Miami Law's Innocence Clinic recently hosted a discussion between Miami Law students and exoneree Stephanie Spurgeon, "The True Cost of False Accusations."
Spurgeon told her story of how she was wrongfully convicted of manslaughter in 2008. Blamed for the death of an infant who spent one day at her home daycare, Spurgeon was incarcerated on a 15-year prison sentence. She completed a nine-month program to become certified to work at the law library, where she used her resources to draft a motion for post-conviction relief. In 2018, three separate innocence clinics took Spurgeon's case and worked on it until her release in 2020. Now, Spurgeon works as a legal assistant and continues fighting for wrongfully convicted people.
The discussion then transitioned to talking about another case of falsely accused child abuse featured in the Netflix documentary "Take Care of Maya." Spurgeon, familiar with the case, had seen the testimony of Maya Kowalski, whose mother was falsely accused of abusing her. Spurgeon discussed the parallels between her case and the Kowalski family, highlighting the dangers of "junk science" allowed in courtrooms, such as blood spatter analysis, fire analysis, and shaken baby syndrome.
Tori Simkovic, J.D. '22 and an associate at DLA Piper, moderated the discussion and said these discussions help remind law students interested in innocence work why their work is essential.
"It makes you more zealous and more responsible advocates," Simkovic said, addressing those who were in attendance. "It teaches you, if you want to go into prosecution, the obligation that you have to properly investigate and the obligation you have to question your experts."
The Innocence Clinic is dedicated to identifying and correcting wrongful convictions and is committed to exonerating innocent individuals and combating injustice. The clinic handles cases involving innocent individuals incarcerated who have new evidence ranging from recanting witnesses to new witnesses discovered by students to prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel.
"If there is one thing you take away from listening to this today, I just hope that it is to have an open mind," Spurgeon said. "As prosecutors, as defense attorneys, just look at all the information because there could be little nuggets of truth buried within there and you have to be really diligent to find it."
Read more about Miami Law's clinics.
