DISCLAIMER: This is a prototype page that uses interviews from last year's XONR8 Theater project. The site we will make for the "Humans of the South Bay" project will be all about residents of the South Bay, not lawyers from the California Innocence Project.
"The media come here because we’ve exonerated somebody, and that’s what they’re interested in.
And that stuff is great for a very short period, of time: you win a case, you’re excited, you’re running out of the courtroom, you have a great weekend. But if you really want to get to the humanity of all this, and what makes defense attorneys tick, you know, the losses haunt you. they stay with you forever. Particularly for us here, because we’re the end of the line. So we know that when we lose, our clients die in prison. That’s why once we activate a case, we actually never give it up, we just keep going, and going, and going." -Justin Brooks Director, California Innocence Project |
"I never judge. I’m not there to judge my clients. I’ve never had a client I thought was guilty, because I don’t judge them. It’s easy for me, I mean, I don’t do a job, I represent a human being. So I don’t put a judgment on anybody, ever. I just don’t do it.
You just get a mindset of 'I’m here to be the one person in the courtroom not judging this person. Everyone else standing here, the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, the marshall, they’re all on the other side, and then there’s me standing here making sure this guy gets a fair trial. And that’s my job, whether they did it or didn’t do it.'" -Mario Conte Lawyer, California Innocence Project |
"The first three times Brian Banks wrote to us, when he was still incarcerated, he really had no new evidence for us to pursue his case.
So I had told him the last time that new evidence could be in the form of a victim recantation or any new biological evidence that may not have been tested at trial, and so forth. And so the fourth time he called me, he was actually on parole and he, begged me to take his case. He said that he had gotten a video of the victim recanting and he really wanted me to take a look at it. It was a really weird spot that I was in because we had never taken a case where the person wasn’t physically in prison. So I was compelled by his passion to keep coming back and asking for help and I agreed to meet him." -Kim Hernandez Program Manager, California Innocence Project |
"I remember the first time I met Alan Giminez and I remember thinking that there was no way that this guy did it. You know sometimes those emotions can kinda cloud your judgment but you really have to meet Alan to realize how friendly and how warm and how... he’s just not a violent guy at all. I remember feeling overjoyed that we had a client that was just so approachable and nice and friendly.
I also remember the moment I realized Alan was innocent. When I started looking through the medical testimonies, I saw that Alan was convicted on a theory of shaken baby syndrome; when an infant is shaken to death. It's been largely discredited and is no longer something that is so cut and dry as when Alan was convicted." -Alex Simpson Lawyer, California Innocence Project |
"If you look at it this way, we receive about 2000 requests for assistance a year and we have twelve exonerations in the past fifteen years, so it’s more likely that we’re not able to prove someone’s innocence and they’ll get denied in court. Exonerations are very rare.
It’s not easy and there are many times where you just feel burnt out and you feel defeated but at the end of the day you love what you do and you have other clients that you care about and depend on you. To be in the Innocence Project, you gotta have thick skin, you have to be willing to work hard, and you have to be open minded but stay skeptical as well." -Raquel Cohen Lawyer, California Innocence Project |
"You go into a prison visit and you're sitting there with your client who is sometimes shackled, usually he is sitting there in a jumpsuit. I know that it’s not a pleasant experience and its not fun to be sitting on the other side of the table. ESPECIALLY when you are sitting there for something that you didn't do, so it’s always difficult when you sit down with a person and you do an interview and you think that they’re truly innocent.
So yeah, it’s a very emotional experience for sure. I would say one of the most difficult things to do at the Innocence Project is to sit and talk to a person who is telling you that they’re innocent." -Michael Semanchick Lawyer, California Innocence Project |