I’m not quite sure why, but I found this particularly repellent:
According to [Marissa Bluestine, the assistant director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School], unsavory actors have taken advantage of the profusion of innocence organizations to exploit anxious inmates marked for death. “There is this weird cottage industry of folks who are under the radar—and I think they are completely predatory and disgusting,” she said. “They will reach out to folks who are incarcerated, [and] offer to review their case and present it to a conviction-integrity unit, saying it’ll only cost you $2,500. And they have no intention of doing any work.” Bluestine said she has worked with clients who have lost money and resources, such as transcripts with only one extant copy, to scams masquerading as innocence efforts. None of which is to say that genuine innocence programs are responsible for their malicious imposters—only that the proliferation of scattered innocence groups across the judicial landscape has given the fakes room to grow. [Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic]
I suppose an innocence program, which advocates for convicts for whom there is some credible doubt as to their guilt, is simply trading in a product, and as such grifters/scammers are attracted due to the desperate circumstances of the customers.
