Peter Neufeld of the Innocence Project Speaks at JPC's Annual Luncheon

Peter Neufeld of the Innocence Project spoke on April 20, 2011 as the keynote speaker for Judicial Process Commission's 40th Anniversary Fundraising Luncheon. The talk was held at Temple B’rith Kodesh’s new location, 2131 Elmwood Ave. in Rochester, NY.

The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, 292 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release.

The Innocence Project’s full-time staff attorneys and Cardozo clinic students provide direct representation or critical assistance in most of these cases. The Innocence Project’s groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Now an independent nonprofit organization closely affiliated with Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence Project’s mission is nothing less than to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.

Additional Information: Judicial Process Commission | The Innocence Project