During the third annual awareness of National Wrongful Conviction day, issues in the justice system were brought to light. The Innocence Project of Minnesota and Center for Justice and Law at Hamline hosted the event in Anderson, on Tuesday, Oct 4.

Michael Hansen and Koua Fong Lee both spoke, sharing their personal stories of being wrongfully convicted for crimes they didn’t commit.

Hansen was wrongfully convicted of murdering his three month old daughter, Avryonna Hansen. He served six years of a 15-year sentence before being exonerated by the Innocence Project of Minnesota.

“I had faith in the system, I never thought I’d be convicted.” Hansen said. “Even my lawyer was confident.”

The wrongful conviction took a toll on Hansen.

“I lived with a lot of hate inside me. I was pretty bitter,” Hansen said.

Even after having been released Hansen said, “I have PTSD and I still deal with it, I dealt with it this very morning.”

Fong Lee was also wrongfully convicted for a vehicular homicide after his Toyota Camry accelerated uncontrollably at the end of a St. Paul freeway exit ramp and crashed into two vehicles, killing a man and two children and injuring two others.

The Innocence Project of Minnesota’s main goal is to keep the innocent from being convicted and freeing those imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. They receive around 300 applicants a year and decide who to help based on who they think is innocent and if they can prove it. It takes a lot of reinvestigating and can be a lengthy process.

“The public has a false belief that guilty people go free. That’s not always the case in my experience,” said Julie Jones, the legal director of The Innocence Project of Minnesota. It’s clear that this issue in our justice system has been here for a while and bringing it to light only helps the opportunity to find solutions.

Hansen said that, “Julie was the first person [of] anyone in government that said sorry to me.”

Both Hansen and Fong Lee received compensations after being exonerated. However, neither Hansen nor Fong Lee felt that the compensation could ever heal any of the time they lost in prison.

“Compensation is good, because the state takes responsibility, but you can never get that time back, you never feel whole again,” Hansen said.

Fong Lee also commented on the aspect of compensation.

“I’m lucky that I had my wife and a place to go, but sometimes when people get out they don’t have a place to go, so compensation is very important,” Fong Lee said.