In Brattleboro on January 12 a judge set the schedule for a case involving a man who was kept in prison for 18 years for a crime he probably did not commit. In 2012, a judge ordered John Grega released from prison in Springfield, Vermont, near Brattleboro, after 18 years in prison for a murder that he probably did not commit. The murder happened in 1994 in Dover, Vermont, which is also near Brattleboro. Grega died in a car crash on January 23, 2015. His family is seeking to hold government officials accountable for the 18 years Grega spent in prison.

The judge said a prosecutor and three state police officers probably fabricated evidence in the case. The jury will be chosen starting June 6. The lawyer for the Grega family, Ian Carleton, has a web site at www.sheeheyVT.com.

A group that has a web site at www.InnocenceProject.org has freed 337 people from prison in the USA by proving they were innocent of the crime they were imprisoned for. On average those people spent 14 years in prison.

No other nation on earth incarcerates such a high percentage of its people. As of 2008, the USA had about 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. "England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63." That's according to "U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations," an article by Adam Liptak that appeared in the New York Times on April 23, 2008. Those numbers were virtually unchanged as of 2013.

About half the people in U.S. prisons are there for non-violent crimes, mostly related to drugs.

Suzi Wizowaty is a former elected member of the Vermont legislature. She runs a group that works to reduce the number of people that Vermont imprisons. The group's web site is:

www.VermontersForCriminalJusticeReform.org

A group that Works nationally to reduce the prison population has a web site at www.EllaBakerCenter.org.