Colorado Innocence Project Finds New Home at Colorado Law

The Colorado Innocence Project is getting a new home, moving from the Denver office of Arnold & Porter to the Clinical Education Program at Colorado Law.

The Project identifies individuals with colorable claims, and ensures that counsel is appointed to assist these individuals, per Colorado law. The Project also uses volunteer investigators and lawyers to assist the inmates directly.

Jim Scarboro ‘70 has been the driving force behind efforts to identify and assist Colorado prisoners making claims of innocence despite having been convicted and exhausted the normal appellate processes. Because Scarboro is reducing his active role at Arnold & Porter, and suggested making Colorado Law the new home. Professor Ann England and Professor Pat Furman ’80, with the approval of Dean David Getches and Clinical Education Director Deb Cantrell, agreed to take on the responsibility of continuing the work of the Project. 

Professor Furman cites the universal importance of the Innocence Project in an article in the September 2003 issue of The Colorado Lawyer. He says, “It concerns anyone who cares about law enforcement and public safety. For every innocent person wrongfully convicted, a guilty person roams free.”

Current law students in Colorado Law’s clinics will help to review the initial inquiries, send, receive and evaluate the formal applications, speak with trial and appellate counsel, review counsel’s files and court transcripts and consider the applicability of new forensic techniques (including, but not limited to, DNA testing). 

Clinic students also are helping to finish the transfer of operations to Boulder. It is hoped that the Innocence Project will be up and running at its new home by the end of the spring 2010 semester.