We have exciting news to share. After an extensive search, the Innocence Project’s Board of Directors has officially appointed Christina Swarns to be our next Executive Director. Christina will start on September 8 and will leverage her national reputation as a criminal justice reform expert to advance our mission of exonerating the wrongly convicted and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. She succeeds Maddy deLone, who previously served as our Executive Director for 15 years.
Christina Swarns will be the new Executive Director of the Innocence Project on September 8, 2020. Photo courtesy of Christina Swarns.
Christina has dedicated her entire professional career to criminal justice reform and currently serves as the President and Attorney-in-Charge of the Office of the Appellate Defender, one of New York City’s oldest institutional providers of indigent appellate defense representation. Christina previously spent more than a decade at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, where she served as its Litigation Director and Criminal Justice Project Director.
Our Board unanimously agreed that Christina is the ideal person to lead the organization into its next phase. She brings a powerful legal mind and a proven ability to successfully lead mission-driven organizations.
Thank you for all you do to make our work possible and we wish you well during these extraordinary times.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
