Our Work

We’re improving the criminal justice system.

Guided by principles rather than specific outcomes, we are committed to holding our justice system accountable. We seek to identify and correct problems that perpetuate wrongful convictions, such as mistaken eyewitness identifications, coercive interrogations that lead to false confessions, and scientifically unsupported techniques such as bite mark evidence and other “junk science.”

Our efforts are reforming laws and policies.

Together with our exonerees, we’ve successfully advocated for policies and practices to identify, prevent, and rectify wrongful convictions in Washington State, including policies to:

• Improve eyewitness identification procedures.
• Mandate preservation of crime scene evidence.
• Promote access to post-conviction DNA testing.
• Scrutinize jailhouse informants and other incentivized witnesses.
• Compensate those who are actually innocent for years lost from wrongful conviction.
• Mandate the recording of all custodial interrogations in Washington State.

Education is critical to ending wrongful convictions.

We serve as a nonpartisan resource for judges, attorneys, the media, and the general public, sharing information about how wrongful convictions have happened and how we have secured freedom for our clients. Our decades of research and partnership with other Innocence Network organizations around the world give us access and insight into the problems within our justice system, and how to fix them.