Kentucky Innocence Project: Building Partnerships to End Wrongful Convictions

The Kentucky Innocence Project (KIP) requests funding to maintain a part-time staff attorney and part-time paralegal to review and prepare cases for litigation, to secure experts for litigation, and to train law student externs at all three Kentucky law schools in the intake and case identification process. KIP was founded in 2001 and is an established innocence organization housed within Kentucky’s statewide public defenders post-conviction branch at the Department of Public Advocacy. KIP is the only innocence organization in Kentucky and has obtained many successes over the past two decades and serves as an active member of the National Innocence Network. The purpose of the program and expected outcomes will be to identify, review, investigate, research, and litigate post-conviction claims of innocence, and to develop programs to mitigate systemic issues. Project activities will build on prior innocence case work undertaken by KIP and will enable KIP to support new cases. KIP also seeks to develop new project activities to include: developing partnerships with three Kentucky law schools to utilize student externs in the identification and review process of appropriate cases; building criminal justice partnerships with the Kentucky Department of Corrections and the Kentucky State Police Laboratory to identify potential cases and; developing partnerships with Eastern Kentucky University College of Justice, Safety and Military Science and the University of Louisville Criminal Justice School to address systemic errors.