Vilkri.com is an online financial companion run by a husband and wife team (known as vilkri-he and vilkri-she). They also blog regulary about their personal finances to give readers a glimpse into their principles in action.

We are very happy to participate in the One Dollar Give campaign and introduce a charity organization very important to us – the Innocence Project.

The Innocence Project’s overall mission is to improve our justice system. It tries to achieve that mission by following two goals. First of all, it provides direct representation or critical assistance to persons who most often turn out to have been wrongfully convicted and are jailed for crimes they did not commit. Second, it tries to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for unjust imprisonment of the innocent. We might wish for a perfectly run criminal justice system, but we are human and humans make mistakes. We also have law enforcement practices that are far from unbiased. For example, know that some states have not yet updated their laws so they would admit DNA testing that would prove the innocence of a convicted prisoner, and could even help to uncover the identity of the real criminal.

We at vilkri are fortunate enough that we don’t have any personal stories to tell that would connect us directly to the work of the Innocence Project. We do not know any convicted criminals. All those helped by the Innocence Project are all nameless and faceless to us. But we have an important personal connection to the Innocence Project nonetheless. Just like every other person in the United States, we are exposed to the US justice system. We wish the system to work in a just way for all. But we recognize that it is not an infallible system, and so we are as responsible (however indirectly) for the mistakes the system makes as we are for the punishments we tolerate for those who do commit crimes.

The Innocence Project sends regular reports to donors on the work they do, so we were updated on their successes this year. They helped use DNA testing to free a total of 225 of the wrongly convicted now. Of these, 17 were on death row. Imagine yourself being on death row knowing very well that you did not commit the crime! Furthermore, imagine the Innocence Project did not latch onto your case! We know that states have actually executed convicted persons when DNA evidence was available that would have proven their innocence. Yes, we all have access to the courts and we are all supposed to be treated equally in court. We want this to be true. To us, the Innocence Project allows all of us to strengthen our belief in the justice system, because it allows that the belief in fairness and equal treatment to come closer to reality, and one supported by all of the available evidence.

We will never be able to make our justice system perfect and completely fair, but we can always try to improve the system we have, especially when we convict suspects in the harshest way possible with sentences of life imprisonment without parole, or death. All of us here in the United States of America benefit from a better functioning justice system – not just the 225 people whose convictions have been overturned by the Innocence Project’s intervention.

Now is a good time to contribute to this important charity, for the benefit of us all!

To donate $1 to the Innoncence Project to provide legal support and help exonerate wrongly convicted individuals, click here. Please use “One Dollar Give” in the dedication portion of the donation form. After you’ve donated, come back and vote in the poll so that we can count donations!

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(Yes, the poll offers you the choice between “Yes.” and “Yes.” because I didn’t think we really needed to count the “No” answers, and the poll required two choices! Hey, it’s not a perfect system, but it’ll work!)