Mark Godsey was a “prosecutor’s prosecutor” who didn’t think there were any innocent people in prison. Then he began supervising his law school’s Innocence Project, and realized his assumptions were all wrong.

In the criminal-justice system romanticized by Hollywood films, those convicted of crimes are generally guilty. And a protagonist need only prove that someone’s been wrongly imprisoned to get them freed by a judiciary that values truth and justice. The scrappy investigative reporter, jaded detective, or overmatched defense attorney comes up with the key piece of evidence that proves beyond doubt that someone has been wrongly convicted, and in the next scene that person walks out of the courthouse to be surrounded by joyful loved ones and supporters as the credits roll.

The real world is often quite different. Since it was established in 1992, the Innocence Project has succeeded in reversing the convictions of over 200 people, but the group says that a “staggering number of innocent people” remain behind bars today.

Perhaps even more troubling is that even when clear, indisputable evidence emerges showing that someone has been imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit, prosecutors, police, and judges will often fight tooth and nail to keep them incarcerated.

In his new book, Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions, University of Cincinnati legal scholar Mark Godsey examines why that happens. Godsey was a former prosecutor who would later go on to co-found the Ohio Innocence Project, a chapter of the national organization. The book, which is in part a confessional, looks at how innocent people can become the victims of faulty eyewitness testimony, bad forensics, and a variety of blinding cognitive biases on the part of law-enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and judges, and why the system so tenaciously defends the status quo, even when it’s guilty of railroading innocent citizens.

With so much attention rightly focused on racial injustice in recent years, Godsey’s book offers another important piece of the puzzle. You can listen to my 25-minute discussion with Godsey in the player above, or read a transcript that’s been edited for length and clarity below.

Joshua Holland: You were an accomplished prosecutor in New York—a prosecutor’s prosecutor, as you write in the book. You believed in the system. And at first, you were skeptical about the Innocence Project. Tell us a little bit about how you came to be an advocate for reform.

Mark Godsey: It was by accident. I was very proud of my job and loved being a prosecutor. I went into academia to become a law professor, and the first school where I got a job had an Innocence Project. When I arrived, they said, “The professor who runs it is on sabbatical this year. Since you’ve got a criminal-law background, you’re going to have to supervise it.’ I really couldn’t say no—I was untenured, I was the new guy on the block. But I remember thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me. There are no innocent people in prison.” That was my view.

I went to the first meeting and the law students were talking about this guy they just visited in prison named Herman May, and they were totally convinced he was innocent. I remember sitting there, just doing internal eye rolls and thinking, “What a bunch of bleeding-heart nonsense.” But then DNA testing ended up proving that he was innocent and he was released. It was a huge eye-opener for me. It made me realize that my assumptions perhaps had been wrong—I’d been a little bit too cocky about the criminal-justice system that I’d been a part of.

So I went through a conversion in that one year, and then the very next year, I founded the Ohio Innocence Project. And we’ve now freed 25 Ohioans, who together served 471 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.

JH: Twenty-five people who had served over 470 years—that works out to just under 20 years, on average.

MG: Our longest was Ricky Jackson, who served almost 40 years for a murder he didn’t commit. You’d think you’d be totally broken and a mess after going into prison at 18 years old and getting out when you’re basically 58, but he’s an incredibly inspiring person. These exonerees are often really inspirational people that make you realize that when you get upset about traffic or stupid things, there’s a lot more important things in life that we’re taking for granted.

 JH: Your book reveals how hostile police, prosecutors, and judges often are towards efforts to absolve those who have been wrongly convicted, even when there’s solid evidence. You detail how even simple requests for records are ignored or treated as some sort of effort to undermine the credibility of the courts.

Yet, as you write, these officials who appear from the outside to be operating with an abundance of bad faith and dishonesty see themselves as the good guys and gals, and believe themselves to be doing the right thing. How do you square that circle?

MG: The first thing that shocked me when I started doing post-conviction innocence work is when we had several cases with DNA evidence, and it was absolutely clear the person was innocent. I saw these prosecutors just going into denial and spinning all these ridiculous theories about how the person might still be guilty. They almost make you laugh. My first reaction was, “Are these people kidding? Are they serious?” I’m in court thinking, “Is this Candid Camera?”

That’s how ridiculous these theories could be. And I realized that the Innocence Movement is really pointing out some flaws at the basic core of the criminal-justice system, and those in the system are really in denial about it. I think I was too, as a prosecutor. So I started studying the psychology behind it and seeing how, when you’re in a bureaucracy that’s cocky and has been around for centuries, and you become a part of it as a prosecutor, and you believe that it’s something where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and then somebody comes along and says there are all these flaws in it, it’s very hard to accept.