BARRY C. SCHECK

Barry Scheck is co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project. A Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City, he has served for more than twenty-one years as the Director of Clinical Education, Trial Advocacy Programs, and the Jacob Burns Center for the Study of Law and Ethics. Scheck received his undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1971 and his J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley in 1974. He worked for three years as a staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society in New York City.

In 1988, Scheck and his colleague Peter Neufeld became involved in studying and litigating issues concerning the transfer of DNA technology to forensic applications. Their work in this area not only shaped the course of case law across the country but led to an influential study by the National Academy of Sciences on forensic DNA testing, as well as important state and federal legislation setting standards for the use of DNA testing. Scheck now serves as a Commission member on New York State's Commission on Forensic Science, as well as on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 1998, Scheck was appointed to the National Institute of Justice's Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence and in 1999, Scheck received the Distinguished Defense Attorney Award from Governor George E. Pataki.

Scheck is known for his representation of well-known defendants such as Hedda Nussbaum, Louise Woodward, O.J. Simpson, Abner Louima, Danny Reyes, Jarmaine Grant and Thomas Pizzuto in a wide variety of cases based on racial profiling, wrongful death and conviction throughout the United States. He is also the author, with Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer, of Actual Innocence (Doubleday 200/Signet 2001).

In 1992, Scheck and Neufeld established the Innocence Project, a clinical program at Cardozo Law School. To date, 104 individuals have been exonerated in the United States through post-conviction DNA testing since 1992. The Innocence Project has either represented or assisted in the representation of more than half of these cases.

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