Barry Scheck

Barry Scheck has been honored as the most outstanding criminal defense lawyer in America. A pioneer of the use of DNA evidence, he co-founded the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York City. In the past decade, the Project has helped secure the exoneration of more than 200 men previously convicted of crimes they did not commit, many of whom would have faced execution but for the intervention of Scheck and his associates. He describes many of these cases in his book, Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted. Scheck may be best known to the American public as the DNA expert on the O.J. Simpson defense team, an occasion he saw as an opportunity to promote higher standards in the handling of DNA evidence. He has frequently served as an expert advisor to law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, and has assisted in the investigation of unsolved crimes such as the JonBenet Ramsey murder. He has served as counsel in numerous civil and criminal actions involving the rights of battered women and incidents of police brutality, including the Abner Louima police assault incident in New York. He co-founded the Innocence Project after six years of litigation to establish standards for the use of DNA evidence in U.S. courts.