A first of its kind report was just released by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, that's now shining a light on more than two dozen wrongful convictions, largely due to misconduct by prosecutors.

The conviction review unit examined cases which resulted in 25 people serving a combined 426 years in prison.  All but one was a person of color.

“We learned that these cases and these errors were truly preventable. With better training, with more guidance of line prosecutors, and with an ethos and a culture in the office not to bring cases on flimsy or noncredible evidence, and not just leave it up to a jury to decide, but actually do the hard work of convincing, and making sure the evidence is in fact reliable, we don’t have to go through this again,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

Among the factors that showed up in multiple cases were false or unreliable confessions, misconduct by prosecutors and witness credibility issues, leading to 28 wrongful convictions reversed by this unit since 2014.

“I think that a lot of people think that these are one-off mistakes, and what this report shines a light on is that there are systemic issues and structural issues in the way cases are investigated, prosecuted and handled in our courts that lead to these wrongful convictions,” said Gonzalez.

Normally, records showing why cases have been dismissed by a judge would not be available to the public.

“This is an important effort to be transparent, to acknowledge the human tragedy of 426 years of collective imprisonment of these men and women. Some never got out of prison, in fact, three of these people died in prison,” said Gonzalez.

“And it also leads us to our mission of building back trust with our community and making sure that we get it right in the future,” he said.

Brooklyn District Attorney Gonzalez joined Mornings on 1 via Skype.