Junk Forensic Science and Wrongful Convictions: A National Survey Anchored by the Maria Montalvo Case

Georgia has recorded 60 exonerations since 1989, and 42 of those people — 70 percent — spent more than four years between conviction and exoneration, which is precisely the window O.C.G.A. § 9-14-42(c) allows for a felony habeas petition. That deadline, enacted in 2004 without documented legislative justification, has been paired with judicially narrowed statutes, the elimination of out-of-time appeals, no right to counsel in habeas proceedings, and a conviction-integrity infrastructure that reaches 3 of Georgia's 159 counties. What remains is a system in which the state's own Chief Justice says the burden falls on people who cannot carry it, and in which compensation arrives only after innocence has already been proven somewhere else.