A Simple Idea
In 1992, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld had a straightforward hypothesis: if DNA evidence could convict the guilty, it could also free the innocent. They founded the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, staffed largely by law students willing to comb through case files for hours on end.
Their first exoneration came quickly. Then another. Then another. Each case followed a heartbreaking pattern — eyewitness misidentification, false confessions under pressure, junk forensic science presented as fact. Real people, sitting in real cells, for crimes they had not committed.
The Numbers
By 2024, the Innocence Project and its affiliated network had helped exonerate over 375 people in the United States through DNA testing alone. Those 375 people had collectively served more than 5,600 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Twenty-one of them had been on death row.
Behind every number was a person. Kirk Bloodsworth, the first death row exoneree freed by DNA, who had spent nine years in prison for a crime committed by someone else entirely. Damon Thibodeaux, who spent fifteen years on Louisiana's death row before DNA cleared him. Each story was a monument to both human failure and the stubborn refusal to accept it.
Changing the System
The Innocence Project did not just free individuals. It changed how American justice works. Their advocacy led to the passage of post-conviction DNA testing laws in all fifty states. They pushed for reforms in eyewitness identification procedures, interrogation recording requirements, and forensic science standards. They proved, case after case, that the system could be wrong — and that admitting error was not weakness but strength.
What This Means for You
The Innocence Project started with two lawyers and a stack of case files. They did not wait for the system to fix itself. They went into it, armed with evidence and patience. If you see something broken — in your community, your workplace, your family — you do not have to accept it as permanent. Truth has a way of surfacing when someone is willing to dig.