The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District on Monday announced the selection of two lawyers who will provide guidance to a new unit tasked with reviewing potential wrongful convictions.
Jeffrey D. Robinson and Kristine Hamann will work as independent consultants on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s newly created Conviction Integrity Unit.
Established in September, the unit is tasked with reviewing cases in which defendants convicted of violent felonies can get a chance at having a case reconsidered, such as in cases in which DNA testing of biological material may establish actual innocence.
Mr. Robinson works as senior counsel at Lewis Baach and Ms. Hamann is a visiting fellow at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance.
They will work with the unit to review material related to new claims and provide assessments of the potential merits of and investigative steps necessary as to those claims.
The Conviction Integrity Unit is the first established by a U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“In standing up the first federal Conviction Integrity Unit, we wanted to bring in outside counsel who would offer a fresh perspective to our review process in order to ensure that we were reaching the right conclusions when assessing these innocence claims,” said U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. “Our goal is to not only identify historic wrongful convictions but to do everything in our power to prevent those wrongful convictions from occurring on a going forward basis.”
• Andrea Noble can be reached at anoble@washingtontimes.com.
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