EDITORIAL: Wrongful convictions

As frustrating as it is when criminals evade justice, it’s unacceptable when men or women are locked up for crimes they didn’t commit. Looking to reduce — or even eliminate — the number of wrongful convictions, the Clark County district attorney’s office has tapped a veteran public defender to run a new unit that will review claims of innocence.

According to a report released earlier this year from the University of Michigan Law School’s National Registry of Exonerations, 2015 saw an all-time high in the number of wrongly convicted Americans who finally found justice. The average exoneree had served nearly 15 years in prison, and many of those freed received help from conviction review units.

Conviction review units, also referred to as conviction integrity units, exist in most major cities across the country. Their primary goal is to review factual claims of innocence, oftentimes when new evidence is brought to the attention of prosecutors. They also attempt to prevent wrongful convictions by adopting and implementing best practices for prosecution.

The Clark County district attorney’s conviction review unit is the first of its kind in Nevada.

The new Clark County unit will be run by Dan Silverstein, who earned a law degree from the University of San Diego in 2000, and who has worked with the county’s public defender’s office nearly all of his career. Mr. Silverstein will start as chief deputy district attorney on Oct. 24, and will be joined in the unit by an investigator and a paralegal.

While District Attorney Steve Wolfson estimates that Mr. Silverstein’s team could need two to three months to establish its procedures for cases to review, he also says that he doesn’t want to turn away any cases that might be “worth considering during that interim period.”

Mr. Silverstein calls his new job an extension of his career “of trying to prevent wrongful convictions,” and says the unit will focus on examining claims by defendants who say they are “actually innocent” of charges for which they were convicted.

He says he’s monitored similar units across the country, and “when they are done properly and legitimately, they are a great service to the community.”

While the vast majority of those convicted in our judicial system are indeed guilty, any mistake is one too many. But public distrust of law enforcement is perhaps at an all-time high in this country and that can also affect the reputation of our nation’s courts. Clark County deserves kudos for creating a unit with an eye toward rectifying errors and fortifying public confidence in the system.