By Lee A. Daniels

Michael Anthony Green was released from the custody of the state of Texas last Friday – 27 years after being wrongly convicted for the rape of a woman that brought him a sentence of 75 years in prison.

He was embraced by nearly two dozen family members, including some nieces and nephews who had not been born when he was sent to prison at age 18. He carried in his arms a framed photograph of his mother, who had died while he was in prison.

Green was released because the Harris County District Attorney’s Office had been persuaded to re-open the case files of the 1983 rape and conduct DNA tests, which finally proved that what Green had said since his arrest was true: he was innocent.

And so, the story of Michael Anthony Green, who entered prison when Ronald Reagan was President and the idea of wireless communications devices was still the stuff of science fiction, is another of the stories of those American citizens whose ordeal stands the hallowed principle of the American legal system on its head: he was guilty until he was proved innocent.

In its broad outlines, Michael Anthony Green’s story has now been repeated so often, it’s become commonplace to find its like simply by scanning the media on any given day.

That’s one reason TheDefendersOnline.com a year ago sought out The Innocence Project to begin publishing as a weekly feature the most visible and dramatic results of this innovative legal clinic – “The Exoneree of the Week”

The Innocence Project is a nonprofit legal clinic established in 1992 and affiliated with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. It is dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted men and women through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. According to its research, there have been 258 post-conviction DNA exonerations in U.S. history.

Of those convicted and sent to prison, 17 had been sentenced to death before DNA testing proved their innocence; the average sentence served by all of those subsequently exonerated is 13 years; about 70 percent of those exonerated by DNA testing are members of minority groups; and the actual perpetrator of the crime for which an innocent man was convicted has been identified through DNA testing in about 40 percent of the cases The Innocence Project has successfully gained exonerations.

Michael Anthony Green’s case was not one of The Innocence Project’s, but in its broad outlines, it is no different. For proof, read the story of the current “Exoneree of the Week,” Larry Johnson, or the stories of any of the cases of those exonerated in TheDefendersOnline.com files or those of The Innocence project itself.

They place in stark relief one insistent question about America’s criminal justice system.

That question isn’t are there more Michael Anthony Greens or Larry Johnsons out there in the nation’s jails and prisons.

The questions is how large is that cohort among the nearly two million men and women now incarcerated? How many of America’s “inmates” are in prison because the flaws of the criminal justice system marked them as guilty until proven innocent?

The use of DNA testing by The Innocence Project, other legal clinics, and, in some cases, local prosecutors’ office has been a powerful stimulus to raising awareness of the problem and, albeit far too gradually, chipping away at the pretense that the problem is not a serious one.

But, it must be said, the work they’ve done thus far must be seen as evidence that the system is deeply structurally flawed. There should be the greatest respect given to the individuals throughout the legal system who have helped the wrongly accused – who themselves must persevere for years against seemingly impossible odds – prove their innocence.

But the system itself deserves no congratulatory pats on the back. Instead, it deserves a fury tempered into an unshakable determination to press the multiple reforms the criminal justice system needs to approach the ideal America so proudly hails.

Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal  Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., and Editor-in-Chief of  TheDefendersOnline.