About the Innocence and Justice Clinic
Mission
The I&J Clinic serves two primary missions:
- Provide Wake Forest students with a hands-on clinical legal education opportunity.
- Identify, investigate and advance credible claims of innocence made by inmates convicted of felonies in North Carolina.
Learning Objectives
This interdisciplinary course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to examine the legal, scientific, cultural and psychological causes of wrongful convictions. Students will be given an opportunity to apply this knowledge to actual cases by reviewing and investigating claims of actual innocence by inmates and, where appropriate, pursuing legal avenues for exoneration and release from prison.
Seminar Component
Students meet for two hours once a week to examine and discuss the substantive law that addresses the causes and remedies associated with wrongful convictions. Topics covered include:
- mistaken eyewitness identification
- false confessions
- "junk" forensic science
- the role of forensic DNA testing
- the use of "jailhouse snitches" and cooperating witnesses
- police and prosecutorial misconduct
- incompetent lawyering
- policy and legislative reforms
- innocence and the death penalty
- post-conviction remedies for innocence claims
Client Component
Students are placed in teams and assigned actual cases to investigate where inmates are claiming innocence. Students will have an opportunity to review criminal files, interact with police investigators, contact prosecuting attorneys, gather documentation, prepare legal documents and memos, and apply critical legal skills to a client’s case. Students will meet with faculty to discuss the ongoing progress of their cases and what needs to be accomplished to further the review and investigation of the inmate’s claim of innocence.
Grading Process
There is no final exam in this course. Grading will be based on attendance and participation, handling of clients’ cases and clinic matters, and a research paper that addresses a topic that relates to wrongful convictions. Students are invited to design their own topic for the paper with faculty approval. The course is 4 credits.
Clinic Cases
The I&J Clinic works in partnership with the NC Center on Actual Innocence which processes requests for assistance from inmates who are imprisoned in North Carolina. The Center oversees the seven law schools within the state that have innocence project programs and assigns cases based on the school’s geographic proximity to where the crime took place.
