Found Innocent.Org

This is not a perfect organization. Not too many are. But the enduring — founded in 1992 — strength of the Innocence Project is its absolute refusal to write off people or cases as lost causes.

And circumstantial evidence, malicious media reporting and horrendous police work, not to mention inadequate legal representation, can make some of these cases look pretty hopeless.

This approach takes what they once referred to as “true grit.”

Since it was begun by celebrity lawyer Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld and the good people at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York, the Innocence Project has gone international with sister organizations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, all dedicated to proving the innocence of wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing and the overall reform of criminal justice systems to prevent future injustice.

Today, Project Innocence is a recognized and admired non-profit leader.

As the organization explains, “In addition to working on behalf of those who may have been wrongfully convicted of crimes throughout the United States, The Innocence Project performs research and advocacy related to the causes of wrongful convictions. The Innocence Project is a member of the Innocence Network, which brings together a number of innocence organizations from across the United States.”

As of January 21, 2010, 249 defendants previously convicted of serious crimes in the United States had been exonerated by DNA testing. Almost all of these convictions involved some form of sexual assault and approximately 25% involved murder.

Never let it be said that the Innocence Project only tackles the easy ones.

For more information, please visit the Innocent Project or the Innocence Network.