As a victim of a wrongful murder conviction that was finally overturned after nearly 18 years, I know firsthand how difficult it is to get a wrongful conviction reversed, even when there is evidence of your innocence. In 1988, when I was just 17 years old, my beloved parents were murdered in our Long Island home. Police questioned me for hours with no attorney present, insisted I was guilty and falsely claimed both that my father had implicated me before dying and that my hair had been found in my mother’s hands. I was finally exonerated and released after new evidence and witnesses established others were responsible for the crime and disproved the story that had been fed to me during my interrogation. But it took years and countless petitions and appeals in both state and federal courts to finally get the opportunity to even have this new evidence considered.