Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Director of Midwest Innocence Project, worked on Lamar Johnson’s case over a decade to get him exonerated and freed from prison. After 28 years in prison, Judge frees Lamar Johnson for a murder he didn’t commit. Lamar applied in 2008 to the Midwest Innocence Project to help with his case and was released in 2023, 15 years later.
Tricia Bushnell was interviewed by Pruitt & Gray on POINT BLACK and said, “To look at a system and watch it time and time again close the door in front of an innocent person because it values finality over fairness” is frustrating.
Tricia continued saying, “So we have a system that says we just want a conviction to be done and we don’t care whether or not it was right or not. And that’s what we hear time and time again and specially here in Missouri where we have an attorney general’s office that is bought every innocence case for the last 25 years.”
“It can be to look at a system and watch it time and time again close the door in front of an innocent person because it values finality over fairness” -Tricia Rojo Bushnell
Tricia Rojo Bushnell continued with, “Like Lamar Johnson, once that evidence is out there, the judge can make the decision but it’s getting into court. I think what maybe folks don’t know about Lamar Johnson’s case and how many years, and how we had to appeal all the way up, and past a different law just to get Lamar Johnson home. So, I mean, the past five years have been incredibly difficult.”
ABOUT
Tricia Rojo Bushnell is a lawyer and the founder and executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project (MIP), a non-profit organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Arkansas.
Bushnell is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Prior to founding MIP in 2001, Bushnell served as a public defender in Kansas City, Missouri, where she represented individuals in various criminal cases, including homicide and sex offenses.
Under Bushnell’s leadership, MIP has helped free dozens of individuals who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. Bushnell has also advocated for criminal justice reform, and has spoken out against the death penalty and other injustices in the criminal justice system.
Bushnell has received numerous awards and honors for her work, including the Missouri Bar Foundation’s Lon O. Hocker Memorial Trial Lawyer Award and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Champion of Justice Award.
