New Innocence Project Clinic at West Virginia University College of Law
The Innocence Project climbs into the Mountain State. From the Gazette-Mail:
[Innocence Project clinic director Valena] Beety and recent University of Chicago Law School graduate Kristen McKeon, who is helping with cases as part of a yearlong fellowship, will handle the bulk of the casework for the WVU clinic. The clinic’s four law students are charged with screening applicants for the program, Beety said.
“We’re focusing as a project on freeing innocent people who are in prison, but also on policy problems, systemic problems that lead to wrongful convictions, and making eyewitness identification more reliable,” she said.
Seventy-five percent of the 297 prisoners exonerated through DNA evidence since 1989 were convicted because they were mistakenly identified as suspects, according to figures from the national Innocence Project, which is based in New York.
WVU’s clinic is still new, Beety said, so they haven’t received many applications for post-conviction help, but she has been reaching out to prisons, public defender offices and other avenues for leads on potential cases.
When the applications do start rolling in, the clinic’s student screeners will generally take two factors into account in determining whether to take a case: the credibility of the applicant and whether there is likely to be evidence that would conclusively point to an exoneration.