Following a recent wave of exonerations of prisoners who were wrongfully convicted, a Queens assemblyman is pushing for the state to create a commission to review what allowed the men — who served 68 years in prison between them — to be sentenced to prison.

Michael Gianaris, a Democrat, first drafted a bill that would create a statewide “Innocence Commission” in early 2005, but there wasn’t enough support to push it through the Assembly. Armed with the stories of men such as Alan Newton, who was released this summer with a clean record after spending 21 years in prison following a conviction on charges of rape, robbery, and assault, Mr. Gianaris said he believes the bill will pass.

The co-director of a group that helps prisoners convicted before DNA tests were mandatory get access to such tests, the Innocence Project, said he agrees. “When a plane crashes, the National Transportation Safety Board investigates. When we have a bad outcome at a hospital, we look into the causes,” Peter Neufeld said. “But when a man is exonerated, nothing is done.”

The bill calls for elected officials to form a commission comprising 10 unpaid appointees, including law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, crime victims, defense attorneys, and professors. The commission would be activated only once a court ruled that someone was wrongfully convicted. It would then investigate what led to the wrongful conviction and make recommendations.

Similar commissions have been created in six states since 2000. Mr. Neufeld and the other co-director of the New York Innocence Project, Barry Scheck, along with journalist Jim Dwyer, called for such commissions in their 1999 book “Actual Innocence,” which documented the stories of people who were wrongfully convicted.

The widespread use of DNA testing has contributed to a surge of exonerations in America. There have been 21 DNA exonerations in New York State history, representing about 10% of the country’s 188 exonerations.

Some legal experts say these exonerations highlight problems in the criminal justice system that in the past were given less attention.

“It takes a while to educate people that the way we’ve been doing things for a long, long time can be better,” a clinical law professor at University of Wisconsin Law School who has written on the subject, Keith Findley, said. Mr. Findley is the co-director of the Innocence Project in Wisconsin. “There is a natural defensiveness about the way things have always been.”

A New York State Innocence Commission would deal with judicial subjects beyond evidence storage, including the use of eyewitness testimony and jailhouse informants, as well as the interrogation of suspects. None of the findings could be used in a lawsuit against a law enforcement agency or other party in the state, Mr. Gianaris said.

The Innocence Project in New York has run into difficulties recovering the evidence for cases of people who claim they were wrongfully convicted.

Mr. Newton and his lawyers tried to acquire the rape kit used at his trial in order to have it DNA tested three times over more than a decade, but New York Police Department officials told them the kit was lost or destroyed.

It was eventually found with the help of the chief of sex crimes at the Bronx district attorney’s office, Elisa Koenderman, but the Innocence Project has used the case to highlight the problems with evidence storage at the NYPD.

The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, has since said the department has appointed a committee to review procedures and is seeking proposals to upgrade the entire evidence storage system.