page_title: Alissa Bjerkhoel
section_title: Timothy Atkins
hierarchical_section_title: Alissa Bjerkhoel / CIP work / Prominent cases / Timothy Atkins
caption_attribution_description: English: Justin Brooks and CA Innocence Project client Tim Atkins outside courthouse
context_page_description: Alissa Leanne Bjerkhoel is an American litigation coordinator at the California Innocence Project, a nonprofit, in-house law school clinic that investigates and litigates cases of factual innocence while training law students to advocate for justice. A native of Truckee, California, Bjerkhoel, who graduated from California Western School of Law, which houses the Project, has been an attorney with CIP since passing her bar exam in 2008. Bjerkhoel has served as counsel for CIP on numerous criminal cases, and achieved the legal exoneration of a number of convicted prisoners. Among the high-profile exonerations she has worked on are those of Brian Banks, Timothy Atkins, Reggie Cole, Daniel Larsen Uriah Courtney, Guy Miles, William Richards and Kim Long.
  In 2013, Bjerkhoel and two other CIP attorneys walked 700 miles from San Diego to Sacramento in an event they called "The Innocence March" to protest the incarceration of twelve inmates they considered innocent, and to raise awareness of the issue of the wrongly convicted. They also presented twelve petitions – one for each incarcerated person – to Gov. Jerry Brown, calling on him to pardon the twelve.
context_section_description: In July, 1987, Timothy Atkins was convicted of one count of murder and two counts of robbery. The police were led to Atkins when a woman named Denise Powell, a prostitute, told police that Atkins had confessed to her to being an accomplice in the killing of a man who had been shot in the chest during an attempted carjacking. CIP co-founder and director Justin Brooks said, "The jury sees this young black kid... this woman says, 'yeah, I think that's the guy,' and he goes away for twenty-three years."
  Powell later testified that she had fabricated the story of Atkins's confession. She recanted her testimony, saying that she had lied to police about the confession and had been afraid the lie would be revealed if she changed her story. In his decision, the judge stated that Powell's recantation, together with the "unreliable and changing [eye-witness] identification" led him to believe that "no reasonable judge or jury would have convicted Atkins." He was exonerated in February 2007 after more than 20 years in prison.
caption: Justin Brooks and CA Innocence Project client Tim Atkins outside courthouse (2007)
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