A Chicago Attorney Is Getting Justice For Hundreds Of Wrongfully Convicted People All At Once

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For hundreds of people across the Midwest, their new years, new lives, and new selves aren’t marked with a calendar but with a court docket. More specifically, the day that they watched 47-year-old attorney Josh Tepfer walk into a courtroom with his black backpack slung across his shoulder like a college student playing dress-up in a suit.

Tepfer’s bag is to the attorney who frees the innocent what the cape was to Superman, the hammer to Thor — the tool that helps him do the seemingly impossible. And at scale. In it, he carries the briefs, files, and other paperwork that allow him to seek the release of people convicted of crimes they didn’t commit — the raw materials from which he crafts their freedom, renews their spirits, and clears their names.

“He gave me life again,” Daniel Rodriguez, whom Tepfer helped exonerate earlier this year after Rodriguez served 17 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, told BuzzFeed News. “I smile a little bit more because of what he did for me and my family.”

Tepfer’s representation has led to the exoneration of 288 wrongfully convicted people — making him among the most prolific exoneration attorneys since anyone began keeping track. Last August, he spearheaded what is believed to be the first mass exoneration of people convicted of murder, all of their cases hinging on confessions and witness statements that had been obtained by a now-retired police detective, Reynaldo Guevara, who used physical force and manipulation. In a single marathon day of court, Tepfer’s work helped wipe unjust convictions from the records of seven people who’d served a collective 174 years behind bars.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/melissasegura/josh-tepfer-mass-exonerations-wrongfully-convicted