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September 19: The Innocence Project

lawrencebush
September 19, 2011

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, was born on this date in Queens, New York in 1949. He and his co-founder Peter Neufeld were pioneers in the use of forensic DNA testing and have influenced scientific forensic research as well as state and federal law. Scheck and Neufeld created the Innocence Project at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law (Yeshiva University) in 1992 with the goal of utilizing DNA evidence to overturn wrongful convictions. At this writing, 273 people in the U.S. have been exonerated through their efforts, after serving an average of 13 years in prison, including 17 who were on death row. Scheck and Neufeld are co-authors with Jim Dwyer of Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted.

“The race of the victims has a lot to do with who winds up getting executed. There is tremendous arbitrariness to the death penalty.” —Barry Scheck