UW-Madison law professors John Pray and Keith Findley run the Wisconsin Innocence Project, which has freed several life-sentence prisoners based on revisiting their cases using DNA evidence. We'll hear from Pray, Findley, and a wrongly convicted individual they helped free at "Crime, Punishment--and Truth by Testing," a free presentation on Tuesday, April 11 at 7 p.m. at the Overture Center for the Arts, 201 State Street in Madison. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion. The program is a presentation of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters as part of its Academy Evening series. Free tickets (suggested donation $2) are recommended to ensure seating. They will be available one week prior to the event at the James Watrous Gallery in the Overture Center (3rd floor) during open hours. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Thursday 11-5; Friday 11-9; Saturday 11-9; and Sunday 1-5, closed Monday. Maps and directions are available at www.wisconsinacademy.org. We apologize that tickets cannot be mailed or reserved by phone. In 1998, Pray and Findley co-founded the Wisconsin Innocence Project. Since then, the Project has been responsible for the release of five prisoners, each of whom had been wrongly convicted of serious crimes including murder and sexual assault. They have also been involved in the Project's efforts to reform the criminal justice system by helping train police officers throughout the state, writing amici briefs in high profile cases, and proposing and drafting legislation in a number of key areas, including preservation and testing of DNA, eyewitness identification procedures, and mandatory videotaping recording of interrogations. Academy Evenings take place regularly in the Overture Center in Madison and at other venues around Wisconsin. The public forums are engaging presentations, free of charge, about a wide variety of topics of public interest featuring Wisconsin's leading thinkers, scholars and artists. They are intended to encourage public interaction with these leaders in an intimate atmosphere designed to build community. The nonprofit Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters connects people and ideas from all areas of knowledge and all walks of life to advance thought and culture in our state. The Wisconsin Academy's many programs include an art gallery for Wisconsin artists, a quarterly magazine about Wisconsin thought and culture, public forums such as the Academy Evenings series, and our new Wisconsin Idea initiative, "The Future of Farming and Rural Life in Wisconsin," a public policy program that brings together farmers, universities, state and federal agencies, conservation organizations, agribusiness leaders, and others to shed light on a sector that strikes at the heart of Wisconsin’s identity and economy. For more information please visit www.wisconsinacademy.org. This presentation is sponsored by the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, M&I Bank, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Isthmus Newspaper, Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek SC, and a number of individual donors. The Wisconsin Academy thanks these sponsors for their generous support.

Submitted by UW Law School Newsletter Admin on April 10, 2006

This article appears in the categories: Must-Know Info