Many said it couldn't be done, that an initiative to free wrongfully convicted people from prison would never get off the ground in Georgia, where the conservative state's laws and attitudes have been firmly stacked against prisoners.


At a time when the Innocence Project was gaining traction in New York, the Peach State still allowed key evidence in disputed criminal cases to be literally trashed — a practice that the Georgia General Assembly finally stopped in 2003 with an evidence preservation statute.

As idealistic Georgia State University College of Law students at the turn of the millennium, September Guy and Jill Polster were told their plan to establish the Georgia Innocence Project was "cute" but a nonstarter. Patted on the head by superiors and rejected in their attempts to develop the concept through Georgia's law schools, Guy and Polster said they were forced to go it alone.

Their perseverance has paid off. Twenty years after founding the Georgia Innocence Project with a box of files in 2002, Guy and Polster were honored with the Founders of Freedom Award at the organization's inaugural freedom celebration dinner on Oct. 6 — a glitzy affair in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood. Founding executive director Aimee Maxwell also received the award.

Surrounded by supportive members of the state's legal community and many of the exonerees they have helped free from a life of incarceration, Guy, Polster and Maxwell reflected on the pipe dream origins of their cause.

"When we started this journey those many years ago back at Georgia State, we had fire in our bellies but not a lot else," Guy said. "We didn't have a lot of support at that time. We were met along the way with some sneers, some pats on the head. But for everyone who said it will never happen here in Georgia, there were 10 more people who opened their hearts and their wallets to support us."

The Georgia Innocence Project, or GIP, now boasts a dozen exonerations. Those 12 men lost a combined 275 years, including 26 years on death row, to wrongful imprisonment in the state for murders and other violent crimes they didn't commit.

The only independent organization in Georgia focused solely on freeing innocent people, the GIP has managed half of its total exonerations in the last two years alone, thanks to a dramatic influx in support and resources.

"We are so immensely proud of the many lives that have been affected by the work," Guy said. "This is our wildest dream."

Giving Back Hope

For exonerees like Clarence Harrison, being free is a reality that sprang from a nightmare. Harrison was arrested in DeKalb County, Georgia, in 1986 on rape, robbery and kidnapping charges, and convicted the following year. He spent 17 years in prison before being freed by the GIP in 2004 as its first exoneree.

"After the evidence in my case got destroyed, I lost hope," Harrison told those at the award ceremony. "I believed I was going to die in prison."

Harrison's priority upon release was marrying his partner, who had worked three jobs while he was incarcerated in order to afford him an attorney.


"Eighteen days after I was released I was locked back up," Harrison joked of his marriage.

Former DeKalb County District Attorney Jeff Brickman said Harrison was the first person to be led into the back of the county's courthouse in a Georgia Department of Corrections jumpsuit, shackled at the hands and feet, and exit hours later from its front steps in a dress suit "as a victim but as a free person."

"It was amazing," said Brickman, a GIP board member. "Probably the most meaningful thing ever in my career. Clarence hadn't done anything wrong. He was 100% innocent. It was a no-brainer."

The GIP says Harrison's plight is shared by an estimated 5% of Georgia's prisoner population — roughly 2,500 innocent individuals behind bars.

For the lawyers who manage to help right that wrong and restore an innocent person's freedom, including those in Georgia's BigLaw firms, it's undoubtedly a career highlight.

"To prove that people are innocent, I can't imagine more important pro bono work, frankly," Alston & Bird's Joey Burby said during the award ceremony. "The work of GIP is vital."

Alston & Bird was one of four law firms honored at the event for volunteer contributions to the GIP's efforts, alongside King & Spalding, Eversheds Sutherland and Troutman Pepper.

Each firm received the Page Pate Exemplar of Service Award, named for founding GIP member and former board member Page Pate, whose death in September shocked Georgia's legal community. Pate's firm, Pate Johnson & Church, was also presented with the award on his behalf.

"We are heartbroken by Page's passing and we miss him dearly, but we know that in so many ways his spirit lives on," GIP Executive Director Clare Gilbert said.

In a recent example of the firms' work, a team of more than 10 King & Spalding attorneys worked to free Dennis Perry in 2020 from a double murder conviction, helping to unearth new DNA evidence linking an alternate suspect to the 1985 fatal shooting of a Southern Baptist church deacon and his wife. Perry spent 21 years wrongly incarcerated over the crime, having waived his right to appeal in order to avoid the death penalty.

Upon his release from a prison in Georgia's southeast and clinging to his wife, a tearful Perry told waiting media and supporters, "I just want to go home."

Trailblazing a Path to Freedom

The call of home is something Calvin Johnson understands deeply. Johnson was the first person to be exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing in Georgia, with the help of the New York-based Innocence Project. Since his "rebirth" in 1999, Johnson has authored a book about his ordeal and served on the board of directors for both the Innocence Project and GIP.


As the GIP's board of directors chair, Johnson was the first exoneree in the country to hold such a role. He spoke at the GIP awards about his disbelief, as a college graduate and Ohio state senator's son, at being sentenced to life for a sexual assault he didn't commit.

"They put the chains around my wrists, my waist and my feet ... and as I'm being taken out of the courtroom I look back and I see a tear slowly running down my mother's cheek," Johnson said. "I think, 'How did I get here? I've been kidnapped by the state of Georgia and they should be charged with a crime.'"

Johnson said he was sent to the hardest working prison camp in the state, where he and other prisoners were forced to wade through swamps "dodging water moccasins." The prison experience, including sleeping with boots on in case anything happened, turned him from a nice guy into a tough guy, he said.

During one of Johnson's worst nights in prison, he woke to the prisoner in the bunk below his being stabbed over an unpaid debt. For maintaining his innocence, Johnson was repeatedly denied parole for "not accepting responsibility."

"I started to become hard," he said. "I felt like I was losing a part of me. The years went on while I just felt like a rubber band being stretched, like any moment I might just snap."

The DNA evidence in Johnson's case was retrieved from a trash bin, at a time when there was no requirement in Georgia that evidence be preserved. He said hearing about DNA technology provided a "small sparkle" of hope when the dream of freedom was almost diminished.

Upon his release, Johnson visited his ailing mother in a medical facility. This time, the tear that ran down her cheek was one of joy, he said.

12 Exonerations is Just The Beginning

The GIP deserves praise for its work in Georgia, but that work is only just starting, board chair Michael Tyler said. He acknowledged the support of countless individuals, law firms and organizations — including key sponsors Delta and Google — and said the ultimate goal is putting an end to stories like those shared by Harrison and Johnson.

"We are proud that for 20 years, the GIP has been at the very forefront of this liberation movement," Tyler said. "The freedom that we celebrate tonight is that flower of freedom which was watered by the tears of 12 innocent men. We understand that our work is far from finished; in fact, it has barely begun."

As executive director, Gilbert is focused not only on freeing the wrongly imprisoned, but also bringing about systemic change. A large part of the organization's mission is educating the public about what leads to wrongful convictions and advocating for policy and legislative reform.

The GIP has helped to pass legislation for access to post-conviction DNA testing, strengthened eyewitness identification procedures, improved evidence retention, fair compensation for exonerees, and guaranteed disclosure of crucial DNA evidence in law enforcement databases.

"In a criminal legal system that's centered around over-criminalization and mass incarceration, speed and finality are valued over accuracy and truth," Gilbert said. "And wrongful convictions are a predictable and tragic byproduct of those intentional policy choices."

Gilbert said the GIP typically gets involved when prisoners have exhausted all other options and no longer have the right to an attorney at the government's expense. Freeing an innocent person from prison might be the obvious thing to do, but is often a "David and Goliath" battle, she said.

"The procedural bars to relief are closing in on them with each passing day," Gilbert said. "We are often the very last hope. These cases are hard to correct, especially in Georgia where the law is stacked against the imprisoned."

Louis Dekmar, the chief of police in LaGrange, Georgia, is a leading example of how those tasked with prosecuting criminals can make changes to ensure the innocent don't wind up behind bars. Dekmar, presented with the GIP's Trailblazer Award, has developed a standard for post-conviction investigation by law enforcement agencies to review and assess facts that may have led to a wrongful conviction, so misconduct and mistakes aren't repeated.

Dekmar's police department was involved in the case of GIP exoneree Terry Talley, who spent 40 years in prison for a 1981 spate of sexual assaults around the LaGrange College campus. With Dekmar's help, the GIP managed to prove Talley's innocence, despite the state's attempts to keep him locked up.

When Talley was excluded as a suspect by the DNA testing of a rape kit — the only physical evidence in the case that the state hadn't destroyed — state prosecutors changed their single-suspect theory and argued he was responsible for the assaults for which no evidence remained.

"I couldn't imagine a worse experience than being innocent and being in prison," Dekmar said. "Trying to get somebody innocent out of prison is not a difficult choice."

Gilbert said the GIP's assistance of those wrongfully convicted doesn't end upon their release from prison. The organization also provides and connects exonerees with various resources to help them rebuild their lives.

"Freedom after decades in prison is the end of one struggle, but it's the beginning of another very complex struggle of recovery," she said. "GIP has a big mission in a very difficult state. But with each passing year, we have increased our efficacy and our impact."

--Editing by Marygrace Anderson.

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