Justice Brandeis Innocence Project
Institute Associate Director Pamela Cytrynbaum with Innocence Project student researchers Alex Perloe, Kyle Turner, Rebecca Gedalius, Micheline Frias, Carol Ortenberg, and David Pepose.
 |
The Justice Brandeis Innocence Project, the feasibility of which is now being explored, would address an ethical crisis in the United States: the incarceration of thousands of innocent people. Most of those are poor and nonwhite; class and race make them more vulnerable to arrest and conviction and least able to afford effective legal representation.
A 2004 University of Michigan study found that between 1989 and 2004, 328 inmates have been exonerated; the author concludes there are likely thousands of innocent inmates in prison today. A 1996 National Institute of Justice Report indicated that 10 percent of America's two million prisoners may have been wrongly convicted. Innocence projects around the country, primarily based at law schools, can collectively examine relatively few cases. The Justice Brandeis Innocence Project, which would be only the third journalism-based project in the U.S., will increase the number of cases being examined. Most innocence projects are based at law firms or law schools, and only pursue cases in which there is DNA evidence to test. Journalism projects like ours use “gumshoe” investigative techniques to pursue non-DNA cases. The law-based New England Innocence Project will refer non-DNA cases of likely innocence—in which lawyers have already reviewed the record and concluded that these people might be innocent. We will investigate those cases.
Justice Brandeis Innocence Project
student researchers Rebecca Gedalius
and David Pepose analyze court documents as part of their investigation
of the case of a Massachusetts man serving life in prison for a murder
he says he did not commit.
 |
Currently, Institute Associate Director Pamela Cytrynbaum is developing several models for the Institute to consider in developing a Justice Brandeis Innocence Project, which would investigate cases of potentially wrongfully convicted inmates. During this exploratory period, the Institute is investigating the case of a Massachusetts man serving life in prison for a homicide he says he did not commit. The case was referred to the Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism by the New England Innocence Project.
The work of the Institute's journalists and students will shine a greatly needed spotlight on the increasing inequities between the powerful and the powerless, finding and exposing wrongdoing where it exists in the legal and court systems.
Institute Founding Director Florence Graves
and Brandeis alumna and attorney Frayla Schoenfeld work with student researchers on the Innocence Project case.
 |
