The Innocence Project at Congregation Kol Ami

On Friday night January 20 at 8:15 pm, Jason Kreag, a staff attorney at the Innocence Project and Alan Newton, an exoneree from prison will appear at Congregation Kol Ami, as part of their Synaplex event. The Innocence Project’s groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. The Project seeks to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment. The Innocence Project believes that the personal stories of the exonerated provide the most compelling introduction to the problems of wrongful conviction.

Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing the group has assisted 280 people in the United States who have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row.

Jason Kreag litigates post-conviction DNA cases throughout the country. He also supervises students through the Innocence Project clinic at Cardozo. Prior to joining the Innocence Project in October 2007, Mr. Kreag worked as a staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights. At SCHR, Mr. Kreag represented inmates on death row in Alabama and Georgia in state and federal post-conviction proceedings. Alan Newton was exonerated by DNA testing after serving 21 years in New York prisons for on a wrongful conviction for rape, robbery and assault.

The program is free and open to the community. Congregation Kol Ami is located at 252 Soundview Avenue in White Plains. For more information call Ilene Miller at 949-4717 ext. 111.