Peter Neufeld, co-author of Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted (Doubleday, 2000) and an outspoken advocate for the rights of the wrongly accused, will speak at Cornell Law School Wednesday, Sept. 27.
Neufeld's talk is from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in Myron Taylor Hall's MacDonald Moot Court Room and is free and open to the public. The title is "Executing the Innocent: Why So Many Wrongful Convictions?"
Neufeld is co-founder and director (with attorney Barry Scheck) of the Innocence Project at Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. Like the Cornell Law School's Death Penalty Project, a sponsor of Neufeld's visit, the Cardozo Innocence Project relies on volunteer law students and attorneys to review hundreds of cases of people who have been poorly defended or falsely convicted of crimes. Over the past few years the Innocence Project has helped 40 of the 64 innocent prisoners exonerated in the United States through new DNA evidence.
In his book, Neufeld shows how difficult it can be to get such evidence reconsidered.
Neufeld has a private practice specializing in criminal defense. He, along with co-counsel, currently represents Abner Louima, the Haitian American who was shown to have been tortured by police in a New York City precinct bathroom.
"Peter's visit will give our law students an inside look at how the criminal justice system actually works, which often is not explored in much depth at law schools," said John Blume, a director of the Law School's Death Penalty Project (along with Professor Sheri Johnson).
That is also one of the aims of Cornell's Death Penalty Project and Cardozo's Innocence Project. Both were launched in the early 1990s to provide adequate counsel to those too poor to afford it, relieve the overburdened U.S. public defender system and teach students such skills as how to interview witnesses in a criminal case, read a trial record and write a post-conviction defense brief. Their founding coincided with Congress's decision to stop funding death penalty resource centers throughout the United States, which poor defendants had relied on for assistance. In effect, the students and professors have tried to fill a small part of the void left by the closing of the resource centers, explained Blume.
The Cornell project's emphasis is on justice, attempting to prove, for example, that the jury selection process in the county where a black defendant was tried was racially imbalanced or presenting compelling new evidence that might overturn a conviction or death sentence. The Cardozo project focuses on proving actual innocence, mainly through the use of DNA testing.
But even the irrefutable proof of DNA evidence in rape cases doesn't guarantee that a legal decision will be changed, said Professor Steve Garvey, a scholar with the Death Penalty Project. "It's much harder than the public may realize to obtain a reversal." Often the police or prosecutors resist reopening cases for a variety of reasons, he explained, from racial prejudice to fear of the public's reaction.
An expert on DNA evidence, Neufeld is co-chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers DNA Task Force. In 1995 he was appointed by the New York state governor's office to the Commission on Forensic Science, which regulates all state and local crime laboratories.
Neufeld obtained his law degree from New York University School of Law in 1975. The National Law Journal named him runner-up, along with Scheck, of its 1999 Lawyer of the Year award for his work leading to the exoneration of innocent people and for helping establish a network of clinical programs.
In addition to the Death Penalty Project, Neufeld's visit is being sponsored by the Science and Law Students Association. For information, contact Garvey, 255-8589.
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