For the second time in the past year, Point Park University students Paige Krivda and Darlene Natale saw another wrongfully convicted man walk free. The two remaining employees of the now-defunct Innocence Institute joined dozens of journalists outside the Allegheny County Jail on Sept. 13 to watch Terrell Johnson’s release from prison after 17 years.“There’s nothing like seeing that,” said Natale, graduate assistant at the Institute, who also reported the release of David Munchinsky last September.Johnson received a first-degree murder conviction in the shooting of a Hazelwood woman. Although Johnson repeatedly claimed innocence, he received a sentence of life in prison in 1995.Bill Moushey, Point Park journalism professor and director of the Innocence Institute, investigated and reported Johnson’s case for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and then trained his students to do the same.Students of the Innocence Institute recapped the facts and interviewed key witnesses, namely Evelyn “Dolly” McBryde, who claimed she saw Johnson shoot the victim, Verna Robinson. McBryde, who had been arrested on shoplifting charges, offered information to police so her own charges would be dropped, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.Justin Platek, a 2011 journalism alumn and former practicum student at the Innocence Institute, made several attempts to track down and interview McBryde in 2010. When McBryde realized reporters were looking for her, she claimed they were harassing her and subsequently filed an injunction against the Institute.In court, the judge ruled that while there was no proof of harassment, the Institute could no longer contact McBryde. In that moment, Platek understood the weight of his work. “That struck a chord with me, knowing that the truth I was seeking was important,” Platek said in a phone interview last Thursday. “If you’re totally innocent, you don’t try to prevent people from talking to you. So that’s how I knew we were onto something there.”Matt Stroud, a student in the Master of Arts in journalism and mass communication program, was also involved in the court proceedings and said it was a “learning experience.”“We discovered not only that journalists need to be careful when seeking interviews, but also that Dolly was a liar who would say literally anything if she thought it could benefit her,” Stroud wrote in an email interview last Saturday.Johnson won the right to a new trial in 2008 when a witness claimed McBryde was lying. During Johnson’s re-trial two weeks ago, another witness, Kenneth “Skinny” Robinson, came forward and testified that McBryde could not possibly have witnessed the shooting. At the time of the incident, she was in his sister’s basement having sex with a man in exchange for drugs.On Sept. 12, Johnson was found not guilty and was acquitted of charges. When Platek went on Twitter and read that Johnson had been released, he was “speechless.” Stroud was relieved.“The criminal justice system moves slowly and it can be painfully intransigent. So many people, including myself, were frankly worried that the DA would find some way to unfairly re-try Terrell and keep him locked up forever,” Stroud wrote in his email.Krivda, work-study at the Innocence Institute and sophomore broadcasting and international business major, went to the courthouse every day, even during her breaks between classes, to watch Terrell Johnson’s re-trial.In Krivda’s article, posted on the Innocence Institute’s website, she reported that after Johnson was released from prison, he pointed to members of the Innocence Institute and said,  “That’s my family right there. They never gave up. I appreciate it all. They did everything that I needed them to.”While Natale enjoyed the “exciting” opportunity to see another innocent man released from prison, she is also disappointed to see the Innocence Institute’s efforts come to an end. “Seeing someone walk out of prison just gives you the incentive to carry on investigating. Unfortunately, we’ll have to move to a different area of investigation now,” Natale said in a phone interview last Saturday.As of last semester, the Innocence Institute is no longer active, due to a lack of operational funds. This semester, Moushey, Krivda and Natale will work to transfer all cases to Institutes in other cities.While the Innocence Institute is no longer taking new cases, Krivda still sees the value in similar projects initiated by individuals outside the legal system. The unfortunate reality, she said, is that the justice system is not always just.“Sometimes it doesn’t work. Things go wrong and it takes a long time to fix them,” Krivda said in the Atrium Overlook last Friday. “You need things like the Innocence Institute, lawyers who are going to listen and judges who actually care.”