Longmont's New District Attorney Announces Formation Of Conviction Integrity Unit

This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Michael Dougherty, Boulder County's new District Attorney(DA) announced that his office has created, in collaboration with the Criminal Defense Bar, a Conviction Integrity Unit. Mr. Dougherty says, "The formation of this unit is consistent with our mission of seeking justice in every case".

The purpose of the unit is to ensure the level of wrongful conviction cases in Boulder County is as low as possible with Dougherty saying, "Getting it off the ground is a top priority".

The DA's office will be partnering with the Boulder County public defenders office, the defense bar and the University of Colorado's Korey Wise Innocence project.

The goal of the partnership is to create a conviction integrity unit that examines all cases where defendants claim they were wrongfully convicted.

Dougherty moved to Colorado to create and run a similar program at the state level called the Colorado DNA Justice Review Project. This project was part of the Colorado Attorney General's (AG) office and looked into potentially wrongful convictions across the state.

Current AG, Cynthia Coffman (R), did away with that program.

Dougherty and Deputy District Attorneys Fred Johnson and Mark Rimaldi lead on the DA side initially. Others within the DA's office will likely be added to efforts as they get the unit off the ground.

Dougherty said, "A prosecutor's mission is to do justice in every single case, and not to rack up convictions like notches in a gun belt. If there is reason to believe someone is wrongfully convicted, prosecutors should have an open mind and a process to examine those cases."

According to Dougherty, this effort is the first of it's kind in Colorado organized and operated from a DA's office.