With a Chance at Freedom, They Faced an Unexpected Obstacle: Their Own Lawyers

Milique Wagner spent over a decade in prison fighting his murder conviction, but faced opposition from his own lawyer, who failed to investigate key evidence and instead urged the judge to shut down his petition. Wagner's case is one of many in which court-appointed attorneys did minimal work, delaying or denying justice for wrongfully convicted people. An investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica found that Philadelphia's post-conviction system repeatedly failed to deliver justice.