Photographer Taryn Simon brings us face-to-face with individuals falsely accused and convicted. While mugshots and photoarrays are used to condemn and imprison these innocents, Simon has turned the camera around to document these victims of mistaken identity and perverted justice. Simon photographed the wrongfully convicted at locations that were crucial in these legal cases: the scene of misindentification, the scene of arrest, the alibi location, or the scene of the crime. Through Simon?s interviews with each, the men and women in this book confront the paradox of innocence and imprisonment, the inability to recover the years stolen from them, and the states? unconscionable refusal to compensate them or ease their traumatic transition to civilian life.
This compelling book of photographs and interviews with the wrongfully convicted by Taryn Simon is co-authored with commentary and case profiles by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck. The Innocence Project, founded by leading civil rights attorneys Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, is responsible for most of the postconviction DNA exonerations in the United States today, many of which are included in this book. On the ten-year anniversary of its founding, the Project continues to free the innocent, striving to transform criminal justice into a more equitable and reliable system.