Prosecutors' New Role: Helping Those Wrongly Convicted

After Aaron Salter was convicted of murdering a man he had never met, he immediately began trying to track down the real killer from behind bars. When another inmate described the crime in detail, Salter began investigating him. Eventually that other man signed an affidavit swearing that Salter was innocent. Yet appeals courts refused to grant him a new trial. Then, last year, his lawyers sent his file back to the Wayne County prosecutor in Detroit — the same office that had sent him away for...