Title
Recognizing and honoring the Pennsylvania Innocence Project for its advocacy on behalf of wrongfully convicted Pennsylvanians and promotion of criminal justice system reforms to enhance conviction integrity.
Body
WHEREAS, In 2008, a group of lawyers, under the leadership of David Richman and David Rudovsky, founded the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. With the enthusiastic support of Dean JoAnne Epps, the Project found its home at Temple University's Beasley School of Law and opened its doors in April 2009; and
WHEREAS, In the Fall of 2009, the Pennsylvania Innocence Project began working with students from Temple Law School and Villanova University School of Law to screen and evaluate cases. Since then, the Project has created partnerships with Thomas R. Kline Drexel School of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Rutgers University Law School, and Penn State School of Law. In 2016, the Project added an office in Pittsburgh, housed by Duquesne University Law School, and including interns from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law to better serve clients incarcerated in Western Pennsylvania and build upon the nationwide movement to examine the cases of individuals who may have been wrongfully convicted; and
WHEREAS, In eight years of work, the Pennsylvania Innocence Project has succeeded in vacating the convictions of six Pennsylvanians - Eugene Gilyard, Lance Felder, Jim Fogle, Donte Rollins, Shaurn Thomas and Crystal Weimer; and
WHEREAS, The Pennsylvania Innocence Project has also secured new trials for two Pennsylvanians wrongly convicted, and helped in two cases which resulted in Alford pleas - where the men pled no contest to reduced charges, while asserting their innocence, and were immediately released from prison; and
WHEREAS, A Pennsylvania Innocence Project client, Tyrone Jones, was among the first Pennsylvanians resentenced as a former "juvenile lifer." Tyrone was paroled even as he continued to assert his innocence;...
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