The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Nina Morrison to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, putting someone onto the federal bench with the extraordinary background of having worked to free dozens of innocent people from prison and death row.
Morrison was confirmed in a 53-46 vote to her lifetime federal judgeship. Every Democrat voted for her, along with three Republicans: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) did not vote.
Morrison, 52, has spent the last 20 years being the senior litigation counsel at the New York-based Innocence Project, an organization focused on exonerating wrongly convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system. She has been lead or co-counsel on cases that have freed more than 30 innocent people from prison.
During her confirmation hearing in February, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee bizarrely attacked Morrison as if she had committed…
