Home » Symposium » 2003 Symposium
Seeking Justice—Protecting the Innocent
- Hugo A. Bedau
Professor emeritus, Tufts University -
After graduating from high school in San Francisco in 1944, Hugo Bedau entered naval officer training at the University of Southern California. Two years later, and a civilian once again, he transferred to the only college in the nation an hour's drive from Palm Springs, Lake Arrowhead, and Laguna Beach—the University of Redlands, where on bitter winter nights he tended the smudge pots to save the orange groves and to earn some pocket money. Graduating in 1949, he came to this area for graduate work at Boston University and Harvard.
Before joining the Tufts faculty in 1966 Dr. Bedau taught at Dartmouth, Princeton and Reed. His early interest in echt philosophy has been replaced by concentration on issues in political and legal philosophy. He has authored, edited and contributed to numerous publications in his field. Recent titles include Thinking and Writing about Philosophy (2002), Current Issues and Enduring Questions (5th ed., 1999), The Death Penalty in America (4th ed., 1997), In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases (1992), Civil Disobedience in Focus (1991), and Death is Different (1987).
- Jonathan Blodgett
Essex County District Attorney -
Jon was elected to his first term as Essex District Attorney in November of 2002 and took the oath of office on January 1, 2003. Prior to taking office, District Attorney Blodgett spent 15 years in private practice as a partner in a Peabody law firm, and prior to that spent 1-1/2 years as assistant district attorney in Essex County.
Jon is a 1976 graduate of Princeton University where he excelled in baseball. While working as a legislative aide for Senate President Kevin Harrington and later for House Majority Leader Jack Murphy he went to school nights earning his law degree from Suffolk University in 1983.
District Attorney Blodgett lives in Peabody with his wife and three children and is well known for his dedicated service to civic affairs and youth sports.
- Stanley Z. Fisher
Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law -
At BUSL, Professor Fisher, who is also coeditor of Massachusetts Criminal Practice, teaches courses in criminal procedure, criminal law, and wrongful convictions. "The recent exonerations of more than 100 prisoners based on DNA evidence and the similar rash of exonerations of innocent men and women on America's death rows have forced us to question our faith in the reliability of criminal convictions in our system," he says. "I find it exciting to study ways to improve our investigative and adjudicative procedures to lessen the risk of convicting and punishing people unjustly."
Widely published in this area, Professor Fisher has also studied the criminal justice system in Great Britain. In April 2002, the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment used his British research in framing recommendations for fundamental reform of police and prosecutorial conduct on investigations. In 2000, he helped found the New England Innocence Project, which uses law students and criminal defense lawyers to investigate and litigate claims of innocence by prisoners who might be exonerated by DNA testing.
- K. David Goss
Director of Fine Arts, Gordon College -
K. David Goss was Director of Bicentennial Programs at Salem Maritime National Historic Site in 1976. From 1977 through 1987 he served as Director of Education at the Essex Institute. In 1987 he moved to the House of Seven Gables as the site's Museum Director, and simultaneously managed the restoration of Pioneer Village with the assistance of Peter LaChapelle and Pioneer Village Management Associates. In 1990, he entrusted Pioneer Village to the Board of Directors of the House of the Seven Gables for continued management and ongoing restoration. In 1997 he left the House of the Seven Gables to assume the role of Executive Director of the Beverly Historical Society and Museum, leaving in 2000 to become the director of Fine Arts at Gordon College in Wenham, MA.
David holds a B.A. in history from Gordon, an M.A. in American History from Tufts University, and completed all but his doctoral dissertation in the Boston University American and New England Studies Program. He has authored two books: Massachusetts Officers and Soldiers of the French and Indian War (1985) and Salem in the Age of Sail (1987), and contributed to Treasures of a Seaport Town (1988) and Cornerstones of Salem (1999).
- Scott Hornoff
Exonerated -
In the summer of 1989, Jeffrey Scott Hornoff was a newly promoted detective in the Warwick, Rhode Island, police department, a husband and a dad. He was also briefly a suspect in the murder of a woman living in Warwick. However, a favorable polygraph test and interviews quickly eliminated him as such.
In 1991 the Rhode Island State Police assumed the unsolved murder investigation, but were assigned to investigate and target Scott as their only suspect. A modern day witch-hunt ensued and, with the help of the media, Scott was found guilty of first-degree murder in June of 1996. He was sentenced to life in prison. At every step in the judicial process the system failed Scott and his loved ones. If not for the hauntings of guilt and remorse by the true killer, Scott would not have been freed from prison in November of 2002, having served six years, four months and eighteen days for a crime he did not commit.
- Betty Ann Waters
Esq. -
On May 12, 1983, Kenneth Waters was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder for the death of an Ayer, Massachusetts woman. He was sentenced to life in prison based on the testimony of two former girlfriends who claimed he admitted to the crime. Kenneth's younger sister, Betty Anne, devoted her life to proving his innocence. She returned to school to earn her GED, then her bachelors, a master's in education, and eventually a law degree from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. She accomplished this while raising two boys alone and working as a waitress part-time. While in law school she began investigating her brother's case. She began to correspond with the Innocence Project in New York. Attorney Barry Scheck agreed to assist her in her efforts to exonerate Kenneth. Betty Anne convinced the court to have her brother's DNA tested against blood samples found in a box of evidence from his trial, which she learned during her investigation was in the basement of the courthouse where he was tried and convicted. The samples were tested and led to his exoneration in March 2001.
Betty Anne plans to continue her work helping those wrongfully convicted and is a member of New England Innocence Project's network. She also believes that the Commonwealth should assist the exonerated with their reintegration back into society and feels strongly that wrongfully convicted individuals should be provided with sufficient housing, medical coverage, mental health counseling and resources, and financial assistance upon exoneration.