08/25/2026
This is bigger than one survey, one event, or one organization. There is a growing concern about national and out-of-state organizations coming into Michigan to collect the stories, experiences, trauma, and data of exonerees and their families, then taking that information back to institutions that benefit from it. The Organization of Exonerees believes it is time to establish a clear standard: Exonerees are not research subjects. We are not case studies. We are not data points. And our trauma is not a commodity.
Our stories have value. Our experiences have value. The information shared by our families has value. Too often, directly impacted people are asked to reopen the most painful chapters of their lives while someone else builds research, secures grants, publishes reports, expands an organization, advances a career, or gains national recognition from what was collected. We need to start asking the most important question: Who benefits? Who owns the data? Who controls the stories? Who receives the funding? Who gets published? Who gets invited to present the findings? And what tangible investment comes back to the exonerees, families, and communities whose lives produced that knowledge? Putting words like “research,” “advocacy,” “amplification,” or “national campaign” around extraction does not automatically make it ethical.
Research can be important. Data can move policy. Storytelling can change hearts and minds. OOE understands that better than most because storytelling, education, advocacy, and narrative control are central to how we build power and create change. But there is a difference between working with a community and extracting from one. Ethical engagement requires informed consent, transparency about funding, clarity about how information will be stored, shared, published, and used, and meaningful exoneree leadership in determining how our experiences are represented. It also means resources should flow back into the communities providing the knowledge.
Michigan does not need organizations parachuting in to “give exonerees a voice.” Michigan exonerees already have voices. We have leaders. We have exoneree-led organizations. We have advocates who have spent years building trust, supporting families, advancing policy, educating institutions, and standing beside exonerees long after the researchers, cameras, and national attention are gone.
We do not need to simply be studied. We need to be invested in. We do not need to simply answer the questions. We should help write them. We should be leading the research, shaping the methodology, interpreting the findings, controlling how our stories are represented, and determining what happens with the information our community provides.
Our pain should never become somebody else’s product. Our trauma should never become somebody else’s fundraising strategy. Our stories should never create opportunities for everyone except the people who actually lived them.
The standard moving forward is simple: If you want to work with Michigan’s exoneree community, come prepared to work in genuine partnership with Michigan’s exoneree community. Not around us. Not through us. Not off us. With us.
We know the value of our stories. We know the value of our data. We know the value of our lived experience. And most importantly, we know our worth.
Nothing about us without us.
-Ken Nixon
Executive Director of OOE
