Project Co-Director

When we called Jerry Miller to ask him to come to New York to talk with Bill Moyers, he said yes immediately. He had seen some of Bill's programs while spending 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and he was eager to have a thoughtful discussion about his case and the issues it raises.

Jerry was 22 years old when he was arrested and charged with a brutal rape, robbery and kidnapping. Less than two weeks ago, he was exonerated in a Chicago courtroom – at the age of 48. A wrongful conviction robbed him of practically his entire adult life.

Jerry is the 200th person exonerated through DNA evidence nationwide. He is a truly unique individual – but his case is eerily similar to many of the 199 before it, and his story echoes the thousands of letters the Innocence Project receives from prisoners every year.

Like 120 of the first 200 people exonerated through DNA evidence, Jerry is African American. Like 77% of the first 200, he was convicted based on eyewitness misidentification. Like nearly all of our clients, he spent years appealing his conviction and came to us as a last resort. And like every single innocent person we have walked out of prison, he now wonders whether his experience will mean anything – whether his case will be a learning moment about the criminal justice system’s shortcomings, or everyone will hear his story, feel bad for him and then go back to business as usual.

The staff at Bill Moyers Journal told us that readers on this blog are used to seeing questions that spark thoughtful dialogue from a variety of perspectives. Our question is the same one that Jerry and our other clients ask us so often:

What will it take for our criminal justice system to learn the lessons these exonerations provide?

What are some of the lessons of these cases? How can we all learn more from these cases – so that other innocent men and women are not wrongfully convicted and left to watch Bill Moyers from prison cells, hoping that in a few years, they too can share their story?

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Barry Scheck is the Co-Founder and Co-Director (with Peter Neufeld) of the Innocence Project. Started at Cardozo School of Law in 1992, the Innocence Project is a national organization that uses DNA testing to exonerate wrongfully convicted people and implements policy reforms to prevent future injustice. Scheck and Neufeld became involved in forensic DNA issues in the 1980s, and their work has shaped the course of law and policy nationwide. Scheck, Neufeld and Pulitzer Prize-winning NEW YORK TIMES reporter Jim Dwyer are the authors of Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted, published by Doubleday.

Bill Moyers talks with Jerry Miller this week on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL.