Massachusetts Innocence Collaboration and Data Informed Expansion.

The Committee for Public Counsel Services Innocence Program (CPCS) and the Boston College Innocence Program (BCIP) have collaborated and secured the release and exoneration of dozens of wrongfully convicted individuals. CPCS and BCIP have established an innovative data project and supported critical law and policy reforms. These successes have led them to identify the following three areas of need: the underrepresentation of female in wrongful conviction cases; the inadequacy of existing post-conviction discovery practices and protocols to ensure access to evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct; and the need for innovative strategies to respond to the alarming number of wrongful convictions in Suffolk County stemming from misconduct by the Boston Police Department. BJA funds will be used to support the following areas of need: staffing at CPCS and BCIP; contracting with directly impacted persons and experienced litigators; developing and implementing research-based improvements to outreach and case screening protocols to increase access to legal assistance of wrongfully convicted women; expanding CPCS pre-existing Data Project to better identify patterns of official misconduct disproportionately impacting Black, Indigenous, and people of color and to generate data to improve screening and litigating innocence cases and support discovery reform; and incorporating Westlaw’s new Artificial Intelligence Assistant, Co-Counsel, into analysis of data collected by CPCS and BCIP to improve efforts to identify patterns of official misconduct. In addition, CPCS and BCIP seek funding to maintain an independent source of investigators and experts for use in cases where there is a need for professional investigators and/or expert witnesses to identify or litigate a meritorious innocence claim.