Wrongfully Convicted!
This show was recorded live at The Hideout in Chicago on May 23, 2017.
Seemingly every week in Chicago, the City is paying out millions to wrongfully convicted people who spent years -- sometimes decades in prison. Those who have their lives destroyed by a broken criminal justice system are typically poor and lacking the support system to fight a wrongful conviction. Thankfully, there are women on the front lines working often for free to clear their names.

For our May 23 show, we’ll talk to some of Chicago’s most powerful wrongful conviction fighters. From a lawyer who helped free a CPD torture victim who spent 30 years behind bars, to former host of MTV’s “Unlocking the Truth,” we’ll hear about what it’s like defending people accused of heinous crimes -- and getting them out of prison -- all while trying to change the system as a whole.

OUR GUESTS

Jennifer Bonjean is the owner and founder of Bonjean Law Group, PLLC. She is a seasoned attorney with extensive experience in criminal defense and civil rights litigation. Bonjean also specializes in appellate, post-conviction, and habeas corpus litigation. Her passion and tenacity drives her to aggressively fight for individuals who have been wronged by the criminal justice system. Bonjean works tirelessly to reverse the convictions of innocent people wrongly incarcerated. She is committed to exposing the rampant police and prosecutorial misconduct that often leads to wrongful convictions. In 2014 the Chicago Innocence Project awarded Bonjean the Humanitarian of the year Award for her work on Stanley Wrice’s appeal.

Eva Nagao is the Managing Director of the Exoneration Project, a pro bono legal clinic that works to overturn wrongful convictions. In her time in Chicago, Eva has served on the Board of Directors of the youth-driven Chicago Freedom School, and as a long-time propaganda specialist for Project Nia. She continues to work with explicitly abolitionist outfits like Liberation Library, sending books to incarcerated youth, and the People's Response Team, documenting police-involved shootings in Chicago. Once, she hosted a true crime series on MTV called “Unlocking the Truth.” Eva's grandparents met as prisoners in Manzanar during WWII, and they never talked about it. She strives to talk about it as much as possible.

Deana G. Lewis is a 2016-17 Mellon Sawyer Pre-Doctoral Fellow and a doctoral candidate in the Educational Policy Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Her research interests include Black girlhood studies, the school/prison nexus, and youth incarceration. More specifically, Deana is interested in Black girls’ experiences within the school to prison pipeline and how their experiences have been left out of discourses about youth incarceration in general. As an educator, Deana teaches, facilitates, and holds discussions that engage race, gender, sexuality, and education for multigenerational audiences. Currently, Deana is a Research Assistant with the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP) at UIC, where she is working on a report called the “State of Racial Justice in Chicago” and a summer program for K-12 educators.

Outside of school and work, Deana is a member of Love & Protect, a support committee dedicated to supporting of marginalized gender identities who are criminalized or harmed by state and interpersonal violence. She is also a founding member of the Just Practice Collaborative, whose purpose is to build communities’ capacity to effectively and empathically respond to intimate partner violence and sexual assault without relying primarily on police or other state-based systems.

Hope you enjoy the show!
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Special thanks to the amazing Bleach Party for our theme music. Check them out at http://letshaveableachparty.bandcamp.com/