Public defender to talk about injustice in the courts
By JARED KEEVER
Is there injustice in the American justice system? That question will be the topic of a talk Monday night, given by 7th Judicial Circuit Public Defender Jim Purdy at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church.
Purdy, who is running for re-election this year, said on Thursday that the talk he calls “Actual Innocence: When Justice Fails” is one he has given before.
“As public defender, I’ve been interested in actual innocence cases for a number of years,” he said. He has held his position since 2005.
During a PowerPoint presentation, Purdy said, he walks the audience through a number of cases from Florida, Oklahoma, Virginia and Texas in which defendants were convicted of crimes they did not commit because of “bad lab work, faulty prosecution ... or various scientific matters.”
He first gave the talk at the Tiger Bay Club in Daytona Beach and recently gave it again at the St. Johns County Bar Association. After that presentation, he said, he was approached by Megan Wall, of St. Johns County Legal Aid and Compassion In Action — an initiative of Compassionate St. Augustine — about giving the talk in the city.
Purdy said he will discuss the work of the Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to exonerate those wrongfully convicted. He will also cover “what causes wrongful convictions in this country” and “the various problems that arise where justice fails."
Purdy said he will highlight “13 Florida defendants who have been exonerated by the Innocence Project, including one who spent 35 years in prison for a crime he did not commit,” and another who “took a plea and was later exonerated.”
Warren Clark, an organizer with Compassion in Action, said the group — which is interested in social justice and prison reform — extended the invitation to Purdy as part of an ongoing series of talks the group has hosted for about two years.
The Compassion in Action initiative grew out of a book club that studied “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander.
After reading the book, Clark said he was “stunned” and the group was forced to ask itself, “What do we do here?”
Instead of immediately moving on to another book, the group decided to begin hosting public education events and providing those who attend with suggested follow-up actions like letter-writing campaigns or petition drives.
Those events have since settled into a routine. They are “always on the second Monday (of the month) and always from 6 to 7:30 p.m.,” Clark said. They are usually held at St. Cyprian’s in Lincolnville.
“The mission is to empower people,” Clark said.
