Meet Garry Ferraris

Tennessee Innocence Project Board Member Garry Ferraris

Profile by Brooke Wanser

Labor and employment law attorney Garry Ferraris has always been focused on making his community and state a more equitable place.

Ferraris knows firsthand the limitations people of low-income backgrounds can face. Raised by a single mother on Staten Island, New York, he grew up in public housing. Ferraris said his mother “worked very hard for our poverty,” still managing to send all three boys to good colleges.

“I saw a lot of smart, talented, able people I grew up with who weren’t as lucky as I was,” he said. “They weren’t able to break out of the disadvantages we had.”

Ferraris attended Columbia University, where he majored in history and wrote for the Staten Island Advance. After graduating, he went to work for a labor union, which eventually brought him to Knoxville as the international vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.

Ferraris was responsible for organizing, collective bargaining, and politics. “I loved the work, except it was clear our industry was not going to survive,” he said.

He was on the road so much for work, upon being dropped off at the airport one day, his young daughter asked his wife, “Is this where Daddy lives?”

At the age of 38, after 15 years of working for the labor union, Ferraris decided to make a change and attend law school.

His “quasi-legal” work for the union led Ferraris to believe a legal career would be a natural fit.

“It had been an ambition of mine for a long time that I had deferred,” he explained. “I had so many relationships with other unions and union leaders, it was a natural base for clients coming to me.”

Ferraris has represented individuals and unions on labor and employment discrimination, including worker’s compensation.

In one instance, he successfully prosecuted, after lengthy litigation, claims for employees of a zinc mine for hearing loss injuries, recovering more than $10 million in compensation.

“I’ve always represented the underdog,” he said.

It’s that interest that led him to the Tennessee Innocence Project, along with a personal connection to wrongful convictions.

Ferraris’ son-in-law’s brother, Greg Taylor, was the first exoneree in North Carolina under their Innocence Inquiry Commission.

In 1991, Taylor got his truck stuck in mud next to a cul-de-sac where a young woman was found murdered the next day. Taylor was sentenced to her murder without evidence to link him to the crime, due to the false characterization of a drop of fluid as being human blood (despite testing confirming that it was not) and flawed jailhouse snitch testimony.

After 17 years in prison, the Innocence Inquiry Commission was able to prove Taylor had no tie to the crime and achieve his exoneration.

“It’s not theoretical, it’s somebody I know,” Ferraris said. “It cuts me to my soul to think of somebody behind bars knowing they didn’t do what they’ve been convicted of. I can’t image how you survive that and can face each day.”

Ferraris recalls film clips of Taylor’s face after hearing he would be exonerated.

“His face, that sudden revelation of it’s over, my nightmare is over,” he recalled.

Ferraris said the Tennessee Innocence Project has made enormous progress in adding lawyers and committed people to their circle of supporters.

“The focus is on people who we are absolutely convinced are truly innocent,” he explained of the work. “We can’t necessarily get to everybody, but we’re going to get to enough to change their lives and make a difference.”

For Ferraris, what the organization aims to do is about more than winning cases.

“It’s about the integrity of the entire system,” he said. “We can’t sit by idly and let that level of injustice continue to exist. The focus is not just on individual cases, but on restoring the system to its full integrity.”