The new Conviction Integrity Unit will work with local law
enforcement officials and prosecutors — especially in small counties — to
reevaluate cases that ended with dubious convictions.
Investigators will also “pursue corrections” for individuals
who were wrongfully or unfairly convicted, according to the Attorney
General’s website.
“We’re striving for justice, not for cases we’re dealing
with today and tomorrow, but the cases we dealt with yesterday,” Shapiro said
in a video announcement
released Wednesday.
Shapiro has appointed Lisa Lazzari-Strasiser, the former
elected district attorney of Somerset County, and a one-time public defender,
to lead the new unit.
Shapiro said Lazzari-Strasiser brings “unique experience
serving in a system we both agree is in need of reform.”
Conviction integrity units have proliferated in recent years
amid a nationwide effort to reduce prison populations and redress past wrongs
of the criminal justice system. They’re a popular tool among a crop of recently
elected progressive prosecutors, who want to use their offices to reduce
incarceration.
The only other Conviction Integrity Unit in Pennsylvania,
founded in 2014 in Philadelphia, has exonerated 13 defendants, according to
a database maintained by the National Registry of Exonerations at the
University of Michigan School of Law.
Most conviction integrity units are located in county
prosecutors offices. Only two other states — New Jersey and Michigan — run such
offices at the state level, data from
the registry show.
Barbara O’Brien, editor of the National Registry of
Exonerations, said it’s “too early to tell” if statewide units are more
effective than those run by counties.
But she said a statewide model does provide a measure of
objectivity, which can be difficult for county prosecutors to match when
they’re asked to examine the work of their colleagues or predecessors.
“You get a little removal from the people who made the
original decisions,” O’Brien said. “The independence of the office is
incredibly important.”
Shapiro’s new initiative will require the cooperation of
Pennsylvania’s county district attorneys, who prosecute the vast majority of
criminal cases in the Commonwealth.
But a spokeswoman for that group said Wednesday that they
didn’t have much information about the new unit beyond what Shapiro announced
publicly on Wednesday.
Lindsay Vaughn, executive director of the Pennsylvania
District Attorneys Association, said Lazzari-Strasiser is scheduled to meet
with members of the statewide group later this week.
At that point, Vaughn said, “we expect to begin to hear more
details and formally start the conversation on what the unit is, how it will
work, what our role will be, and the complex jurisdictional issues it
presents.”
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