The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 and is dedicated to “exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.” It is a nonprofit legal clinic directly affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and was founded by attorneys Peter J. Neufeld and Barry C. Scheck.
The Innocence Project employs a full-time staff of attorneys as well as Cardozo law students. In most cases, the inmates are either directly represented by members of the Innocence Project staff or the staff provided critical assistance in the inmates’ efforts to have their convictions reversed.
The website provides resources to explain what the project terms “serious flaws” in the nation’s justice system. It explains how eyewitness misidentification, false confessions and inadequate legal representation contribute to the wrongful conviction of “scores of innocent people.” The Innocence Project also provides resources for those interested in discovering ways in which the system could be changed for the better, and the site features profiles of those who have been exonerated using DNA evidence.
The project is not an anti-death penalty group but focuses on overturning wrongful convictions and promoting changes in the administration of justice that make them less likely.
Comments: The Innocence Project is a reliable source of information that addresses a number of ways in which the criminal justice system is subject to tampering and human error.