page_title: Peter Neufeld
section_title: Formation of the Innocence Project
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Neufeld / Formation of the Innocence Project
caption_attribution_description: Wash D.C. 2001 Innocence project has a wiki page
context_page_description: Peter J. Neufeld is an American lawyer, cofounder, with Barry Scheck, of the Innocence Project, and a founding partner in the civil rights law firm Neufeld Scheck & Brustin. Starting from his earliest years as an attorney representing clients at New York's Legal Aid Society, and teaching trial advocacy at Fordham School of Law from 1988–1991, he has focused on civil rights and the intersection of science and criminal justice.
context_section_description: In 1992, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck founded the Innocence Project to assist convicted prisoners who could be proven innocent post-conviction through DNA testing.  To date, 343 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 20 who served time on death row.  These people served an average of 14 years in prison before exoneration and release.  The Innocence Project's full-time staff attorneys and Cardozo Law School clinic students provide direct representation or critical assistance in most of these cases.  The Innocence Project states on its website that groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects.  Now an independent nonprofit organization affiliated with Cardozo Law School, the Innocence Project's mission is to free innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the criminal justice system responsible for their unjust imprisonment. They get thousands of letters from wrongly convicted inmates every year.
caption: Neufeld presenting Actual Innocence with co-authors Barry Scheck and Jim Dwyer
exif: {"Image Make": "NORITSU KOKI", "Image Model": "EZ Controller", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "EZ Controller 6.60.031  (160615)", "Image DateTime": "", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "242", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "568", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "19190", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1217", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "718", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "408", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3"}