(Photo of Janis C. Puracal by Michael Schmitt/ABA Journal)
“Two years of pure hell.”
That’s how Janis C. Puracal, executive director and attorney for the Forensic Justice Project, describes the struggle to free her brother, Jason Puracal, after he nearly died in Nicaragua’s infamous La Modelo prison.
In 2011, Jason was sentenced to 22 years for drug trafficking and money laundering. But Puracal says there was no evidence to support his conviction.
Puracal, then a commercial litigator, was able to sleep a few hours every night as she worked on the case with a lawyer and investigators in Nicaragua and brought international attention to the case.
Puracal says Jason lost so much weight that he “wasted away.” He had no food and clean water, and he also suffered from untreated inflammatory bowel disease, she says.
Ultimately, in September 2012, an appeals court overturned Jason’s conviction and he flew back to his family in the United States. It was then that Puracal realized that her work had only just begun. “I was so grateful to the community that rallied around me and my family. I wanted to give back to that community and create the same sense of support around others who have been wrongfully convicted,” Puracal said.
After a stint with the Oregon Innocence Project, Puracal started the Portland, Oregon-based Forensic Justice Project in 2018. Just like the Innocence Project, Puracal helps people who try to prove their innocence after a conviction. But she also works with clients in pretrial proceedings to uncover flawed or misleading forensic evidence to prevent a conviction in the first place. She adds that she represents people “regardless of guilt or innocence, because no one should be convicted based on unreliable forensic evidence.”
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, which has been tracking exonerations since 1989, false or misleading forensic evidence plays a role in 24% of all exonerations. Puracal also wants to reform Oregon’s forensic evidence laws, and she files amicus briefs in cases to help inform the courts.
In 2019, Puracal helped exonerate Nicholas McGuffin, who spent nearly a decade in prison after being convicted in 2011 of murdering his girlfriend, Leah Freeman, 15, in 2000. He was 18 at the time of her disappearance and dead. Puracal and her team exposed several missteps by McGuffin’s trial attorney and prosecutors. Investigators found another man’s DNA on Freeman’s shoes, but that evidence was never revealed to jurors.
Aliza B. Kaplan, consultant to the Forensic Justice Project, says Puracal has a knack for explaining science in court, whether she’s giving a presentation or questioning a witness.
“She lays the foundation for attorneys, judges and others to truly understand the important role forensic science plays in convicting people in our criminal justice system, and how it is often used so inappropriately and in a non-scientific way,” says Kaplan.
Puracal says her work is a “family affair.” Jason and her husband, Andrew Lauersdorf, a lawyer and former prosecutor, sometimes help her.
Although prosecutors are often hostile, she says some are willing to work with her to dismiss a case after looking at the science.
“That was the surprising thing,” says Puracal. “There is room for us to have a more open conversation about the content of the forensic sciences being used.”
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Janis C. Puracal