SAN DIEGO, Feb. 13, 2007–  After serving more than 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, Timothy Atkins’ conviction was overturned by Los Angeles Judge Michael Tynan who declared that "the State has no interest in upholding a conviction obtained by false testimony." Attorneys with the California Innocence Project presented new evidence in a Los Angeles courtroom, including a witness who recanted her trial testimony, proving Atkins' innocence.  He was released from the L.A. County Jail Friday, Feb. 9, 2007.

"This is the pinnacle of our existence," Professor Justin Brooks, California Innocence Project director, told the Los Angeles Times after Atkins' walked out of prison. "This is the whole goal: freeing the innocent."

“Although it has taken way too long and Tim can never get the years back, we are thrilled that the court has recognized that Timothy Atkins’ conviction cannot stand,” said California Western Professor Jan Stiglitz, co-director of the California Innocence Project. “We really appreciate that Judge Tynan was willing to give Atkins a hearing. Sadly, in many cases we cannot even get that far.”

Atkins was convicted of one count of murder and two counts of robbery on July 28, 1987, after being identified by a frightened woman who witnessed her husband being shot in the chest during an attempted carjacking. The police were led to Atkins when a woman named Denise Powell told police that Atkins had confessed to being an accomplice in the killing.

In the hearing last fall, Denise Powell testified that she fabricated the story of Atkins’ confession. Powell recanted the testimony that helped convict Atkins, saying that she made the confession up and was afraid of changing her story after lying to police.

In his decision Tynan stated that Powell's recantation, together with the "unreliable and changing [eye-witness] identification causes this court to find that absent Powell's testimony, no reasonable judge or jury would have convicted Atkins." 

To get Powell's recantation Wendy Koen, then a second-year law student at California Western, worked tirelessly to track her down and get a signed declaration. Koen is now a California Western graduate and LL.M. student - she represented Atkins in court and celebrated his release with his entire family on friday. 

"Tim's case has been quite an education. It is a blueprint for what is wrong with the American criminal justice system," said Koen. "Though we celebrate at this moment, I know that tomorrow we will be fighting battles - most of them losing battles - for other inmates who are actually innocent and deserve justice." 

Of more than 300 documented cases of wrongful conviction in the U.S., nearly two-thirds are the result of erroneous identification. Brooks calls the witness identification in Atkins' case a "highly suggestive, cross-racial identification, in a situation where the person saw the attacker for less than a minute on a dark street. Studies over the past 20 years have shown that these types of identifications are not valid."

Atkins is the fifth inmate that has been released by the work of the California Innocence Project. For more information please visit the project Web site at www.CaliforniaInnocenceProject.org.
 

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ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA INNOCENCE PROJECT – California Western School of Law is home to the California and Hawaii Innocence Projects. Students at California Western work to free wrongfully convicted inmates by reviewing more than 1,000 claims of innocence each year, and focusing on cases where there is evidence of actual innocence. Innocence Project attorneys and students then investigate cases by tracking down and re-interviewing witnesses, examining new evidence, filling motions, securing expert witnesses, and advocating for their clients during evidentiary hearings and trials. Four California Innocence Project clients have been released since the project’s inception in 2000.

ABOUT CALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW - California Western School of Law is the independent, ABA/AALS-accredited San Diego law school that advances multi-dimensional lawyering by educating lawyers-to-be as creative problem solvers and principled advocates who frame the practice of law as a helping, collaborative profession.  California Western is home to several innovative centers and institutes including the California Innocence Project, the Center for Creative Problem Solving, the Institute of Health Law Studies, and the Institute for Criminal Defense Advocacy.  In addition to a J.D. program, the law school offers several dual degree programs in conjunction with local universities; an LL.M. in Federal Criminal Law; and an M.C.L./LL.M. for foreign law graduates. 

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