Northern California Innocence Project

The Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) is a non-profit clinical program of Santa Clara University School of Law. NCIP’s mission is to promote a fair, effective, and compassionate criminal justice system and protect the rights of the innocent. NCIP challenges wrongful convictions on every front by exonerating the innocent, educating future attorneys, and reforming criminal justice policy. NCIP envisions a criminal justice system that makes us safer, is cost-effective, and is fair and equitable - one that accurately separates the innocent from the guilty and treats all with fairness and compassion. NCIP assists wrongfully convicted California prisoners who seek to advance claims of factual innocence. Large numbers of people seek our help. NCIP has developed a four-stage process to screen and investigate the hundreds of requests for assistance. In order for NCIP to consider a case, a potential client must meet all of the following basic criteria: The person must be actually innocent of the crimes for which they are convicted; there must be a significant chance that substantial new evidence may be found to support a claim of innocence; the person must have been convicted of a serious felony in one of the 48 Northern and Central California counties from Monterey, Kings, Tulare and Inyo County up to the Oregon border.