UCLA Innocence Project hopes to help wrongfully convicted inmates by reviewing old cases

A few months ago, Amber Phillips maneuvered her Honda Element into the parking space at about 4 p.m.

That was when the stakeout began.

Over the next five hours, Phillips sat in her car with fellow UCLA School of Law student Steven Krieger. They studied, munched on chips and took swigs of Gatorade. Occasionally, they left the car to stretch their legs. But mainly, they watched and waited.

At the time, Phillips and Krieger were working on an independent field study project for academic credit that expanded on their work as members of the UCLA Innocence Project. The student group is a chapter of the California Western School of Law’s organization, which helps inmates who have been wrongfully convicted.

The UCLA law students were looking for a woman who had witnessed a shooting that had occurred years ago. She testified against the person convicted for the crime, but there were indications that she might recant her statement.

“We waited a long time for her to come out (of the building). You could see her moving inside,” Phillips said.

They hoped to question the woman about the case and obtain information that might help prove the innocence of the man sentenced for the shooting.

“When all this went down, they were kids, and they were scared. We thought, “˜She’s a lot older now, maybe she’ll be less scared,'” Phillips said.

But when they spoke to her, she refused to give them any information.

“Her position was that she moved on with her life, and she didn’t want to be involved,” Phillips said.

Phillips and Krieger then tried to track down another witness, but that led nowhere. They ended up turning the investigation over to the California Innocence Project.

So far, UCLA students have worked on over 150 cases since the chapter was founded in 2008, Krieger said. He and Phillips are the only two who have gone on to actually investigate a case, he added.

Inmates who believe they have been wrongfully convicted fill out a questionnaire, which is then used to assess whether their case merits further investigation. Inaccurate eyewitness identification ““ when witnesses points their fingers at the wrong person ““ is the most common cause of such convictions, Krieger said.

UCLA students review these questionnaires, along with case briefs, and recommend to closing or opening the case. The review can take anywhere from six to 20 hours and often requires going through stacks of paper four inches thick.

“Once I’ve read the questionnaire and brief, I start piecing together a timeline. I try to piece together the story. That’s how I understand (the case),” Phillips said. “It’s not just regurgitating information. You have to see what’s there and what’s not there, and that takes a lot of time.”

The chapter sends its recommendations to the California Innocence Project, which decides what to do with the case. About 85 percent of cases do not receive further evaluation or investigation, said Jeff Chinn, assistant director of the California Innocence Project.

The program is a way for students to get out of the classroom and practice the law instead of simply studying it, Krieger said.

“I don’t think anybody believes everyone in jail is actually guilty,” he said. “But I don’t think a lot of people know they can have the impact of exonerating those people.”

Because of the program’s success in exonerating inmates, the number of Innocence Projects nationwide has increased ““ 17 new projects joined over the last two years, said Keith Findley, president of the Innocence Network.

Innocence projects started after the anti-death-penalty movement in the 1970s began to decline. Advocates of abolishing the death penalty had failed to win the support of public opinion, said UCLA law Professor Scott Cummings.

“The leaders of the movement decided to focus on how the death penalty was implemented in grievously wrong ways to highlight a broader point: You don’t want to impose the ultimate sanction on someone unless you’re really, really sure. And even then you may not be really sure,” he said.

By revealing the justice system’s failures, Innocence Projects have paved the way for legislative reform, Findley said. For example, innocent people have been convicted in rape-murder cases on the basis of bite mark evidence.

“The skin is not a good substrate for holding good bite marks. It’s flexible, it swells, it doesn’t make reliable imprints. There are many cases when forensic odontologists have sent someone to prison or death row just because these teeth marks match that person’s. It’s terribly flawed,” Findley said.

Currently, the Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into creating a National Institute of Forensic Sciences to conduct research on forensic evidence, Findley said.

The Innocence Project provides an avenue for learning about the justice system’s weaknesses, a lesson not fully included in the UCLA law school’s curriculum, Cummings said.

“(The law school) focuses on understanding how the law operates and how it should operate, and not focused on the way it fundamentally breaks down in certain situations,” he said. “I think coming face-to-face with reality is the most powerful teacher.”