John,

This week marks the Innocence Project’s 30th birthday! It’s been a tremendous ride since our founding in 1992. As we reflect on the small legal clinic we started together, we never could have imagined the project’s impact would be this great 30 years later. With your support, the Innocence Project, together with the Innocence Network, has become a leader in the fight to free wrongfully convicted people and transform the criminal legal system.

In celebration of our 30th, two generous donors, John O’Farrell and Gloria Principe, have stepped forward and issued somewhat of a challenge: If 200 Innocence Project supporters chip in before midnight on Aug. 29, they’ll donate $20,000 to support our work.

So we’re reaching out to ask if you’ll be one of the 200 donors to get us to that goal and help keep our work going for another 30 years and beyond.

The two of us met as public defenders at the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx. We learned about DNA methods through our work in the ‘80s on the case of Marion Coakley, a man who was wrongly convicted of rape and robbery.

We then launched the Innocence Project clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law based on the belief that if DNA technology could prove people guilty of crimes, then it could also prove that people who had been wrongfully convicted were innocent. We knew that with this information, we could start identifying many of the root causes of wrongful convictions and work together to rebuild a broken system that’s destroyed so many lives.

Since its founding, the Innocence Project has helped exonerate more than 239 innocent people who spent a collective 3,690 years wrongly incarcerated — 193 of whom were exonerated by DNA evidence. We couldn’t be prouder to be part of such an amazing team, and are constantly in awe of all the Innocence Project has been able to accomplish over the last 30 years. And we know this work could not have been done without the generosity and overwhelming support of the community that helps fund these efforts.

This work is far from done, and we want to make an even bigger impact on our unjust criminal legal system over the next 30 years. So please, make a donation of $30 or more right now and you’ll not only help unlock a $20,000 donation, but you’ll help sustain this critical work for the next three decades.

We truly appreciate you all and the support you have given us in our quest to free the innocent and stop wrongful convictions from happening in the first place. We’re so incredibly thankful to everyone who has helped — in big ways and small — throughout the last 30 years to get us to where we are today. Here’s to another 30.

Thank you,

Barry Scheck
Co-Founder and Special Counsel
Innocence Project

Peter Neufeld
Co-Founder and Special Counsel
Innocence Project