The Post-Conviction Justice Unit within the California Department of Justice will have “broad discretion” to investigate wrongful or improper convictions.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on Friday a review of criminal cases statewide to search for possible wrongful convictions, pledging to look for new evidence and scrutinize prosecutors’ conduct that could prompt a new round of exonerations for people in prison.
“We can’t be knee-jerk every time at all times, blindly defending convictions when they’re indefensible because of innocence, or because of error, or because of an excessive sentence,” Bonta said. Nationally, exonerations have been increasing steadily since 1989, with a peak of 282 recorded in 2022, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at University of California Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law. The project has recorded 3,381 exonerations since 1989, according to its website.
In San Francisco, the district attorney’s Innocence Commission spent 18 months investigating the conviction of Joaquin Ciria, who was sentenced in 1990 to life in prison for the shooting death of Felix Bastarrica. A judge overturned Ciria’s conviction last year after the district attorney’s office found new witnesses and evidence of “a cascade of errors” in how the case was handled.
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