Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office recognizes Wrongful Conviction Day, October 2nd

October 2nd is Wrongful Conviction Day, a day that acknowledges the reality of wrongful convictions and the profound harm they cause. A wrongful conviction ripples through families, victims, law enforcement, jurors, and the entire community. When somebody is wrongfully convicted, they lose years of their freedom as well as the chance to build a life. Through an indepth training last year with Healing Justice, a national nonprofit that advocates for restorative justice and reform, the CIU learned that a wrongful conviction can devastate the wrongfully convicted and their families, retraumatize victims, and demoralize the community. In the end, society pays the price because the real perpetrator often roams free, committing more crimes. There is nobody, not one sector of society, that benefits when someone is wrongfully convicted.

The National Registry of Exonerations, which collects and analyzes information about all known exonerations in the United States, reports that a total of 3,734 individuals have been exonerated since 1989. Glynn Simmons of Oklahoma, the longest serving exoneree in the United States, spent 48 years, 1 month, and 18 days in prison before being released in 2023. Richard Phillips of Michigan, the longest serving exoneree in Michigan, spent 46 years, 1 month, and 6 days in prison before being released in 2017. Simmons and Phillips are only two of hundreds of individuals who can never recover lost time because of wrongful convictions. To better understand the causes of wrongful convictions, please visit the National Registry of Exonerations at https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration. 

“As prosecutors, our calling is not measured simply by the number of convictions we secure but by the pursuit of justice itself. Wrongful Conviction Day is a stark reminder of the grave consequences when justice is denied. The wrongful imprisonment of even one innocent person shatters lives, devastates families, and erodes the trust that holds our system together. And victims, too, are left without the assurance that true accountability has been achieved. That is why I created the Conviction Integrity Unit - to ensure that if mistakes were made, we correct them. The integrity of the criminal justice system must be preserved above all else. While we cannot give back years unjustly taken, we can and must do everything in our power to prevent such tragedies from happening in the future.” 

In 2022, Prosecutor Lucido created the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU). The following year, the Department of Justice awarded the CIU the Post Conviction DNA Evidence Grant Award, a $1.6 million award of grant money, to better identify and review post-conviction cases for DNA evidence and testing that may support a claim of innocence. The CIU continues to review and investigate claims of factual innocence (DNA and non-DNA) to determine whether there is clear and convincing evidence that an applicant’s claim of innocence, (i.e., that he/she played no role in the underlying conviction), is supported by new evidence. In 2023, the CIU obtained its first exoneration. 

The CIU also engages in community outreach to educate incarcerated individuals and their families about their right to request a wrongful conviction review. The Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office earned an achievement award from the National Association of Counties in 2025, in part, for the CIU’s use of the prison messaging system to reach out to nearly 33,000 incarcerated individuals to explain the availability of the CIU to inmates convicted in Macomb County. To learn more about the CIU, please visit https://www.macombgov.org/CIU. 

On Wrongful Conviction Day, the CIU and Prosecutor Lucido ask everyone to remember a famous quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." The Macomb County Prosecutors’ Office takes these words seriously and will continue to do our best to bend the arc in the direction of justice.

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