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 the crimes her clients had been convicted of that they didnt actually commit, either.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), both potential 2024 presidential contenders who have used the committees hearings for grandstanding, tried to blame Morrison for spikes in violent crimes in cities across America. They pressed her on whether she felt guilty about freeing people from prison who had been convicted of violent crimes, despite the fact that they had all been exonerated by DNA evidence.

Across this country, Americans are horrified at skyrocketing crime rates, at skyrocketing homicide rates, at skyrocketing burglary rates, at skyrocketing carjacking rates, Cruz told Morrison. All of those are the direct result of the policies youve spent your entire lifetime advancing.

I will oppose you and anyone else the administration sends to us who do not understand the necessity of the rule of law, Hawley vowed, nonsensically.