NU launches research on innocent women who end up in prison
November 30, 2012 9:58AM
The Center on Wrongful Convictions unveils its Women's Project at the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University of Law on Thursday, November 29, 2012. Audrey Edmunds, wrongfully convicted of shaken baby, tells her story of wrongful conviction. I Stacie Scott~Sun-Times Media
Audrey Edmunds spent 11 years in prison for shaking a 7-month-old baby to death, even though the Wisconsin day-care operator said she’d only ever shown the baby “the utmost respect, care and love.”
“I was calling on the telephone to 911 and giving her CPR, and I was convicted of utter disregard for human life,” said Edmunds, who was released from prison in Wisconsin in 2008 after an appeals court there ruled new research into shaken baby syndrome might prove her innocence.
Edmunds, now 51, joined a handful of other women downtown Thursday as Northwestern Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions launched its “Women’s Project.”
Karen Daniel, a senior staff attorney at the center, said she hopes the project — aside from helping wrongfully convicted women — will spur research into the particular factors that might contribute to innocent women ending up in prison. “It’s much more common in women’s cases that false confessions contribute to wrongful convictions than in men’s cases,” Daniel said.
Among other things, the project wants to examine the possible ways that women respond differently during intense interrogations, Daniel said. Daniel said there’s likely to be an emphasis on cases like Edmunds’, where women are accused of killing a child or a vulnerable adult in their care.
Stefano Esposito
