Fran Watson
has been a clinical professor at the Indiana School of Law at IUPUI for the past 14 years. Before that, she was the first chief public defender of the Marion County Public Defender's Agency. She is a member and former board member of the ACLU of Indiana.
Fran is also extremely active in the Innocence Project, and assembles teams of her best students to pursue innocence projects in Indiana.
In fact, Fran was instrumental in winning the Innocence Project's 100th exoneration.
Larry Mayes served a staggering 21 years of an 80 year sentence for rape before DNA tests on a long buried rape kit finally set him free on December 21, 2001. Students had been told for nearly 2 years that the kit had been lost before one convinced a diligent clerk to conduct a successful search in the courthouse basement. Professor Watson represented Mr. Mayes and secured his release within days of receiving the DNA test results. Mayes had been convicted solely on a mistaken eyewitness identification by the victim -- who had also failed to identify him as her attacker in 2 separate lineups where he was present. The likely cause of her mistaken identification was revealed by the prosecution only after the petition for DNA testing. The victim had been hypnotized before viewing Mr. Mayes photograph.
During his 21 years in prison, Mr. Mayes' father, daughter and son all passed away. He now lives with his mother and works at a job referred to him by a sympathetic prison guard.
More information about the Innocence Project is available at www.innocenceproject.org.
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