Both cases involved gun killings in the Detroit area, both convictions leaned on unreliable witnesses, and both ended with commutations late last year. Yet in each case, the legal work is not quite finished.

“The Innocence Clinic is somewhat unique in the long time periods our cases span. That is the nature of post-conviction appellate litigation,” said Imran Syed,  ’11, who was a student-attorney in the clinic and now serves as its co-director and a clinical assistant professor. “All of our victories in recent years have represented the culmination of years of work by dozens of students. These two cases are especially meaningful to the Innocence Clinic, though, because they go back to the very beginnings of the clinic.”

The Michigan Innocence Clinic is the first exclusively non-DNA innocence clinic in the country. Since its inception, the clinic has won the release of 40 men and women who had been wrongfully convicted of crimes and served anywhere from a few months to 46 years in prison.