Tillman Case A Highlight For Connecticut Innocence Project

James Tillman shares his impressions of the novel To Kill A Mockingbird with inmates at Cheshire Correctional Institution on July 26, 2007.

James Tillman shares his impressions of the novel To Kill A Mockingbird with inmates at Cheshire Correctional Institution on July 26, 2007. (Patrick Raycraft, Hartford Courant)

CAROL RIORDAN

"A gift" is what James Tillman calls the 18 years he spent in prison on a wrongful conviction.

Sentenced for rape, assault and robbery, Tillman was the first person in Connecticut to be exonerated with post-conviction DNA testing through the efforts of the Connecticut Innocence Project. Tillman's book about his incarceration, release and redemption, "The Power of Conviction," is scheduled to be published in the spring.

Tillman's experience influenced the debate on the death penalty, whichwas repealed in Connecticut in 2012. The Innocence Project's work has led to the reform of the state's criminal justice procedures regarding eyewitness identification.

For the lawyers who started the project a decade ago, their work to gain freedom for Tillman and others was a highlight of their careers.

The Connecticut Innocence Project began with two lawyers, Karen Goodrow and Brian Carlow, public defenders in the Capital Defense and Trial Services Unit who were working on capital felony cases. The national Innocence Project had been founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing.

Goodrow was dogged in her work on behalf of Tillman. "She fought for me like I was