Fishman Haygood files amicus brief for Innocence Projects
January 10, 2018
Fishman Haygood lawyers Alysson Mills and Kristen Amond have filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Fifth Circuit appeal of Alvarez v. City of Brownsville on behalf of the Innocence Project, Inc., the Innocence Project of Texas, the Innocence Project New Orleans, and the University of Mississippi School of Law George C. Cochran Innocence Project.
The appeal asks whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brady v. Maryland requires the government to disclose exculpatory evidence known to it at the time a defendant pleads guilty. The amicus brief asks the en banc court to reverse a panel decision holding that it does not.
The amicus brief highlights the stories of persons who pleaded guilty to crimes they did not commit, all the while the government possessed evidence establishing their innocence. In each instance, the wrongful convictions—accompanied by years, sometimes decades, or wrongful incarceration—could have been avoided if the government had timely disclosed the exculpatory evidence already in its possession.
Read the amicus brief here.