In Oklahoma, nearly 4% of prison inmates are estimated to have been wrongly convicted of a crime.
The Oklahoma Innocence Project, headquartered at the Oklahoma City University School of Law, is working to get them justice.
News 9 spoke with The Innocence Project’s Legal Director Andrea Miller to learn more about her organization.
How does the Innocence Project work?
Miller: Well, simply put, we help innocent people who are in prison for crimes they did not commit. We receive letters from hundreds of inmates a year. We go through those letters. We make a determination if we think that it’s a case we can help. [There are] a lot of people we can’t help, sadly, but if it’s a case we determined we can actually generate new evidence of actual innocence, then we will continue on with their case and litigate the case.
You’re helping an Oklahoman right now, Karl Fontenot. Can you explain that case and where it stands right now?
Miller: Carl is literally the innocent man. He was featured in the Netflix series “The Innocent Man.” His case was returned from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals after broad-ranging prosecutorial misconduct, hiding evidence and misrepresenting evidence. The state has yet to produce any evidence in this case, but we’re currently stalled because the trial court ruled that they would have to corroborate a confession, meaning they would have to produce some evidence that shows the confession is true. It’s a false confession. There is no such evidence, but that case is currently pending at the Court of Criminal Appeals on a state’s appeal of that issue.
That crime happened back in Ada in 1984?
Miller: It’s been a long time. He’s been waiting for his time in court, and he’s ready to exonerate himself and clear his name, and we wait some more.
What other cases are you working on?
Miller: We have a lot of cases that are in court at the moment. One really interesting case is out of Oklahoma County. Our client is Joshua Christon. He was convicted of a shooting at a convenience store, first-degree murder. In that case, we discovered, as is common in Oklahoma County in these older cases, a stack of information from the prosecutor’s file that had not been turned over to the defense that would have helped him obtain an acquittal. So we’re litigating that issue right now…