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Ohio Innocence Project lands $15 million donation

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News

Published: September 29, 2016

The Ohio Innocence Project at the University of Cincinnati College of Law has received the largest donation ever made to the college and any innocence program in the nation.

The record $15 million donation came from Richard Rosenthal, a longtime Cincinnati philanthropist.

In 2004, he and his late wife Lois gave $1 million to create and endow the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Institute for Justice, where the OIP is located.

“The Ohio Innocence Project has a laudable mission: to free every innocent person in Ohio,” Rosenthal said in a statement. “I’m proud to help ensure its life-saving work continues now and forever.”

Founded in 2003, the Innocence Project allows law students to work side-by-side with professional attorneys in order to help free wrongfully imprisoned inmates.

In Ohio, the nonprofit program is the state’s only law-school based innocence organization and to date has freed 24 people who have served a combined 450 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

“The University of Cincinnati College of Law is deeply grateful to Mr. Rosenthal for his long-standing support of our faculty, staff and students who do such wonderful work addressing the injustice of wrongful convictions,” said Jennifer Bard, dean and Nippert Professor of Law at the UC College of Law. “The OIP is an important component of our experiential ‘learn by doing’ curriculum and by training the next generation of prosecutors, defense attorneys, legislators and judges is already advancing one of our nation’s core constitutional protections: the right to a fair trial.”

In a statement, cofounder and director of the New York City-based Innocence Project, Barry Scheck called the Ohio program a national model for innocence organizations nationwide.

Each year, about 20 law students spend a full year working on cases that require in-depth knowledge on everything from how to interview witnesses and write case briefs to forensic techniques and DNA testing.

“Through hands-on learning, they discover how to build a case and what can make a case go wrong, resulting in a tragic injustice,” the university said in a press release.

OIP director Mark Godsey, who cofounded the organization with John Cranley, said that Rosenthal and his wife were instrumental in building the program.

“We were just a couple of young lawyers but Lois and Dick knew how to build institutions,” Godsey said. “They had a vision and helped teach John and I how to take our ideas and passion to the next level.”

The college of law says that the large gift will be used to provide for the Ohio Innocence Project in perpetuity.

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