Univ. of Tampa student starts non-profit to investigate wrongful convictions

University of Tampa senior Gretchen Cothron has launched a nonprofit organization called �Screaming for Sunshine� to help investigate wrongful convictions.

Cothron is an honors student, with a major in criminology and minor in law and justice.

Last year, she completed a project to demonstrate the necessity of recording interrogations during investigation, which isn�t required in Hillsborough County. Last month she presented her findings at the National Collegiate Honors in Washington, D.C.

After her work last year, she moved into an honors fellowship ��researching a statistical formula to see how eyewitness testimony, faulty forensic science and false confessions contribute to wrongful convictions,� according to the University of Tampa web site.

�Cothron has presented her preliminary findings at the Southern Criminal Justice Association�s annual conference and is presenting an extension of the same project at the American Society of Criminology's annual meeting in November,� the UT site said.

�Cothron hopes to practice criminal appellate law after law school to help fund her real passion, a nonprofit she has formed called Screaming for Sunshine to assist with investigations of wrongful convictions.

�Florida leads the nation in the number of death-row exonerations,� Cothron said, �and there has to be countless others.�

Cothron�s nonprofit site here.

Story here.

For the tip on this, thanks to Glenn S. Dardick, Ph.D., Associate Prof. of Information Systems at Longwood Univ. in Farmville, Va. He�s also the Director of the Association for Digital Forensics, Security and Law and editor of the Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law.