The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck at Cardozo School of Law. Its mission: to free the staggering number of innocent people who remain incarcerated, exonerating the wrongly convicted through DNA testing, and to bring reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment to prevent future injustices.
Their full-time staff attorneys and Cardozo clinic students provide direct representation or critical assistance, their intake and evaluation staff conducting extensive research into each case to determine whether DNA testing could be conducted to prove innocence.
Studies have estimated that between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent (for context, if just 1% of all prisoners are innocent, that would mean that more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison).
The Innocence Project is a founding member of the Innocence Network, an affiliation of independent organizations working to overturn wrongful convictions and improve the criminal justice system.
Money collected from Serving Up Comedy will go to the local affiliate, Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent (LPI).
More can be learned at www.innocenceproject.org