The Innocence Project and Winston & Strawn LLP Launch InnocenceRecord.org

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Today, the Innocence Project and Winston & Strawn LLP launched InnocenceRecord.org. It is the first on-line, searchable database of the court records and other data of the cases of those who have been wrongfully convicted and later exonerated through DNA evidence.

Innocence Project board member and author of An Innocent Man John Grisham described the Innocence Record as “a much-needed analytical tool in the effort to advance innocence reform across the country.”

Over the years the Innocence Project amassed a large collection of records from the cases of those exonerated through DNA evidence. Building on that unique repository, for the last six years, attorneys, summer associates, paralegals, researchers and staff at Winston & Strawn and the Innocence Project have devoted thousands of hours scouring the country for every available court record relating to cases where wrongfully convicted defendants were later exonerated through the use of DNA evidence. Winston & Strawn then carefully summarized and abstracted these files, while the records themselves were archived and digitized.

  

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For the first time, these case abstracts and records can now be accessed and searched by users in a variety of ways, including by name, date, jurisdiction, or even by individual words within the records themselves.

In today’s press release at PR Newswire, Winston & Strawn partner David Koropp, who has overseen the development of this project since its inception was quoted as saying:  “The ultimate objective of the Innocence Record is to preserve these critically important documents and create a means for making them accessible to those academics, legislators, law enforcement agencies, and members of the general public interested in understanding why wrongful convictions take place and in discovering ways to prevent them from occurring in the future.”

The Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. To date, 254 people nationwide have been exonerated through DNA testing and dozens of states have implemented critical reforms to prevent wrongful convictions.  Additional information is available at www.innocenceproject.org.

Winston & Strawn LLP is an international law firm with more than 900 attorneys among 14 offices in Beijing, Charlotte, Chicago, Geneva, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, New York, Newark, Paris, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Washington, D.C.