Lunchtime Seminar Series 

 Human Rights & Exonerations: Is Innocence Enough?

By Dr. Brian Farrell

 Lecturer in Law & Human Rights, University of Iowa College of Law

and President of the Innocence Project of Iowa.

Friday 15 March, 1-2pm

Seminar Room, Irish Centre for Human Rights 

In many domestic legal systems, procedural barriers can preclude a wrongfully convicted person from being exonerated despite the existence of evidence of innocence. In 2018, the Iowa Supreme Court joined a small minority of US jurisdictions in recognizing a freestanding claim of “actual innocence” (in a case in which Dr. Farrell was involved as an amicus curiae). Building on recent scholarship identifying an emerging international consensus on the right to claim innocence, this presentation will examine whether procedural barriers can be reconciled with human rights law, or if the incarceration of a factually innocent person is inherently contrary to international human rights norms.