By Drew Johnson

Kirstin Blaise Lobato spent nearly half her life in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. The 35-year-old Panaca native was wrongfully imprisoned for the 2001 murder of Duran Bailey in Las Vegas – even though she wasn’t in Las Vegas at the time.

On Dec. 19, Clark County District Court Judge Stefany Miley threw out Lobato’s conviction after attorneys from Chesnoff & Schonfeld and the Innocence Project presented expert testimony that Lobato was three hours away from the scene of the crime at the time of Bailey’s murder.

Lobato became a free woman on Dec. 29, when Clark County District Court Chief Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez finally dismissed the murder charges at the request of the district attorney’s office. It was the first time in her adult life she set foot outside of prison.

However, the DA’s office revealed that the decision to stop fighting Lobato’s release had nothing to do with her innocence. Instead, Deputy District Attorney Sandra DiGiacomo stated: “Although we fully believe in her guilt, as did the 24 members of our community who found her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, our resources are such that we are electing not to proceed with the third trial of this defendant, particularly considering the more than 15 years she has served in prison.”

This troubling response is reflective of Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson’s problematic approach to wrongful convictions.

Although Wolfson created a Conviction Review Unit in 2016, the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center (RMIC) was skeptical of the undertaking. At the time, RMIC noted Wolfson’s lack of collaboration with “local and national innocence projects, legal defenders associations and other key criminal justice professionals,” a hallmark of other successful conviction integrity units.

The organization was also “equally disturbed by the proclamation contained in Mr. Wolfson's statement that his office ‘stands by all of our convictions’.”

“Considering the fact there have been 1,791 exonerations in the United States [as of May 2016], the likelihood of human error and the known causes of wrongful convictions that plague our justice system, we are disappointed Mr. Wolfson believes there have been no wrongful convictions in Clark County," the RMIC stated.

The nearly 16 years Kirstin Blaise Lobato sat in prison for a crime she didn’t commit is proof the Clark County DA’s office is guilty of wrongfully convicting innocent people.

The well-publicized case of Fred Steese is another example of the fallibility of Clark County prosecutors. In 1995, the Clark County DA’s office tried Steese for murder, and was able to convict him for the crime only after committing numerous ethical and constitutional violations, from hiding exculpatory evidence to concocting entirely false theories.

In 2012, the same year that Wolfson took office, the Nevada 8th Judicial District Court overturned Steese’s conviction and issued an order of actual innocence, an incredibly rare judicial finding. Rather than using his new position to tackle issues of prosecutorial misconduct head-on, Wolfson remained unmoved by Steese’s innocence and worked to maintain the conviction.

Even though it was clear that Steese was totally innocent and wrongly imprisoned, Wolfson demanded that Steese’s release from prison be conditioned on his acceptance of an Alford plea – a controversial plea that simultaneously allows defendants to maintain their innocence while prosecutors maintain that their original decision to prosecute was just.

Wolfson’s six years in office have been spent fighting against Steese’s exoneration. And when lawmakers drafted legislation to combat the type of misconduct that occurred in Steese’s case, Wolfson’s office not only opposed the bill, but ignored established fact and suggested that there had been no wrongdoing.

The people of Clark County deserve a prosecutor who seeks justice, truth and fairness, and recognizes that human beings are fallible. Instead, we’re stuck with a DA who would rather let innocent people rot in prison than admit that his office made an error.

Until the Clark County district attorney’s office stops wasting time and resources trying to keep people like Kirstin Blaise Lobato and Fred Steese locked up for crimes they didn’t commit, Clark County residents should have no faith that Steve Wolfson and his office won’t continue to imprison innocent people.

Drew Johnson is a Las Vegas resident who serves as a senior scholar at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance and a contributor to Newsmax and The Daily Caller.