We are driven to free the innocent of Delaware and meaningfully reform the system that wrongfully convicted them. 

Founded in 2018, Innocence Project Delaware ("IPD") fights to correct and prevent wrongful convictions and ensure justice within the criminal legal system for innocent people in Delaware who are imprisoned for a crime they did not commit. IPD is the only organization in Delaware solely dedicated to freeing the wrongfully convicted.

IPD provides pro bono forensic testing, case investigation, experts, and an experienced legal team to exonerate innocent Delawareans. IPD takes DNA and non-DNA cases. 

We are a small staff of lawyers, development, and communications professionals who work with a dedicated network of criminal defense attorneys, experts, scholars, and exonerees to help free the innocent. We also use our expertise about wrongful convictions to provide education to the Delaware community.

IPD is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit and receives no funding from the “Innocence Project,” a separate organization based in NYC, or from any other innocence organizations. We are not associated with the Delaware Department of Justice's Actual Innocence Program.

  • Wrongful conviction occurs when a factually innocent person is convicted of a crime they did not commit. It is a symptom of a broken criminal legal system that must be fixed.

  • Since 1989, more than 3,500 wrongfully convicted people have been exonerated in the United States, including 190 who were sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit. That number continues to grow.

  • Delaware was one of the last three states in the country to develop an Innocence Project and is one of about a dozen that fails to compensate the wrongfully convicted.

  • According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Delaware’s incarceration rates stand out internationally. The incarceration rates are not limited to the most populous cities, people all over the state are being locked up at high rates. 

  • Black people in Delaware are incarcerated at a rate 5.4 times higher than White people.

  • As of 2022, 21.2% of the population of Delaware consists of Black individuals. Yet in the Delaware prison system, 60% of the people who are incarcerated are Black. This includes 65% of people serving life without parole sentences, and 63% of pretrial detainees in Delaware.

  • In Delaware, the cost of incarcerating older people is incredibly high, and their risk of reincarceration is incredibly low, yet 15% of people in Delaware prisons are over the age of 55.

To learn more about our work, watch this video from a presentation we gave at Westminster's Peace & Justice Work Group.

  • Innocence Conference in New Orleans, 2024

  • Innocence Project Delaware Clinic Students at Delaware Law School, 2023-2024

  • Innocence Conference in Arizona, 2023

  • Innocence Conference in New Orleans, 2024

  • Jermaine “Marlow” Wright hugging his mother after being released from prison, 2015

    Jermaine “Marlow” Wright hugging his mother after being released from prison, 2015

  • Our Team, 2023

    Our Team, 2023