Annual Report

Multiplying Efforts

Exoneree Robert Jones, who was represented by Innocence Project New Orleans (and later by the Innocence Project in a civil rights lawsuit), with members of Hero The Band at the 2019 Innocence Network Conference in Atlanta.  (Image: Jennifer Watkins/Lyra Photography)

Backed by ongoing and generous support, the Innocence Project serves as the home base for the Network Support Unit, a group of organizational development professionals who work collaboratively with leaders within the Innocence Network to build capacity in the innocence movement. The Innocence Network is a coalition of independently funded innocence organizations working in all 50 states and in 12 countries outside of the U.S.

Pictured from left to right: Bhavan Sodhi (Innocence Project’s director of intake and case evaluation), Keren Ablin-Hertz (of the Public Defender Office in Tel Aviv, Israel), James Lockyer (Innocence Canada co-founder), Meredith Kennedy (Innocence Project’s director of the Innocence Network), and Michael Crystal (law professor) at a 2019 panel on wrongful convictions at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

Innocence Project Co-founder Peter Neufeld (left) and exoneree Herman Atkins (center) at the 2019 Innocence Network Conference in Atlanta. (Image: Jennifer Watkins/Lyra Photography)

Over the last two years, the Network Support Unit (NSU) convened network members to facilitate stronger connections and share skills, manage collective events and initiatives, and develop key partnerships to raise awareness of wrongful convictions.

114

events held by network member organizations, family, exonerees, and board members on Wrongful Conviction Day in 2020 and 2021

38

U.S.-based network member organizations received coaching on organizational and strategic development from the NSU in FY2021

57M

people on six continents who saw #WrongfulConvictionDay content in 2021

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Next chapter

Supporters gather at New York City’s Union Square on Sept. 8, 2021, to rally for Pervis Payne. (Image: Elijah Craig II/Innocence Project)