In a historic victory, Korey Wise Innocence Project client Jason Hogan was released from prison after receiving a 77-year sentence for a crime he did not commit.
Despite safeguards in our criminal legal system, innocent people are convicted of crimes and sentenced to years in prison. The Korey Wise Innocence Project (KWIP) at Colorado Law works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted in Colorado and advocate for reforms to prevent future injustices. The project strives to reform the criminal legal system with two goals at its forefront: to prevent wrongful convictions at the front end and to make it easier to correct mistakes when they do happen.
An integral part of the Colorado Law and ˛ĘĂń±¦µä communities, KWIP provides mentorship, training, and inspiration to law and undergraduate students through both hands-on legal work and passionate advocacy.
Reflecting on KWIP’s impact on students, executive director Anne-Marie Moyes said, “Law students gain important insights through their work with KWIP. They see the long arc of a criminal case—from trial through every step of the appeals process.”
She continued, “They obtain a deeper understanding of why it's so important to have a competent defense lawyer and a fair prosecutor at each of these stages. After graduation, most KWIP students enter careers as public defenders or prosecutors, and they carry these important lessons into that work.”
KWIP celebrated a monumental success last spring with the release of client Jason Hogan on May 9, 2023. Convicted of a robbery/kidnapping at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver, he was nine years into serving a 77-year sentence when the yearslong efforts of KWIP bore fruit.
Because Hogan’s case appeared to be a wrongful conviction based on mistaken eyewitness identification, KWIP took on the case in 2019 and embarked on a three-year-long journey to uncover additional evidence of Hogan’s innocence.
“Immediately, Jason's case looked like a wrongful conviction based on eyewitness misidentification,” Moyes said. “Although the victim positively identified Jason as the robber, she initially told police she did not get a good look at the robber's face. Plus, she reported that the robber had a sun tattoo on his left hand, and Jason had no tattoos on his hands.”
Beyond the victim's problematic identification, the state had little evidence to convict Hogan.
KWIP learned that an identical robbery/kidnapping took place at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center five days after the crime for which Hogan was convicted. Because the two crimes and suspect descriptions were strikingly similar, the police concluded that the same man committed both crimes. However, police quickly developed compelling evidence that Hogan did not commit the second robbery, including:
- The victim in the second case failed to pick Hogan’s picture from a photo lineup and said that the man who robbed her was not in the lineup.
- A fingerprint lifted from where the robber touched the second victim's car did not match Hogan’s.
- The second victim described another distinctive feature of her attacker—a heavily pockmarked complexion. This description did not fit Hogan.
“Eyewitness misidentification is one of the most common factors in cases of wrongful conviction,” Moyes explained. “Nationally, 28% of all exonerations involve mistaken eyewitness identification. Human memory is highly imperfect and fragile. And, when people experience a stressful event like a violent crime, they are much less able to make an accurate identification.”
Though due process required the police to share the exculpatory evidence about the second robbery with Hogan’s lawyers, they failed to do so. Consequently, the jury that convicted Hogan never learned about the second identical crime and all of the evidence showing that Hogan was not the robber.
In 2022, KWIP shared this new evidence with the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) at the Denver District Attorney's Office. KWIP was prepared to file a motion for post-conviction relief based on the new evidence, but such motions can take years to litigate in the courts.
The CRU then offered to let Hogan enter an Alford plea to a lesser charge and be resentenced to time-served. By accepting the CRU's offer, Hogan was able to avoid a long court battle and return home to his family immediately.
Hogan’s case is just one of a number of cases taken on by KWIP this past year and is the result of yearslong dedication from Colorado Law faculty, students, and volunteers. While there is still more demand for their services than they can satisfy, KWIP now has the bandwidth to take on complex cases and seek justice for more innocent clients. This capacity to take on more work was one of Moyes’ goals since her tenure began as executive director in 2019. Over the past few years, KWIP has grown from a staff of two lawyers to six.
In 2022, Gov. Jared Polis signed into law a bill written by the Korey Wise Innocence Project to ease access to post-conviction DNA testing in Colorado.
Law students play an integral role in continuing this work. This past year, KWIP's Faculty Director Ann England focused her Criminal Defense Clinic on innocence work. Eleven clinic students—all 2Ls and 3Ls—together took on five new KWIP cases. The students carefully reviewed trial transcripts and discovery, put together investigation plans, interviewed witnesses, and drafted motions. Some of their cases look very promising, and KWIP is hopeful about freeing their innocent clients.
“We are really fortunate to be part of the Colorado Law community,” Moyes said. “Law students bring incredible passion to this work, and we're able to take on more cases with their help.”