Until 2020 when IPD started reviewing cases Delaware was one of only three states nationally without an independent innocence project. Many of those projects started two decades ago, meaning we have a lot of work to do.

IPD is the only organization focusing on claims of actual innocence for wrongfully convicted people throughout Delaware. Nobody should be in prison for a crime they did not commit. Wrongful conviction means that an innocent person is taken from their family and community, while the true culprit goes free.

Because we are reviewing old cases, some as far back as the 1980s, we see law enforcement practices that have long been discredited. We have seen cases in which the police used psychics to “solve” the crime or hair analysis purporting to link our client to the scene. On further analysis, the hair was determined to be cat hair.

Our partnership with Delaware Law School means that every dollar donated goes directly toward our mission of helping innocent people.

Although we are a small organization, our team has years of litigation experience in the field—together we have successfully represented hundreds of wrongfully convicted people and obtained numerous exonerations.

The small size of Delaware’s criminal defense bar, a result of low bar passage rates, means that there are not enough lawyers to investigate and represent people who were wrongfully convicted.

Wrongful conviction is very much a part of our country’s mass incarceration problem which disproportionately impacts disadvantaged, vulnerable communities.