ABA House of Delegates Seeks to Help Prosecutors Push Past Procedural Obstacles to Exonerate the Wrongfully Convicted

Yesterday, 

The ABA House of Delegates...at the 2025 ABA Midyear Meeting in Phoenix passed a resolution to help prosecutors trying to vacate wrongful convictions who come up against procedural obstacles or court skepticism.

Resolution 503 urges federal, state, tribal and territorial governments to pass laws or create rules making it easier for prosecutors to request that convictions be vacated because of errors of “constitutional magnitude” or “compelling evidence of the defendant’s factual innocence.”

The resolution specifically states that “appropriate weight” should be given to a prosecutor requesting that a conviction be vacated, and “absent compelling evidence in the record to the contrary, that such request be granted.”

Here is the resolution:

Like my article, "Rectifying Wrongful Convictions through the Dormant Grand Jury Clause," the resolution was partially inspired by the case of Lamar Johnson, in which a prosecutor found that Johnson was wrongfully convicted by faced legal barriers before he could be exonerated and released:

It will be interesting to see whether Resolution 503 finds any purchase at the legislative level. It is certainly sorely needed as the number of cases in which prosecutors have been thwarted in their efforts to rectify wrongful convictions proliferates.

-CM