Our mission is to raise awareness about the innocent women in prison.

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Women face a truly unique battle when it comes to the problems they face when addressing wrongful convictions. For starters, the crimes they are convicted of traditionally are linked to their roles as caregivers in their communities, such as killing a spouse or abusing a child. Not only do they suffer the trauma and injustice of being wrongfully accused of a crime they did not commit, but that is compounded by their suffering associated with the pain of harm to, or loss of their loved one. 

 

In many instances, a crime never even occurred. “No crime cases” are cases where a person was convicted of a crime that did not occur, either because an accident or a suicide was mistaken for a crime, or because the convicted person was accused of a fabricated crime that never happened. This is one of the largest differences between wrongful conviction cases involving women versus men. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, about 73% of female exonerees are exonerated for a crime that never occurred, compared to 37% of male exonerees. 

 

Proving Innocence

 

In the United States, we all learn and are continually reminded that we have the right to be presumed innocent, and so rather than the accused person having to prove innocence, the government is required to prove guilt at the very high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But once someone has been wrongfully convicted, and their appeal has failed, the burden seems to switch. Now, when the person is incarcerated and has virtually no access to resources and no right to an attorney at state expense, they are often stuck trying to prove their innocence.  

 

So you might be asking, how does someone prove they are innocent when a crime never occurred? This is a great question, which also illustrates another problem wrongfully convicted women tend to face. DNA testing, which for decades has been a vehicle to fight wrongful convictions because it helps reveal or exclude the identity of the perpetrator, rarely aids in cases where no crime has occurred and there is no perpetrator. Since 1989, women only account for 2% of exonerations where DNA was present. The majority of those exonerations were men who were convicted of violent crimes such as rape and murder where DNA evidence that shouldn’t otherwise be present is likely to be left behind and could be tested.

 

As stated earlier, the wrongful convictions that women face are often tied to their roles as caretakers in society. It is no surprise that a quarter of female exonerees were exonerated from crimes with child victims. These exoneration cases often involve allegations of physical or sexual abuse that did not occur (such as cases involving accidents or natural deaths, false allegations by the complainant, and the now largely scientifically debunked “shaken baby syndrome”). Fifteen percent of female exonerations were cases involving child abuse compared to only nine percent of male exonerations. This was the case for new GIP employee Karla Baday, who was freed from prison after 17 years of wrongful incarceration for a crime she did not commit.