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Sen. Pat Jehlen received the New England Innocence Project (NEIP) Arc of Justice award for her years of dedicated service supporting wrongfully convicted people and their families at the annual storytelling event, Voices of the Innocent, on Sept. 12 at City Winery Boston.
Jehlen told the News that in 2004 her bill gave “exonerees annuities of up to half a million dollars, which had been capped at only $50K before.”
According to the NEI’s press release, the award recognizes the special contributions of a community member who “bends the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”
Jehlen has been an incredible partner to the New England Innocence Project NewEnglandInnocence.org over the last 20 years and has truly bent the arc of the moral universe toward more justice for wrongfully convicted people, including passing landmark legislation to compensate victims of wrongful convictions and championing funding for the Exoneree Network.
“The New England Innocence Project has helped free numerous innocent people, often after decades in prison,” says Jehlen. “I worked to pass the 2004 Wrongful Convictions compensation law, based on stories like that of Lawyer Johnson. But even when people like Sean Ellis were exonerated after decades in prison, they had to fight for months or even years to get any compensation.”
She told the News that 91 prisoners had been exonerated, including Sean Ellis, the current president of NEIP. Ellis was featured in a Netflix series, “documentary Trial 4,” about his 22 years in jail for supposedly killing a police officer in Boston.
NEIP is an independent social justice non-profit that works to correct and prevent wrongful convictions and fights injustice within the criminal legal system for innocent people imprisoned for a crime they did not commit in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
