September 14, 2016

The Wisconsin Innocence Project Statement

Role of the Advisory Board

Recently, questions have arisen regarding the role of Mike Griesbach, the Manitowoc County ADA, on the Wisconsin Innocence Project’s Advisory Board as he has given public statements, written op-eds and published a book about our former client, Steven Avery.

While Mr. Griesbach is an Advisory Board member, we want to make clear that Mr. Griesbach does not speak for, or claim to speak for, the Wisconsin Innocence Project or its Advisory Board. We do not join Mr. Griesbach in his argument that Steven Avery is guilty as convicted of the 2005 homicide of Theresa Halbach. We also agree that several of Mr. Griesbach’s specific statements in his recent writings are problematic. For example, Mr. Griesbach unfortunately downplays the frequency and importance of false confessions. No one knows how often false confessions are made, but research has shown that they are one of the six most common contributing factors to wrongful convictions, accounting for nearly 25% of convictions later overturned with DNA evidence. Mr. Griesbach’s reliance on Mr. Avery’s prior alleged misconduct is also problematic, given that such prior conduct is inadmissible in court as proof of new conduct due to its potential to bias and mislead fact-finders, and given that some of that prior conduct is also what led authorities to focus on Mr. Avery in the prosecution that led to his wrongful conviction in the 1985 attempted rape and murder for which Mr. Avery spent 18 years wrongly imprisoned.

We believe it is important, however, to have diverse voices on our Advisory Board and we value the input of our prosecutor members. We created our Advisory Board to try to break through the adversarial polarization that marks our criminal justice system in the United States. WIP's Advisory Board is deliberately composed of experts from a wide array of positions and perspectives in the criminal justice system. The Board is not a governing Board; it does not set policy, manage the budget, make litigation decisions, oversee personnel, or perform any of the other tasks traditionally associated with a governing or fiduciary board. It is, rather, an advisory board--a board whose function is to provide advice to the staff and students at the UW Law School who do handle the cases and determine the direction of the project.

Given the diversity on the Board, disagreements among Board members, and disagreements between individual Board members and WIP policy or casework decisions, are inevitable on occasion. In those instances, Board members are of course free to express those opinions, but do so in their individual or other capacities, and not as members of the WIP Advisory Board. And while those disagreements may arise, WIP continues to value the input of those Board members, as they help WIP staff and students to be aware of and consider competing perspectives on the criminal justice system and individual cases, and thereby help WIP serve its mission-exonerating the innocent, improving the system to reduce errors, and educating law students.

Keith Findley and Carrie Sperling

Co-Directors, Wisconsin Innocence Project

Submitted by WIP Admin on March 15, 2017

This article appears in the categories: Wisconsin Innocence Project

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