Innocence Project seeks to support wrongfully convicted Hoosiers

Roosevelt Glenn’s children were 2, 7, and 8 years old when he left for prison after being wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in Gary in December 1989.

“My girls, you know, they have to hear their dad is a rapist and stuff like that. They grew up with this,” he said.

Glenn was convicted of the crime in 1993 through evidence obtained from biological material that was supposedly linked to him and a state crime lab analyst’s testimony that a hair found on the sweater was similar to Glenn’s.

DNA evidence could not prove Glenn was linked to the crime.

Years later, Francis Watson, a former professor at the Indiana University McKinney School of Law and founder of the school’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic, approached Glenn with the intention of re-examining his case.

“She became that new inspiration, that new hope, because she came into the prison and she was like, ‘Mr. Glenn, you don’t have to prove your innocence. I wouldn’t be here if I thought you was guilty.’ And that was like a whole new life for me,” Glenn said.

During the re-investigation, DNA testing on the hair from the victim’s sweater concluded it wasn’t Glenn’s, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

In 2015, further testing showed genotypes in the biological evidence from the sweater did not belong to Glenn or another man convicted of the same crime.

Glenn’s conviction was vacated in 2017, and he was a free man, with the case being dismissed.

Fast forward another few years, and Glenn is now back in his kids’ lives, and working alongside the woman who fought for his freedom on a new mission: the Indiana Innocence Project.

The project’s collaboration with higher education

The Indiana Innocence Project, which officially launched last month, advocates for Hoosiers wrongfully convicted of a crime and supports them as they re-enter society.

Right now, individuals who believe they were wrongfully convicted can apply for representation by the project.

Glenn is a board member on the project, working alongside experts in the criminal justice community and another exoneree in Indiana, Krissy Bunch.

Valena Beety, another project board member and a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, brings crucial experience to the new initiative. She worked on the Mississippi Innocence Project and founded and directed the West Virginia Innocence Project.

In her positions with the Innocence Project and at the law school, Beety will act as a liaison between the work the nonprofit is doing and the students she instructs.

Right now, she supervises students that work on the project but eventually, she’ll teach a class that connects the two.

Students are helping organize the project by building its database to keep track of applications.

“Even if you go through every application for the first screening step, it takes so long to look for evidence,” Beety said, adding that the organization needs to see if it can find enough evidence to determine if litigation is possible.

She said sometimes the group just needs additional information, and there are times the Innocence Project ultimately determines it may not be able to help with a case.

Moving forward, Beety said students will also correspond with applicants and eventually clients whose cases the team chooses to re-investigate.

Marla Sandys, an associate professor in the IU Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice in Bloomington, has worked with Watson for years, collaborating on several innocence-
related projects.

When Watson reached out to see if she wanted to join the Innocence Project, Sandys didn’t hesitate.

“She contacted me and said, ‘What do you think?’ I’m like, ‘absolutely, count me in,’” Sandys said.

Through that friendship, she’s been able to bring her own students on board to work with wrongful convictions.

In the past, Sandys’ students took the initiative to volunteer their time working on the cases.

But with the establishment of the project, she hopes to create a permanent way for her students to join the team.

“From the very beginning, the goal has been to collaborate with the project and students, and we’ve designed it in such a way, or at least thought about it in such a way, of how best to bring students into the fold, both law students and non-law students,” she said.

Exonerations in Indiana

Since 1989, 49 wrongfully convicted people have been exonerated in Indiana, according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations.

The registry has been monitoring exonerations in all 50 states plus Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and within the military, categorizing them by felony convictions and the factors that led to their wrongful incarceration.

Glenn’s wrongful conviction, for example, can be attributed to instances of false or misleading forensic evidence, mistaken witness ID, and perjury or false accusation.

Indiana ranks 19th in total exonerations in the United States, with an average of 8.62 years lost per individual.

The state is currently making strides to support its wrongfully convicted residents through a restitution program passed by the Indiana General Assembly in 2019.

House Enrolled Act 1150 tasks the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute with distributing compensation to wrongfully convicted people who were found “actually innocent,” meaning they did not commit, take part in or plan the crime, according to Indiana Code.

Under the program, eligible applicants are compensated $50,000 for each year they were incarcerated. The money they receive is distributed in equal installments over five years’ time.

So far, the state has approved just over $3 million distributed to 10 individuals, according to Devon McDonald, executive director of the Criminal Justice Institute. About half of the $3 million has been paid out thus far.

Restoring justice with the Innocence Project

Glenn is grateful to Watson for all she did to get back what he lost behind prison bars. Calling her his “angel,” he said Watson can call him anytime for anything because of what she did for him.

And while attending a nationwide innocence conference a few years ago, Glenn said his eyes were opened to how many other people had it even worse than him.

He wants all innocent people in the state to get the justice they deserve.

“That’s why the Innocence Project is very important, because I believe it’s an epidemic in our country that’s not being noticed,” he said. “But it’s starting to now.”•