Description: The Los Angeles Innocence Project works to exonerate the wrongly convicted, free the unjustly incarcerated, and reform the criminal legal system to prevent future injustice.
Thanks to the generous support of our Founding Donor, Andy Wilson, LAIP provides pro bono investigatory services and legal representation to indigent individuals in Central and Southern California who assert claims of innocence.
LAIP works in partnership and collaboration with scientists and students at the California Forensic Science Institute (CFSI), led by Dr. Kathy Roberts, and Cal State LA’s School of Criminal Justice & Criminalistics, within the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. CFSI scientists and students collaborate with LAIP attorneys to test the viability, reliability, and accuracy of evidence used to convict LAIP clients.
At LAIP, we believe in a criminal legal system that recognizes the inherent dignity of all people. We believe in the possibility of a criminal legal system that is not infected by racial bias and does not criminalize poverty, mental illness, or drug addiction and that seeks to reduce harm, reconcile individuals, address trauma, and rebuild those individuals, communities, and institutions that have been damaged by crime and our society’s response to it.