On Wednesday, March 30th, Creighton University will present a talk that focuses on what happens to people who have been wrongly convicted once they are exonerated.
Dr. Rebecca Murray, Chair of the Department of Cultural and Social Studies at Creighton University, says the guest speakers will be Dr. Laura Caldwell, lawyer and founder of the Life After Innocence project at Loyola University and Kristine Bunch, a woman who spent 17 years wrongly imprisoned.
Murray says though people are becoming more aware of the problem of wrongful conviction through things like DNA analysis, she says what has not found its way into the mainstream is the idea of the struggle that wrongfully convicted individuals face when they are released.
"Research indicates people who have been wrongly convicted have a higher incidence of premature death. They have a harder time with PTSD. They suffer depression at higher rates than individuals who were not wrongly incarcerated. So there’s a wide variety of issues that wrongly convicted individuals struggle with once they have received their freedom.”
Caldwell and Bunch will speak at Creighton University on Wednesday, March 30th from 5:30 to 7 in the Harper Center Auditorium.
More information on the Life After Innocence project is available at luc.edu/law/lifeafterinnocence.