OUR MISSION
The Women’s Justice Project (WJP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting against and dismantling the systems of oppression that contribute to the disproportionate incarceration of women in this country through habeas corpus litigation, civil rights litigation, and impact litigation.
WHAT WE DO & WHY WE DO IT
The Women’s Justice Project pursues justice for women who have been wrongfully convicted and are seeking post-conviction assistance in proving their innocence and being exonerated.
The increasing rate of female incarceration in the United States creates a risk of increased wrongful convictions. Despite the innocence community’s best efforts, women who are wrongfully convicted are underrepresented and underserved. Throughout Arizona’s history, there have been 21 exonerations, only two of whom were women, both of whom were Caucasian. WJP will work to increase the number of female exonerees, with a focus on the subgroups of women who are especially vulnerable to a broken criminal justice system.
One of the main differences between male and female exonerees is the type of crimes for which they have been wrongfully convicted. Men are more frequently convicted of violent crimes (defined as rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) than women are. These types of violent crimes are more likely to involve DNA.
Women are more frequently wrongfully convicted for violent crimes that are believed to have been committed in caretaker roles that are traditionally and overwhelmingly filled by women, such as parents, family care givers, day care workers and teachers; cases in which DNA would do little to exonerate them. These cases often involve the use of sexist stereotypes to conjure up a motive.
About 40% of female exonerees were wrongly convicted of harming their children or other loved ones in their care. Shaking baby syndrome (SBS) cases make up a large number of the female wrongful conviction cases. While SBS was previously considered to be based on concrete science and analysis, new research has shown that SBS has been dramatically over diagnosed, leading to a large number of wrongful convictions. This new research has also led to heated debate among SBS experts. Many symptoms previously considered to be indicative of shaken baby syndrome have been found in a number of cases where SBS is not present. These recent findings have led to a shift in thinking and SBS is no longer automatically seen as the cause of the injuries.
Nearly 71% of women exonerated in the last 31 years were wrongfully convicted of crimes that never took place at all, meaning they were determined to be accidents, deaths by suicide or crimes that were fabricated. Approximately 37% of wrongfully convicted women have been exonerated due to false or misleading forensic evidence, also known as "junk science". Other causes of wrongful convictions include coercive police tactics, ineffective assistance of counsel, and prosecutorial misconduct.
The Women's Justice Project will work to prove the innocence of our clients through investigation into the facts, the science, and the arresting and prosecuting agencies’ tactics and procedures, and will litigate such findings to exonerate our clients. Each case is different and proving a claim of innocence can take years.
Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.5 provides that a person seeking post-conviction relief has a right to a court appointed attorney. The Women’s Justice Project is funded in part through the fees paid by the State for court appointed attorneys. Additionally, the project will be funded through donations, fundraising efforts, and in-kind contributions.