ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Anne Driscoll will receive the Salem Award for her work on wrongful convictions.
By Gayla Cawley
Item Staff
SWAMPSCOTT — Anne Driscoll is the winner of the Salem Award for her contributions to free inmates who have been wrongly convicted.
Driscoll, a resident of Swampscott and Ireland, works to overturn miscarriages of justice. Although she started out as a social worker, Driscoll has spent most of her career as a journalist. For 10 years, she has worked as a reporter for the Justice Brandeis Law Project at Brandeis University, which uses investigative journalism to examine possible wrongful convictions.
For that project, she spent nearly a decade working to overturn the conviction of Angel Echavarria, of Lynn, who was serving a life sentence for a murder he did not commit. Driscoll said Echavarria spent 21 years in prison and was exonerated almost a year ago.
In 2013, Driscoll was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to work as project manager for the Irish Innocence Project at Griffith College, which was started by attorney David Langwallner in 2009. Although she now lives in Dublin, Ireland, she spends summers in Swampscott.
Driscoll will receive the Salem Award at a ceremony on Sunday, March 20 at the Bridge at 211, a Salem landmark. A reception will be held at 3 p.m., followed by the awards at 4 p.m.
The Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice is given annually to keep the lessons of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 alive and to highlight challenges in present society. It was established 300 years after the trials in 1992.
Driscoll said she found out she had won in January.
“I still can’t believe it’s actually true,” she said. “I’m just so honored and humbled.”
Advocates say one of the least served populations are the thousands of prisoners around the world who have been convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Driscoll said those wrongful convictions are often for murders and sexual assault cases. She estimated that between 2.3 and 5 percent of all convictions are of innocent people.
“It’s really an issue everywhere in the world,” Driscoll said. “Wrongful convictions don’t have any boundaries. They can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and it does.”
With the Irish Innocence Project, Driscoll said there are about 30 cases being investigated by about 24 students from Griffith College, Trinity College and the National University of Ireland, under the supervision of 10 lawyers who are donating their time for free.
Driscoll is an investigative journalist who spent time as a court reporter for what used to be Essex County Newspapers. Throughout her career, she has also written for The Boston Globe, New York Times and People Magazine.
Driscoll said writing was always her first choice of career, but it didn’t seem like a job that would pay well.
After becoming a social worker, Driscoll realized that field did not offer high pay either, and switched to journalism and writing. In between the career change, she was a waitress. She later saw an advertisement for North Shore Sunday, a newspaper that was looking for a sports reporter. From there, she gained experience, moving on to larger publications.
A recent Irish Innocence Project of Driscoll’s is to exonerate Irish citizen Harry Gleeson, wrongfully convicted and hanged for murder 72 years ago. Plans for a movie based on the case are in the works.
Driscoll said she is also planning to launch Friends of the Irish Innocence Project, a nonprofit whose mission is to boost awareness of the work her team is doing, as well as financially support the work.
She plans to be in Ireland indefinitely and has a two-year work permit. Driscoll is enjoying her time in the country.
“It’s just been an incredible opportunity to work on an international level on an issue I feel so passionately about,” Driscoll said.
Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @GaylaCawley.