Co-director, The Innocence Project and Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo
School of Law

A professor of law and director of clinical education at New York’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Barry Scheck co-founded The Innocence Project in 1992 with attorney Peter Neufeld to provide pro bono legal assistance to inmates challenging their convictions based on DNA testing of evidence. Since then, the project has represented or assisted in over 36 of the 63 cases in which convictions have been reversed or overturned in the United States.

Currently, the project is handling over 200 cases and evaluating another 1,000. The project is also working on legislation that would provide statutes in every state allowing for easier access to post-conviction DNA testing of evidence, and leading the effort to establish an Innocence Network in law schools across the country.

Prior to joining Cardozo’s faculty and initiating its Criminal Law Clinic in 1978, Professor Scheck was a staff attorney in the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division. He has also worked on foundation-financed projects to monitor abuses and coordinate legal challenges to the improper use of federal grand juries and electronic surveillance, among other positions.

A frequent speaker on DNA typing, he is co-author of "Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, And Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted and DNA: the New Evidence of the Nineties," among many other books and articles. Professor Scheck, a member of the California and New York bars, received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University and his law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.

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