ALBANY - Saying wrongful convictions undermine public confidence in the justice system, the New York State Bar Association president has established a task force of 22 professors, former judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and others to identify rules, procedures and statutes contributing to the problem.

“For each wrongful conviction that surfaces, how many others are still unfairly resolved?” said Manhattan attorney Bernice Leber, named president of the 74,000-member association on Monday.

“The problem of wrongful convictions has reached, I would say, national epidemic status,” Leber said. Three states - California, North Carolina and Texas - have established formal innocence commissions and have exonerated hundreds of people, while similar legislation in New York “hasn't gained too much traction yet,” she said.

Barry Kamins, past New York City Bar Association president and an adjunct professor at Brooklyn and Fordham law schools, will chair the task force. It will analyze New York cases statewide that led to wrongful convictions and hold hearings. A final report with proposed reforms is expected in April 2009.

“In New York, the number of cases has really not been collected, I should say studied, with any of the type of detail required in order to reach conclusions about the various causes of wrongful convictions,” Leber said.

She noted work starting in 1992 by attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld at the Innocence Project based at Cardozo Law School in New York, which says DNA evidence has exonerated 217 people wrongly convicted, including 16 who spent time on death row.

The association task force will examine every reported case in New York, like that of Anthony Capozzi, who spent 22 years in prison convicted of two rapes. Capozzi, 51, who is schizophrenic, was freed a year ago after DNA evidence proved those attacks were part of a decades-long crime spree in the Buffalo area by killer Altemio Sanchez, also known as the “Bike Path Rapist.”

The task force will examine the process all along the line, from the innocent person's arrest to interrogation of witnesses, the evidence collected, and everything that happens up to the moment of indictment, Leber said.

“Another interesting facet will be looking at remedies and compensation available to those wrongly convicted,” she said. For taxpayers, the cost could run into millions of dollars.

A lawsuit seeking $41 million has been filed on behalf of Capozzi, who lives now in an assisted living setting because of the mental illness that worsened in prison.

Capozzi was denied parole five times after becoming eligible in 1997 because his refusal to admit the crimes made it impossible to complete a mandatory sex offender program, according to his lawyers.

Erie County prosecutors supported his release. “I truly regret that this had to happen,” District Attorney Frank Clark has said of the 1987 convictions, “everybody trying to do the right thing and going through all the right steps and coming out with the wrong result.”