Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sara Jones. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Sara, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?
In 1998, Thomas Rhodes was convicted of first degree pre-meditated murder and second degree intentional murder for the murder of his wife, Jane Rhodes. He was sentenced to life in prison.
On August 2, 1996, Mrs. Rhodes fell overboard and ultimately drowned during a nighttime boat ride with her husband on Green Lake in Spicer, Minnesota. Upon seeing his wife fall into the water, Mr. Rhodes turned the boat around in attempt to save his wife. In the darkness, he was unable to see her from the boat and so he jumped into the water. Ultimately, he was unable to find her and rushed back to shore and called 9-1-1. Authorities arrived shortly thereafter and unsuccessfully attempted to locate Mrs. Rhodes in the water. The next morning, fishermen found Mrs. Rhodes’ body about 9/10 of a mile from where Mr. Rhodes said she fell overboard and called police. While Mr. Rhodes always maintained that his wife’s death was a tragic accident and that he attempted every effort to save her, authorities concluded that he killed his wife by striking her in the neck, pushing her overboard, and running over her body at least twice with his boat.
Investigations by the Great North IP team and the Minnesota Conviction Review Unit (CRU) found significant issues with testimony that was key to the state’s case against Mr. Rhodes. Nine forensic pathologists reviewed the state’s case and Mrs. Rhodes’ autopsy and all determined that the state’s medical examiner, Dr. Michael McGee, was incorrect in his assessment of Mrs. Rhodes’ injuries. The CRU also retained and consulted its own independent medical examiner who disagreed with Dr. McGee’s assessment. The state has never brought another medical examiner forward who agreed with Dr. McGee’s testimony.
The Great North IP investigation also uncovered factual inaccuracies in the testimony of Captain William Chandler, who testified that he believed Mr. Rhodes misled investigators when searching for his wife’s body. However, his conclusions were based on the inaccurate claim that the lake water was nearly thirty degrees colder than it actually was on the day of Mrs. Rhodes’ death.
The state argued that, based on Dr. McGee’s testimony and autopsy report, Mr. Rhodes intentionally grabbed his wife by the neck, pushed her overboard, and ran her over multiple times. However, the nine other forensic pathologists plus the CRU’s hired medical examiner agree that Mrs. Rhodes’ injuries were explained by a single blow to her head, possibly from falling out of the boat or from a single unintentional strike by the boat as Mr. Rhodes searched the water; postmortem dragging along the bottom of the lake; aquatic animals feeding on the face; and postmortem injuries sustained to the body during recovery and transport. None would have called her death a murder.
The CRU investigation also discovered that the prosecutor’s office withheld evidence from the defense that would have benefited Mr. Rhodes at trial. This evidence, an interview transcript between Dr. McGee and then Kandiyohi County Attorney Boyd Beccue, includes Dr. McGee expressing uncertainty as to whether Mrs. Rhodes was struck by the boat just once or multiple times after going overboard. However, during trial, Dr. McGee testified that Mr. Rhodes struck Mrs. Rhodes multiple times with his boat, suggesting intent. The prosecutor amplified that unfounded testimony in his closing argument by saying that the multiple boat strikes proved premeditated murder.
GNIP represented Thomas since 2013. After 10 years of robust investigation and litigation, GNIP was successful in partnering with the state’s CRU to free Tom after nearly 25 years in prison. In January 0f 2023, Tom walked out of prison a free man into the arms of his now-adult sons, brother, sister, attorney team, and Great North IP staff.
Now, Tom is enjoying his freedom by catching up with family and friends in South Dakota and Florida. He says that after nearly 25 years of incarceration, when he looks out a window now, “every view is like a postcard.”
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am the executive director of the Great North Innocence Project and have been for nearly five years. My awareness of criminal law and matters of justice began in childhood, growing up with a father who served for over two decades as Minnesota State Public Defender and taught criminal and constitutional law. As a result, I had an early foundation that I didn’t fully appreciate until later. After ten years of practicing law, and shifting my career from law into nonprofit development, I was invited to serve on the board of the Council on Crime and Justice. There I learned more about mass incarceration, the collateral consequences and ripple effects of a criminal record, flaws in our system, and the importance of research and policy in improving the criminal legal system. When this position at the Great North Innocence Project opened up a few years ago, I felt like my personal and professional history called me to this work to try to help people wronged by our legal system. My father’s modeling of service and commitment to justice had far more of an influence than I realized as a younger person.
The Great North Innocence Project is a nonprofit organization that works to free wrongfully convicted people and prevent wrongful convictions from occurring in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. By working in the areas of litigation, education, and advocacy, our team represents innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted and incarcerated to rectify a miscarriage of justice; educates criminal legal professionals, law students, and the wider community about wrongful convictions; and advocates for policy and systems change to address the causes of wrongful convictions at their roots.
Our legal intervention is often the last resort for clients who have exhausted all other legal avenues in an attempt to prove their innocence and gain their freedom. After a person is convicted, they no longer enjoy the presumption of innocence. Instead, they must affirmatively prove their innocence against a presumption of guilt. Our legal system values finality, and so to prove one’s innocence after a conviction, or simply to get in front of a judge, is an exceedingly challenging and expensive venture. Our team’s expertise in post-conviction litigation and our pro bono service model offers a path for those with legitimate claims of innocence to pursue justice that they may otherwise be unable to access.
Extensive research has been done about how wrongful convictions occur, and we know the leading causes. These include perjury, faulty eyewitness identification, false/coerced confessions, professional misconduct, abuse of jailhouse informant testimony, and false or misleading forensic evidence. Based on this data, we advocate for legislative changes to prevent someone from being wrongfully convicted in the first place. For example, we’ve successfully advocated for more oversight over the use of jailhouse informant testimony in Minnesota and passed a bill mandating evidence-based practices be used during eyewitness identifications in criminal investigation to improve their accuracy.
However, there is no greater victory than freeing someone who was wrongfully convicted. People who have been wrongfully convicted face the dual trauma of incarceration and the knowledge that a fundamental injustice has been perpetrated against them with little recourse. Often their protestations have gone unheard or have been rejected for years. They lose precious time while behind bars where they miss out on birthdays, holidays, funerals, saving money for retirement, building a resume, and living a free life. Watching a person walk free from prison after years of fighting and waiting is an unparalleled experience, and one that I feel honored and humbled to play a small role in.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
We operate in a unique space in that our clients are exclusively people who are innocent of a crime of which they were convicted. Most of the time, that means the people we represent are still in prison. Reaching this group of people presents many unique challenges that we address through extensive outreach. We conduct outreach within correctional facilities through flyers and in-person presentations to ensure all incarcerated people are aware of our services and know how to apply for them. We present our work to local community organizations, law enforcement, legal associations, and any other group who has ties to folks impacted by the criminal legal system. We also recognize that certain populations are disproportionately incarcerated, and so we conduct more targeted outreach in those communities to ensure all people, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or language, can access our services. Ultimately, we have found that word of mouth is our most powerful tool, and so spreading the word about our services and application process to incarcerated people through a variety of mechanisms is key.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
Once we officially represent clients, we keep in touch regularly through legal visits and correspondences with trusted family members or advocates. After a person is released, we defer to their preferences as to how much or little they remain connected with our work. Some people wish to move on completely from their experience, and we respect their space. Others are interested in sharing their story widely and wish to engage with our ongoing work. In those cases, our team engages clients through reentry support and referrals, regular check-ins via email, phone, and text, and through opportunities to share their story in front of audiences, on our blog, or in media appearances. We believe our clients should always be compensated for the time that they share and knowledge they bring when participating in these types of opportunities, so we always compensate clients when they participate in an event or interview that we sponsor or connect them with.
We also do our best to keep our non-client supporters updated with our organizational work. Oftentimes, the legal process can move incredibly slowly, as can the legislative process. Even so, it’s important to highlight incremental progress and the “little” successes along the way. In our newsletter, on social media, in private meetings, and during outreach events, we highlight the progress that we’re seeing along the way to freeing a person or passing a piece of legislation. It’s important to give our constituents a peek behind the curtain to understand the work that must happen to free an innocent person or pass criminal legal reform because they are on that journey with us, too, as donors, volunteers, and supporters.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.greatnorthinnocenceproject.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greatnorth_ip/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreatNorthInnocenceProject
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/greatnorthinnocenceproject
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/GreatNorth_IP
Image Credits
Event photo credit: Amy Anderson Photography.