There's this inmate in a Philadelphia prison.

"Johnny Berry," Tom Zeager said, reflectively.

Arrested as a juvenile in 1994 and convicted of murder, based on the testimony of a single witness.

Jailed for nine years — until the witness, also in prison, wrote a letter confessing that he had falsely accused Berry of the killing.

The prison reform group Justice & Mercy, of which Zeager is president, worked for three years to get Berry a Post-Conviction Relief Act hearing. But the judge, Zeager said, talked the witness out of recanting, warning that the accuser could end up facing prosecution not only for perjury but for the murder itself.

Johnny Berry is still in jail.

"Is that the system we want?" Zeager demanded.

It's not the system he wants.

That's why Zeager is hopeful that a proposed Innocence Commission, to which he's been nominated, will be able to recommend changes to the judicial system to prevent wrongful convictions — like, in Zeager's view, Johnny Berry's.

State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County, who sponsored the Senate resolution that authorizes the Innocence Commission, nominated Zeager to the panel.

Zeager estimates there may be as many as 7,000 inmates in Pennsylvania prisons who were wrongfully convicted.

The figure isn't universally accepted. Lancaster County District Attorney Don Totaro, for instance, said he has "not seen any credible evidence to suggest that several thousand inmates statewide have been wrongly convicted."

Zeager, though, pointed out that nine Pennsylvania convicts have been exonerated by DNA evidence in recent years, and only about 20 percent of cases involve DNA evidence.

He stressed that the Innocence Commission isn't trying to prove the guilty innocent — but if the innocent are in jail, the real perpetrators are running around free.

"This has nothing to do with getting people off," Zeager said. "This has to do with getting the right person the first time."

Convergence of interests

Zeager, who lives in Clay Township, is somewhat of an anomaly in the prison reform movement.

He's a conservative businessman, owner of the Hershey Farm restaurant in Strasburg, a conservative Christian and a conservative Republican.

He became convinced of the need for reform in the criminal justice system and founded Justice & Mercy to advocate for change.

In 2005, Sen. Greenleaf spoke at a Justice & Mercy forum, where he heard Tommy Doswell, a Pittsburgh man who had recently been exonerated by DNA evidence after serving 19 years in jail for rape, talk about his case.

Greenleaf also met a Duquesne University law professor, John Rago, who discussed the idea of state "Innocence Commissions" to take a closer look at whether wrongfully convicted people had been jailed.

The senator sponsored a bill to establish an Innocence Commission, but the bill didn't make it through the Legislature. Instead, Greenleaf won passage of a Senate resolution directing the General Assembly's Joint State Government Commission to set up an advisory panel on the conviction issue.

Greenleaf said he thinks the joint commission will agree to the project, which would involve police, prosecutors, corrections officials, academics and those interested in the prison system, like Zeager.

"I think he's going to get it through," said state Rep. Tom Creighton, R-37th District, who helped to sponsor the Justice & Mercy forum that sparked the Innocence Commission.

"If it's done right, it can be very productive, and it will open some eyes that have been fairly closed," Creighton said. "... This Innocence Commission can reveal if there is a problem and can really bring some light onto the issue."

Only two other states, North Carolina and Connecticut, have established Innocence Commissions.

Greenleaf said the point is not to "prove people innocent," but to investigate whether the state has a systemic problem and to make recommendations on ways to correct any problems.

"The Legislature, including myself, passed some very tough legislation" in recent years, including stiff mandatory sentences, he said.

"We'd better make sure they're guilty when we impose those sentences."

Proven innocent?

Law enforcers, including Totaro, aren't so sure there is a problem.

He points to checks and balances in the justice system and added that DAs advocated passage of the 2002 law, which Greenleaf sponsored, giving prisoners access to post-conviction DNA testing. The state DA association has recommended four of its members to sit on the Innocence Commission, he said.

"While mistakes have been documented," Totaro said, "it is in the best interests of law enforcement, victims and the community to make sure the right person is arrested and convicted. As prosecutors, our overriding duty and responsibility is to seek truth in justice, regardless of where the search may lead."

Zeager, though, is convinced there is a problem.

He said estimates on the percentage of people who might have been wrongfully convicted range from 2.5 to 15 percent. With nearly 100,000 people in county, state and federal prisons in Pennsylvania, he said, that means possibly 7,000 innocent inmates.

"There is no sure count," he said, "but this would be a reasonable estimate by people who are knowledgeable on the subject."

The Innocence Project, a national nonprofit legal clinic, cites studies showing the most common causes of wrongful convictions — in cases where DNA evidence led to exoneration — were mistaken identifications by witnesses, false confessions and use of informants.

Because of the huge court caseload, Zeager said, there aren't enough resources to fully investigate each charge. Well-off defendants can afford good lawyers and expert witnesses. Poor ones get plea bargains.

Zeager hopes to present a list of possible remedies to the Pennsylvania Innocence Commission, including:

• More stringent testing of eyewitness identifications, considering 25 percent of exonerations involved eyewitness testimony. Sometimes, Zeager said, police may signal witnesses to help lead them to finger the person police suspect.

• Requiring the hiring of an independent private investigator "if a person is going to prison for more than two years." This might cost $5,000 per case, Zeager said. But considering it costs $30,000 a year to incarcerate a person, and the average state inmate is jailed for 4.5 years, "if we could pull out 5 percent of them, we could get a good return on our money ... and we'd also be more [motivated] to go after the right person the first time."

• Applying new technology as it is developed to review all cases "at least every five years." The state needs more DNA labs now, he said; there's a three- to six-month lag time for results because of a backlog of cases.

• Automatic expunging of criminal records "once a person is proven innocent by the courts." Now, even if a person is exonerated, he or she has to get a pardon or a court-ordered expungement; otherwise, the conviction has to be reported on such documents as job applications.

That has made it difficult for people like Tommy Doswell, for instance, to get a job even after getting out of jail.

• Finally, Zeager said, "there's got to be some way we can reimburse people who have been severely inconvenienced" by wrongful convictions and jail. The local courts that adjudicated the cases, he said, ought to be responsible for such payments, rather than the state.

Search for truth

That's not an exhaustive list of solutions. Zeager has concerns about other factors that can produce wrongful convictions.

The Johnny Berry case, in which what appeared to be a change of heart by Berry's accuser now is on hold while he consults a lawyer, is one such problematic situation.

Another that Zeager is familiar with is the case of Mark and Linda Hoover, the Denver couple once interrogated by state police in connection with the 1994 murders of Mark Hoover's parents in Adams County.

Linda Hoover was the prime suspect. "Police knocked down their door at midnight," Zeager said, got their kids out of bed, searched the house and took the parents for questioning. The Hoovers were put in separate rooms, he said, and each was told — falsely — that the spouse would implicate the other in the killings.

It's legal for police to lie and exaggerate, Zeager said, but it's not necessarily right.

In 1998 police charged three Adams County people with killing Phillip and Rachel Hoover during a botched burglary.

A state police spokeswoman said she could not verify details of the Hoovers' interrogation because it happened 12 years ago, and some of the troopers who worked the case have retired.

Trooper Linette Quinn pointed out that the Hoovers were not charged with the murders.

"It's a moot point," she said, "as far as they were never convicted."

Tom Zeager still wants to make sure there are no Hoovers in the prisons.

"That's what I'm looking for," he said. "Truth."

Contact Helen Colwell Adams at hcolwell@lnpnews.com