Need

IPNO's central purpose is to:

Take on the hardest innocence cases that no one else can or will do; and
Devote the majority of our time and resources to freeing poor people who will otherwise die in prison for crimes they did not commit.

Our filing cabinets contain hundreds of requests from indigent prisoners asking for assistance. Unfortunately, we simply do not have the time or resources it takes to look into each case: to be sure, not all of these requests come from innocent prisoners, but some do and IPNO is the only organization in Louisiana working to free the wrongfully convicted. It is particularly important to note that the point at which a prisoner could prove his or her innocence - post conviction proceedings - is the exact point at which the State denies the person the right to a free lawyer.

Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, has now seen 25 men exonerated since 1991 in both DNA and non-DNA cases. Mississippi, which annually ranks in the top three states for per capita incarceration rates, has seen the exoneration of four innocent men since 2006. IPNO knows that an innocence case is one of the strongest forces in driving reform, and we will draw upon these cases to maximize the impact in the criminal justice system throughout in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Noteworthy Points about Wrongful Convictions in Louisiana

Since 1991, thirty people in Louisiana have been freed from prison because of new evidence of their innocence, having served a total of 510 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Twenty-five of them have been fully exonerated to date.
Seven of these prisoners were sentenced to death and 23 to life without parole. Only the death-sentenced prisoners had the right to an attorney to prove their innocence. The others were lucky to find volunteer lawyers.
Seven of these men were 17 years old or younger when they were wrongly arrested.

Noteworthy Points about Wrongful Convictions in Mississippi

Since 2006, five men have been released from prison in the State of Mississippi because of new evidence of their innocence, having served 73 years collectively in prison for crimes they did not commit. Four of these men have been fully exonerated to date.
One of these five men was sentenced to death while two were sentenced to life and the other two men were sentence to 50+ years in prison.
Two of these men, both from Noxubee County, were convicted due to the gross negligence of the acting Noxubee County coroner and were fully exonerated in 2008, within three months of each other.

IPNO believes that, with reforms, the criminal justice system can work for every person it affects regardless of his or her means.

Some of our IPNO's achievements to date include:

Winning the release of 12 wrongly convicted prisoners in Louisiana (almost all of the other 18 Louisiana prisoners were freed by the efforts of the national Innocence Project or by state-funded capital defense offices);
Winning the release of 3 wrongly convicted prisoners in Mississippi, which has led to the establishment of an innocence litigation clinic at the University of Mississippi;
Directly assisting Louisiana's wrongly convicted men with rebuilding their lives upon their release and founding the first exonoree-led re-entry program in the country; and
Founding New Orleans ASPIRES, a working group of prosecutors, police, defense, judges, and evidence clerks to devise and implement best practices in evidence collection, storage, and preservation in New Orleans.