www.umich.edu/~clemency/clemency_manual/manual_intro.htmlI was bowled away by this project after seeing a film & presentation this Friday afternoon, for me it exemplified what this conference is about:
Susan Fair founded the Michigan Battered Women's Clemency Project in 1991. Volunteer attorneys and advocates joined with her and distributed questionnaires to women in two Michigan prisons. Their aim was to identify women inmates who were convicted of murder and for whom the battered woman syndrome was an explanatory defense, but for whom that evidence was either not raised, raised inadequately, or rejected by the judge. Approximately 50 women were interviewed; 25 were identified as primary candidates for clemency petitions.
