The seminar -- entitled "From Unjust Imprisonment to Legitimate Exoneration", and which takes place on Monday and Tuesday at the Catholic University of Porto -- proposes to analyze the complexities of the criminal justice system, especially the North American one, as well as the impact that an unjust conviction can have on an individual.

The 'workshop' is also the first initiative that results from the membership of the two law professors from the Catholic University of Porto in the Innocence Project, an initiative founded in 1992, which has become a large international organization dedicated to litigation and public policies to exonerate individuals who have been unjustly convicted.

The objective of the project is to seek to reform the criminal justice system in different countries, to avoid future injustices, as well as to provide legal assistance, on a 'pro bono' basis, to victims of convictions that have been proven wrong.

In Portugal, the project will now begin to investigate this type of situation, with the creation of a legal clinic, which proposes to help people who have been victims of alleged miscarriages of justice and who seek exoneration.

"We only have a single form of exoneration, through an extraordinary appeal, which is a very limited instrument", said Ana Carneiro to Lusa, one of the organizers of this seminar and who is part of the Innocence Project, with Pedro Freitas.

For these two criminal law specialists, the numbers for this type of situation are not known, but even if the investigation by the Innocence Project in Portugal were to reveal them, they would never show the reality of miscarriages of justice, since many of the cases do not even reach the stage of seeking exoneration.

One of the participants in the seminar is Martin Tankleff, an American who was unjustly convicted of the murder of his parents in 1988, when he was 17 years old, and who served an 18-year prison sentence before his conviction was overturned, having been released in 2007.

Tankleff became a lawyer and now teaches at several universities in this area of miscarriages of justice, having come to Portugal to talk about the North American judicial system and the way in which it has evolved in an attempt to eliminate the flaws in the evaluation of cases.

"There has been a great deal of evolution. Mainly because of technological advances, particularly in the area of DNA investigation and the use of cameras", said Tankleff to Lusa, acknowledging that today judges have more instruments at their disposal to make safer decisions.

Criminal lawyer Tara Whelan also acknowledges this evolution, but emphasizes that it is necessary to highlight the fact-finding component when lawyers seek to defend the innocence of their clients.

"I am not very familiar with the Portuguese judicial system, but I have been told that lawyers focus a great deal on the law and dedicate themselves less to investigating the facts related to the alleged crimes. And that can be a problem", said Whelan, in statements to Lusa.

Both North American lawyers acknowledge that the Portuguese and North American judicial systems have notable differences, but they admitted that it is possible to find several points of contact with regard to the issue of unjust convictions.

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