Finding Justice

Anne Driscoll ’76 has spent her whole career focused on human rights work in some capacity. Today, she teaches and does research at The National University of Ireland Galway, continuing her work with wrongful convictions in Ireland.

Since her time at Salem State University, Anne Driscoll ‘76 has been incredibly involved in human rights work. After earning her bachelor’s degree in social service, she became a social worker, where she got her first look at the criminal justice system. “I was working as a counselor on the North Shore with girls involved in the courts, and I got to see firsthand how the law enforcement and the criminal justice systems worked,” Anne says.

Because she was trained as a social worker, she had always been interested in issues of human rights and social justice. Many of the girls she worked with were disadvantaged by poverty, family history, educational background, and other social issues. Through her experiences as a social worker, she saw that those marginalized by issues like poverty and race were overrepresented in the criminal justice system.

When Anne changed her career path and moved from social work to journalism, she found herself involved with the criminal justice system again. In one of her earliest jobs, she was a reporter covering court proceedings, and learned about how the law works and, in some cases, doesn’t work.

Anne joined the Justice Brandeis Law Project in 2006 at Brandeis University. During that time, she worked on overturning suspected wrongful convictions, including working to free Angel Echavarria of Lynn who was serving a life sentence for a 1994 murder. “It is the most challenging work I’ve ever undertaken because it is so incredibly difficult to prove someone’s innocence,” Anne says. “I read thousands of pages of court documents, knocked on scores of doors, visited dozens of courthouses.”

Anne was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2013 and moved to Ireland, working on the Irish Innocence Project at Griffith College. “My experience working in Ireland through a Fulbright Scholarship exceeded every expectation I had – and my expectations were pretty high,” Anne says.

Not only was Anne able to fulfill a lifelong dream of living in Ireland, but she was also able to teach law and journalism students how to investigate wrongful convictions, something she’s deeply passionate about. “It was such a rewarding and fulfilling professional experience,” Anne says. “I was delighted when I was invited to return the following year and serve as the project manager of the Irish Innocence Project.”

During the two years that she was project manager, Anne was able to help exonerate Harry Gleeson, who was wrongfully convicted and hanged in 1941 for the murder of his neighbor, Moll McCarthy. Through the work of his family and the Irish Innocence Project, Harry received the first posthumous presidential pardon in Irish history.

Anne believes that her Fulbright experience changed the trajectory of her entire life, and she now lives in a small village on the west coast of Ireland in Connemarra.

Anne has contributed to The Moth, sharing her stories and experiences, which are shared live on stage and also broadcast on many radio stations. Read more about her stories from The Moth. 

Recently, Anne has drawn from her blogs about her Irish experiences and published a memoir series called Irish You Were Here.

She is also involved with the Sunny Center, which was founded by two death row exonerees, Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle, who are now married to each other and have opened their home in Connemara as the world’s first sanctuary for other exonerees.

Anne was awarded another Fulbright Scholarship in January 2018. She will be teaching and doing research at The National University of Ireland Galway starting in September 2018, and is thrilled to continue her work with wrongful convictions in Ireland.

You can help support the School of Social Work so that others like Anne can make a difference in the world.