26 July 2010 :

Innocence Commission Created in Florida. Today, Chief Justice Charles T. Canady (Florida’s Supreme Court) issued an Administrative Order establishing an Innocence Commission and naming 23 members to it. The Commission is “to conduct a comprehensive study of the causes of wrongful conviction and of measures to prevent such convictions.”  The Administrative Order creating the commission stated the basis for the investigation: "WHEREAS, the occurrence of cases in which the innocent are convicted and punished constitutes a grave injustice; and WHEREAS, the imperative of avoiding such injustice requires a comprehensive examination of the causes of wrongful convictions and an in-depth consideration of measures to prevent the conviction of the innocent." The commission will only review cases that have already been determined to be wrongful convictions. Commission members will not be sifting through cases of prisoners claiming innocence. Instead, the focus will be on dissecting the cases of Florida's 12 known exonerees and figuring out what went wrong. Members and advocates for the panel say they expect faulty witness identification, problems with jailhouse informants and unreliable science to rise to the top of the list of problems, but they're keeping their minds open.  The 23-member Innocence Commission is scheduled to submit an interim report to the Court no later than June 30, 2011 and a final report and recommendations to the Court no later than June 30, 2012.  The Order further states: "The Commission may hold public meetings, review existing research, contract for new research, and solicit comment from scholars, judges, state attorneys, law enforcement, private defense attorneys, public defenders, elected officials, victims’ organizations, and members of the public." Earlier, a group of Florida lawyers Petitioned the Supreme Court to create an Innocence Commission. In March 2010, the Court Denied the petition.