Lorenzo Johnson
Senior Advisor, Second Look Project
Lorenzo Johnson is thrilled to be working as a Senior Adviser for CUNY Law School’s Second Look Project. In 1995, when Pennsylvania police told Mr. Johnson that they believed he had murdered someone in Harrisburg the previous night, he was incredulous. He explained he had been in New York City the previous night with people who could vouch for him. Nevertheless, the police and prosecutors tried Mr. Johnson, winning a conviction and sentencing him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The conviction was based on such thin and circumstantial evidence that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals—which only decided his case after he had already served 16 years in prison—vacated his conviction on the grounds there was insufficient evidence to convict. Mr. Johnson lived as a free man for the next 148 days until the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Third Circuit, without briefing or argument, and reinstated the conviction. It took another six years before new evidence demonstrated that Mr. Johnson had been telling the truth and that prosecutors had withheld critical exculpatory evidence. Even when this new evidence was finally released, prosecutors threatened to fight the case if he didn’t agree to a nolo contendere plea. Against his deepest moral misgivings, Mr. Johnson finally agreed and since leaving prison—after 22 years behind bars for a wrongful conviction—has fought tirelessly to help the many others who have been wrongfully convicted find the justice they deserve.