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Performative Justice: Nearly 2 Years After Launching Unit to Free Innocent People in Prison, Attorney General’s Office Hasn’t Reviewed A Single Case

Joseph Trigilio, executive director of the Loyola Project for the Innocent, says he doesn’t know why it’s taken the attorney general so long to start reviewing cases. But he could see limited staffing being one of the main factors. “I don’t know that they have that many lawyers and the small amount of lawyers they do have are tasked with creating this unit from nothing,” he said

8:00 AM PST on December 16, 2024

Attorney General Rob Bonta sits at his desk while people hold old folders marked "appeal" behind in the doorway. There is a "world's greatest DA" coffee mug, donut, cell phone with the chill guy meme on the screen on his desk. In the background on the wall, there is an Office of the Attorney General emblem that says "liberty and justice but not right now."

Attorney General Rob Bonta sits at his desk with his arms folded and his feet up on his desk.

|Illustration by CJ Conde for L.A. TACO

This is the second story in an ongoing series on conviction review units and the people and organizations fighting to free innocent people from incarceration. Read the first story here.

When California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched the state’s first conviction review unit in early 2023, he promised to investigate claims of wrongful convictions and cases in which new evidence cast doubt on guilty verdicts.

“Nobody should serve time for a crime that they didn’t commit,” Bonta said at a February 2023 press conference announcing the “historic unit.”

But nearly two years later, not a single person has been exonerated or resentenced through the AG’s Post Conviction Justice Unit (PCJU). In fact, the unit hasn’t even started accepting applications.

A spokesperson for the attorney general's office declined to answer a list of questions from L.A. TACO sent via email in September.