Midwest Innocence Project Completes Successful Case Review - 2011-07-08

As part of the ongoing Freedom Friday project, the Midwest Innocence Project has just completed their May and June screening workshops. At those two volunteer work sessions, more than 120 cases were reviewed. The program is co-sponsored by Langdon & Emison, and firm attorney Phyllis Norman serves on its steering committee and helps recruit additional pro bono attorneys to the cause.

For the next stage of the screening process for these potential MIP cases, follow-up information is now culled regarding the cases that the pro bono attorneys evaluated during the workshops. MIP will then reach out to this network of volunteer attorneys to continue to be involved in working on those cases.   

The next case-screening workshop will occur in September, and the organization is working to include an exoneree presentation at that session. The Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association continues to partner with the Midwest Innocence Project to boost membership on these committees that provide a great deal of the pro bono services that are needed to make the organization a success.     

The MIP is one of the nation’s leading nonprofit organizations dedicated to providing pro bono legal and investigative services to the innocent in prison. The most recent Freedom Friday event was June 24 in Kansas City. Other firms taking a lead sponsor role in this project include Davis, Bethune & Jones, Warden Grier, and Stinson Morrison Hecker.  

While fighting for those wrongfully convicted, the MIP has effectively educated many in the profession as to problems in the criminal justice system.  This includes eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, “snitch testimony,” and junk science used in the courtroom by the prosecution.

Currently president-elect of the Greater Kansas City chapter of the Association of Women Lawyers, Phyllis is regularly a contributor to nonprofit organizations dedicated to the legal profession. Early in her career she was elected as a District 3 representative of the Missouri Bar Young Lawyers Section and is currently serving a 2-year term as the District 4 representative of the Missouri Bar Young Lawyers Section. 

Phyllis' practice focuses on product liability litigation, specifically in the areas of class action suits, auto product defects and mass tort litigation. She has litigated cases at both the trial court and appellate court levels, in Federal and State Court, and before the National Association of Securities Dealers and the American Arbitration Association. She is a graduate of UMKC School of Law and Oklahoma State University.