- According to the Color of Justice report in October 2001, nationally, black Americans are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of white Americans, though in some states the disparity is far greater.

One in 81 black adults in the U.S. is serving time in state prison.

Wisconsin leads the nation in black imprisonment rates.

One of every 36 black Wisconsinites is in prison.

Since 1973, 185 people have been exonerated from death row and 99 of them are African-Americans.

When it comes to incarceration, the U.S. is a world leader with 1.2 million people in state prisons across the country, according to a recent report in the U.S. news, imprisonment is a life altering event that can create negative impacts on the individual at a societal level.

For years, African-Americans and Latinos have pointed out the disparities and the racism in the prison system.

But now organizations are working to free people who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime and sentence.

The Exoneration Project reviews cases of innocence for people who have gone to trial and were found guilty of crimes that they did not commit.

They consider post-conviction cases across the nation for individuals wrongfully convicted of different types of crimes and with different sentence lengths, including cases where a defendant has served their complete sentence or pleaded guilty.

The National Registry of Exonerations states that there have been over 2,891 exonerations since 1989 and more than 25,000 years lost for people who have been wrongfully convicted.

Are you aware of the thousands of convicted people who have been convicted wrongfully?

We'll discuss the work of the Exoneration Project.

Joining me on the show today is Joshua Tepfer.

He is an attorney with the Exoneration Project, we'll discuss what they are doing and how they are helping people who have been wrongfully convicted.

Don't go anywhere.

We'll be right back with Courageous Conversations.

Well, let's get ready to get started.

And let's bring Joshua Tepfer on.

He's an attorney with the Exoneration Project, and we're just so excited to have you, Josh.

Thank you for taking time out of your I'm sure busy schedule to sit with us for a few moments.

- I'm looking forward to it, thank you so much.

- Great.

Well, you work for the Exoneration Project.

Can you tell me, how did the Exoneration Project get started and what exactly do you all do?

I kind of gave a little bit in the intro, but you can kind of reconnect the people with what you do.

- Sure.

The Exoneration Project is one of, you know, I think there's 200 or so internationally innocence projects across the country.

I think there's dozens, at least in the United States.

And basically what we do, some of them are journalist organizations.

Some help the exonerated after their release.

But we are we're a legal services organization, so we represent individuals who allege that they were wrongfully convicted or imprisoned or have already served their time.

And we reinvestigate them and we seek relief in the courts.

- And you're, yeah, you're connected with a college too, right?

Did it begin at the college?

- Right, so we're associated with the University of Chicago Law School, so students sometimes work on the cases as part of a clinic.

So you think of like doctors have students work on actual patients, the students work on actual cases, individuals who are wrongfully convicted.

But we were started actually out of a civil rights law firm, Loevy and Loevy.

So the civil rights law firm is one of the most successful in the country.

I work there as well, too.

And essentially, what they do is, after someone, a lot of their practice is, after someone is wrongfully convicted, they sue the people who are primarily responsible for that.

Usually the police officers and the municipalities that were involved in the wrongful conviction.

- Right.

- However, what's unique about our law firm, which I love, is we don't just get involved after it happens.

What I do and what a lot of us do at the Exoneration Project is we try to get those people out of a wrongfully convicted first, and we do that all for free and pro bono.

- Yeah.

You know, for a long time, African-Americans and minorities and even folks who can't afford attorneys have been screaming, you know that there has been an imbalance right in the judicial system and that we are penalized heavier and many times convicted for a longer period of time, sometimes just because of lack of representation, but also because of white supremacy, because of implicit bias, racism within the court system.

Do you find in your work that minorities and poor folks are usually the ones who are the ones who are sentenced more heavily and even wrongfully convicted?

- I mean, absolutely, the racial disparities in the criminal justice system are obvious.

You can see it every step of the broken criminal justice system, from who's detained pretrial to who's arrested for what cases.

I mean, the obvious examples are powder cocaine in suburban white areas are don't necessarily lead to arrest or pretrial incarceration in the same way that arrests for similar type of drugs in urban areas.

I mean, there's a long history of that.

And then just like in the criminal justice system as a whole, the racial disparities and who's wrongfully convicted match up.

There's just zero question about that.

- Yeah.

And it's great to hear you say it from the perspective of a non-African-American, non-minority, because a lot of times when guys like me say it, it's like, oh, there they go, playing the race card again, you know, there they go, crying victim again, you know?

And let me ask you a question, side question, were you surprised that the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery were convicted?

Or was that something that you thought what would potentially happen?

Because I know from the African-American side we were like, oh, yeah, we have the Rodney King tapes.

We've got all these other tapes.

These guys are not going to be convicted.

They're just they're going to walk and maybe get a slap on the hand.

What about you from an attorney's perspective?

- You know, I mean, it's a difficult perspective for me - was I surprised?

I probably was a little bit surprised that it...

I am a defense attorney at heart.

I'm a criminal defense lawyer.

That's what I do.

So I have trouble celebrating any conviction.

Whatever it is.

There's just so many problems in our criminal justice system.

You know, the conviction of white men for killing this black man is not going to solve the problems that are all throughout the criminal justice system, which overwhelmingly harm black individuals, people of color, poor people, overwhelmingly.

So I probably am a little surprised based upon the makeup of the jury.

But I think the evidence was obviously pretty powerful against those folk.

And, you know, it certainly seems like the jury reached a proper verdict of that case.

- Yeah, yeah.

Thank you for your perspective.

So let me get back to the Exoneration Project.

How many people have you all helped?

And how does one engage, you know, an organization like yours to kind of get involved and, you know, maybe receive the help that they need?

- Sure.

So we've been around since 2007.

As far as how many people we've helped, our organization has exonerated, so proven people innocent, I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 130, 140 people.

- That's amazing.

- But we feel like we've helped a lot more than that.

Sometimes cases happen where we're able to get them sentencing relief or parole, clemency or commutation or some other form of relief, or even able to help them receive some level of justice as well.

So we do some other things like that.

We get, you know, we take on cases.

We're based in Chicago.

A vast majority of our work is local in Illinois and Chicago, but we do take on cases from all throughout the country, and we get thousands of letters a year and we're only able to help, respond even to, a portion of them.

So it's clear to us that there's lots of work to do.

Lots of people need help.

Unfortunately, we're just human beings and can only help so many.

- You can only do what you can do.

But I mean, to have, you know, upwards of 130 people, to have them exonerated from, you know, prison is a big deal because it's not just the individual, but it's their family, their children, right?

All that they're connected to.

Each individual represents a life.

Every life represents a story and there is a whole connection to them.

So those lives, I'm sure were grateful.

Can you...?

I actually read on your Facebook page, there was a corrupt police officer in Chicago.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

I mean, is it OK to talk about?

It's on the public domain?

Can you share with us how you were able to win that case, cases?

- No one ever stops me from talking about that, I talk about it all the time.

So, you know, Chicago, you know, wrongful convictions happen for all sorts of reasons.

Sometimes it's mistake, but unfortunately oftentimes it's intentional misconduct from police or other actors in the criminal justice system that's covered up for a long time.

So what I've been involved in a lot of cases involving intentional police misconduct and so-called code of silence from municipalities that cover it up for a very long time.

The most, what I assume you're referring to is the sergeant, a guy named Ronald Watts and his team of officers who basically for a decade in the housing projects of Chicago, all-black community, was running his own drug line and on the backs of black folk who are poor black folk who, anyone who tried to expose him or anyone who got in his way, he would fabricate cases and falsified charges against them, leading to an enormous amount of wrongful convictions.

So I have been involved in what I believe is the first mass exoneration in Chicago history.

It's resulted in 115 people having their...

I'm sorry, 115 convictions being overturned, something like 90 people, a number of them have had multiple convictions overturned, and a lot of them have already served their sentences and stuff.

But it touched them.

It touched this whole community, the trust of the Chicago police.

It had done so much damage that it's become a bit of my life work the last half decade or so.

- Now that's very valuable work.

And so you had to work to convict an officer.

Did you run into, I think you the wall of silence or the blue wall?

And how were you able to kind of navigate through that to really bring charges and have these charges dropped against the individuals?

- Well, let's be clear, I don't bring.

I didn't convict the officer.

What happened was, you know, I'm not a prosecutor.

What happened was for about a decade, this officer was running, and let's not forget his team who was aiding and abetting his perjury and his drug cases, was running rampant in the housing projects for ten years.

Basically, you know, committing, acting corrupt every day, for a decade.

The FBI in 2012 finally charged him after a supposed near decade-long investigation with one count.

He and one associate, one other police officer, went to prison for a very short time, and then nothing happened.

There was no audit.

No state's attorney, no one who went back and said, Oh, my God, we know this guy was doing all these horrible things.

People were speaking out about it.

People were telling the police, people were telling judges, people were telling their attorneys and no one believed them.

And no one went back after Watts was convicted and said, well, let's fix all of these and that was a huge problem.

So when I learned about it, first I represented someone named Ben Baker and then another woman named Clarissa Glenn, and I started to realize the extent of the misconduct.

Before I knew it, I had literally, literally dozens, if not hundreds, of people contacting me over and over again and saying, this happened to me too.

This happened to me, too.

And so we went back and tried to capture all those people and reinvestigate every single one of those cases and brought them to court.

And it's very much ongoing.

We have 83 more cases that are in court currently that we think are people, we know are people who are wrongfully convicted and are still waiting for justice.

- Wow.

And does the city or the state make a restitution for how these individuals' lives have been, you know, just so damaged by someone in law enforcement?

- No, it's almost the opposite, you know, the city has had for four years after this first mass exoneration, which was in November of 2017, so we're literally at the four-year point, opened a supposed investigation to the police officers who remained on the force throughout this.

Escaped any sort of penalty whatsoever.

And it's still ongoing.

Those officers are still being paid taxpayer dollars to work, to sit on desk duty while this investigation, these so-called investigations into these officers is ongoing, so nothing has happened.

We have a mayor who ran on this platform for to help police corruption who has done nothing.

And we have, like I said, 83 other cases that are pending in court that not enough has happened on those as well, either.

So there's so much more left to be done.

You know, there are the people who have been exonerated have filed lawsuits.

And basically all that's happened so far for years and years is the lawyers get rich defending these corrupt officers on taxpayer dollars.

- It's amazing because you can read, all you have to do is kind of Google, you know, officer misconduct.

There's, you know, incidents, and this does not mean that all police are bad, but it just highlights the reality in Baltimore, right?

There's video of police officers planting drugs, you know, on...at crime scenes.

And then in Florida, right again, officers planting drugs in a crime scene, many a times it's minorities.

Do you see this police misconduct running rampant across the country?

I know what you've seen in Chicago, but you know what has been your experience outside of the Chicago area?

- And I mean, that's the problem, like I'm dealing with like this one aspect that we talked about, 200 convictions or whatever it is, you go to Queens.

I was just involved in another mass exoneration, minimally involved, where 60 people had their convictions overturned with the work of the Queens District Attorney's Office and the legal aid organization there in Queens.

And again, it's just the tip of the iceberg.

These were cops who were charged or convicted of corruption, exactly the type of things you were talking about, caught on video fabricating evidence, and when that happens it is so rare for the system to go back and be like, well, how many people is this officer responsible for doing this thing?

You know, you have a plane crash.

You know, the great Peter Neufeld always says this, you know, a plane crash and a tragedy happens and then there's like ten investigations and everyone puts all this money in.

Like, how does it happen and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again?

You have a wrongful conviction and then you only free one person and then they say, all right, well, you know, no one goes back and looks like, well, who else did he harm, or how do we stop this from happening?

It's just so, so rare.

But, yeah, it's happening all over the country.

Like I said, of course, and it does, it hurts the community.

It hurts the good cops who are doing the things right.

And but to not weed out the ones who are so obviously engaged in misconduct and help the people, all the people they damaged, is a real tragedy.

That's what we try to do.

- Yeah.

Well, I mean, you guys are doing tremendous work.

And let me ask you, was Demetrius Johnson someone that you represented and can you tell us a little bit about his story?

- Sure, yeah, Demetrius Johnson was my client, and this is yet a different group of corrupt officers.

This is a homicide detective named Renaldo Guevarra, who was running rampant on the west side of the city, preying on the Latino community, Latinx community and the African-American community there, and essentially Demetrius Johnson in 1991, he was 15 years old and he was literally abducted by this detective.

His misconduct is so apparent in this case.

Essentially, what happened is a perpetrator who gunned down two people, one survived.

Another third person was there and had a point-blank look at the shooter and that that person knew the shooter.

It was a different person, Brian Johns, and he went into a lineup that night and identified that perpetrator as the shooter.

And for reasons that are totally unknown, Detective Guevarra decided to let that person go, to fabricate a police report and to bury the true police report in a secret file for 30 years, where it said that this eyewitness did identify that person.

And then two months later, he framed Demetrius Johnson, a 15-year-old kid who went to prison for 13 years.

And the only reason this ever showed up is because 30 years later, 28 years later, that secret police report with the true lineup ID surfaced and became public from a different trial.

And then we immediately went to court when we learned of it, and Demetrius Johnson asked us to.

And literally, like two months later, this never happens.

Two months later, the state agrees to vacate a 30-year-old conviction.

He was later certified innocent in a court, and he was exonerated.

- Wow, what is...?

And, man, thank you for that.

I mean, just to think about a person's life being totally interrupted, totally changed.

Damaged.

You know, there's this emotional piece I'm sure that goes with it, the mental abuse that goes along.

I just there's so much that goes along with that.

What is the longest that someone has served in prison that you or your team was able to get exonerated?

- I think my personal one was my client Daniel Anderson, who did 27 and a half years, but he actually wasn't exonerated until eight years later, so he did actually, was convicted for 35 years.

It was a 1980 case and he was exonerated, I think, in 2015.

So that's mine.

You see others.

I think it was, I think his name is Mr Strickland, in the Missouri was something like 44 years or 46 years incarcerated that just came to light recently.

So, you know, these stories are somewhat mind boggling.

There was a couple of brothers in North Carolina, these are not cases that I was involved in, who did, you know, three decades plus, 35 years together.

So it's like 70 years combined.

It's, you know, there's...it's, you know, at some point they just become numbers.

I mean, any amount of time, ten years.

I mean, like wrongfully convicted for something you didn't do, it's just a horrible tragedy.

- Josh, I mean, just thank you for even being, you know, a part of something that tries to bring equity justice right to individuals who have been wrongfully convicted.

So what if, if someone's in a situation like this or, you know, a family member may be looking for some support, how do they connect with you all?

And what is the process?

I mean, I'm sure you have to go through a vetting process because you get thousands of requests per year.

And I know the Exoneration Project is not the only innocence project.

There are innocence projects, I think, all throughout the United States.

But how would someone connect with you all if they had a need for your services?

- We've transitioned to mostly an online application process, so if you go to our website Exoneration Project.org, then you can find a link to fill out an application to get assistance for your loved one.

That's kind of the best way to do it.

If you're incarcerated or are an inmate, you can write a letter.

I mean, I will be honest, the wait, the staffing and the wait, sometimes it takes 18 months, two years to even get a response.

Sometimes.

It's just a sad reality of where we're at and the resources that we have, but that is sort of the process to try to get help from our organization.

And like you said, there are local organizations all across the country too where people should seek out and look for help.

Lots of good people doing this work.

- Yeah, and thank you for that.

Is all of your work done pro bono and are there any charges or costs to participate?

You know, all of it's free, all of our time, all of the work, any costs associated with the investigation, litigation, whatever, we do it all for free.

- Right, and how is that funded?

Is that through the law firm or is there other grants, federal dollars helping you all?

- Yeah, some of the other organizations, you know, they're funded through law schools or through grants and things along those lines.

Ours is all privately funded through our civil rights law firm.

Any work towards the exoneration of getting the conviction overturned is entirely free.

It is no cost.

Any statutory compensation anyone may receive from the state for their wrongful conviction of being innocent, that goes entirely to the client, it is all for free.

So like I said, I'm really, really proud of my organization in that it's not entirely just trying to profit off like a truly miserable situation.

Not that that's in any way wrong because these people have the right to be compensated for their time wrongfully convicted and they need lawyers to help and lawyers need to pay the bills and keep the lights on, too.

But it's particularly heartwarming to me that my boss, my organization, has hired me and others almost to do this full-time, simply pro bono work in building this and helping people get out from under these wrongful convictions.

- That's, you know, thinking about that, that type of work and it must bring you when you know, great joy to see people's lives change in that way.

Can you talk a little bit about what this does for you and how it affects you?

Because many times, you know, we get into a field and we don't get that type of satisfaction by helping individuals.

What does your work do for you and how does it how does it impact you?

- You know, it's a little bit of a complicated question.

It doesn't bring me the joy that you might think it does.

I mean, there's no justice in my work, you know, I mean, when you finally succeed in getting someone out there's, you know, a little bit of a sense of relief and then the work in some way just starts.

I mean, can you imagine 20 years in prison in isolation, away from your family, all that time lost, all the things you lost and being sent back into society?

And you know, we're tasked, we care about these people.

We love these people and trying to help them work their way all through that.

You know, all of us struggle just in daily life, and these people obviously then have daily life to deal with and poverty and no skills during prison, so it can be pretty overwhelming in that regard.

You know, and it's just really not about me, it's about the clients.

I have had to sacrifice absolutely nothing.

I've always wanted to do this type of work to address problems in the criminal justice system, to address, represent people who don't look like me, who have suffered in ways that I have not.

And so I get to do that every day and work with amazing people, really resilient people, the wrongfully convicted and their families.

So it's really just a joy for me.

- Yeah.

Yeah, that that is that is wonderful and the fact that you all kind of have an aftercare process.

Because I realize right, the trauma that they've gone through and much of the things that happen in prison are not talked about, not reported.

And then they're brought out into a world that they are unfamiliar with.

I have a person that I know personally who came out of prison.

It was a woman.

She's in federal prison for nine years.

I mean, she came out and we were talking about social media and she's like, what's a social media, right?

Not understanding, you know, cell phones are not flip phones anymore, right?

But then what do I do for a job because I have to check the box, right?

So now I can't find employment.

How will my family receive me back in?

Where am I going to live?

And all of those are real-life issues that they are faced with.

What type of work do you all do with the folks that that come out?

And is there a way that folks can maybe donate to what you're doing?

- You know, there's some real irony in all of it, too, right?

And I agree with everything you said, and it's awful for people who actually committed the crimes.

The irony is the people who are actually wrongfully convicted actually have less resources when they're out.

- Wow.

- I mean, people who at least when it's done right in some states or the federal system, you know, you may have a parole system, some job assistance program, people who can sort of help facilitate that process.

When you're wrongfully convicted, you're sort of just entered into this weird ether where your like conviction's overturned.

You don't have any help.

You're not on parole.

You don't have any sort of government assistance.

So we have a case manager here full time who works with our relief clients and tries to help them get on their feet with housing assistance, job assistance, getting an ID, yeah, building resumes and things along those lines.

So we're lucky.

You know, we don't take private donations.

You know, we take volunteer work and people who want to help and assist the wrongfully convicted.

We always welcome things like that.

But you know, we're a little bit different of an organization.

So there's lots of lots of good organizations out there that we'd recommend donating money to for this type of thing.

Some exoneree-led organizations, a woman named Kristine Bunch and Juan Rivera have this organization.

You know, I think they're a great organization, so there's lots of places like that that we would support donating money to as well.

- Well, Josh, all I can say is thank you to you and your organization for all of the wonderful and amazing work you're doing.

I realize it's a heavy load to lift every day, but you're making a difference in people's lives.

So I'd like to thank you again for taking the time out to join me here on Courageous Conversations.

And to our viewing audience, on behalf of everyone here at PBS39, may God bless you and keep being courageous.

All right, we'll see you soon.