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NCIP 2011 Year in Review Email
Dear Friend,
Happy Holidays!
This holiday season, as I reflect on our accomplishments over the past year - NCIP's 10th anniversary year - I am overwhelmed by all we have accomplished. NCIP operates on a modest budget that is made up primarily of donations from caring individuals. It is my sincere hope that you will continue that support to help us build on the extraordinary progress we have made thus far.
NCIP's three-pronged mission is to exonerate, educate, and reform. Here are some highlights from 2011 around these core initiatives:
Exonerate
With the hard work and dedication of our legal team, this year NCIP celebrated three exonerations-of men who together lost 57 years of their lives to wrongful conviction. This is an extraordinary achievement and your financial support was instrumental in these successes.
On March 14, the Los Angeles County Superior Court reversed Francisco “Franky” Carrillo Jr.’s 1992 conviction for the murder of Donald Sarpy, and ordered his release from incarceration. The conviction was overturned when the six eyewitnesses admitted they did not really see anything and were influenced to make their identifications of Carrillo. Two other men have confessed to the shooting and said Carrillo was not involved.
On March 28, a San Francisco Superior Court judge overturned the conviction and ordered the release of Maurice Caldwell from prison, where he had spent the last 20 years after being convicted of a murder he did not commit. NCIP re-investigated the case and was located two witnesses who saw the murder and stated that Caldwell was not involved and located the real killer, who confessed to the murder and had gone on to commit another murder.
On September 30, Obie Anthony was freed from a Los Angeles prison for a murder and attempted robbery for which he was not responsible. When NCIP conducted an extensive re-investigation of the case, previously undisclosed evidence was uncovered that proved that the prosecution’s key eyewitness lied during the original trial. The witness also admitted he never saw the perpetrators well enough to identify them.
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NCIP's clinical program has grown exponentially in the past 10 years, graduating 600 students from its Basic and Advanced clinical programs. These exceptional programs teach students key lawyering skills, in addition to the critical skill of ethical lawyering, for both prosecution and defense.
While at Santa Clara Law, students test these skills in moot court competitions. Recently, NCIP students won awards in several of these competitions, proving that their hard work in NCIP’s clinical setting is elevating their overall lawyering skills. NCIP students who attended exoneration hearings this year expressed how being a part of the exoneration deeply impacted them.
NCIP also extended its education to the community at large with its Innocence Matters Breakfast Briefing speaker series. This speaker series educates the community about wrongful conviction and its causes and has become a mainstay of our educational mission.
Reform
NCIP's Veritas Initiative (www.veritasinitiative.org) is dedicated to advancing the integrity of our justice system through data-driven reform. As the leading research and policy organization on prosecutorial misconduct, we are participating in a national tour to raise awareness and promote solutions.
The Veritas Initiative has published two studies on prosecutorial misconduct since its inception and continues to research other important areas such as eyewitness identification, post-conviction DNA access/testing, and compensation for the exonerated (see www.veritasinitiative.org).
The Veritas Initiative studies have gained positive national attention. In addition to numerous news articles, the initial study, “Preventable Error: Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009” was cited in a Yale Law Journal article.
The widespread attention the studies received has given NCIP a leading role in national reform efforts and in a national tour to raise awareness about prosecutorial misconduct. The tour, “Prosecutorial Oversight: A National Dialogue in the Wake of Connick v. Thompson,” is a collaboration with the Innocence Project, Innocence Project New Orleans and Voices of Innocence and will invite discourse about strategies to address the problem.
We Need Your Help
2011 truly has been one of the most successful years in our history, and your year-end gift is more vital than ever to build on the momentum of these successes . Here are some ways you can help:
- Justice for All Dinner Table or Ticket Sponsorship: Join us for our annual Fifth Annual Justice for All Awards Dinner. Visit www.justiceforalldinner.com for more information.
- Donate Today: Your gift would provide much-needed funding for NCIP’s most important programs. Go to www.ncip.scu.edu or return your gift in the enclosed envelope today.
- Five-year Pledge: Consider expanding your support over a five year period. On our donation page, choose “recurring gift”, then “annually”.
Your gift right now will help us free more wrongfully convicted and help prevent others from suffering the same fate. We cannot succeed without you.
With high hopes,
Cookie Ridolfi on behalf of The Northern California Innocence Project
Northern California Innocence Project
Santa Clara University School of Law
900 Lafayette Street
Santa Clara, CA 95050
Phone: (408) 554-4790| Fax: (408) 554-5440
Email: ncip@scu.edu
