Ohio Innocence Project Internship
Along with taking an 18 credit hour course load, spring semester of my sophomore year included a part-time, volunteer internship at the Ohio Innocence Project (OIP) at UC College of Law. The mission of the OIP is to free innocent people from prison and prevent future wrongful convictions. Since Professor Mark Godsey and Mayor John Cranley founded the OIP in 2003, the OIP has freed 24 innocent men and women. The 24th exoneree, James Parsons, was freed on my last day in the office.
My primary responsibility as a volunteer intern at the OIP was to evaluate requests for assistance and present suggestions to the Administrative Director. I also corresponded with inmates and their families through mail and phone calls regarding the status of their cases. The two most difficult parts of my internship were telling inmates and their families to be patient while their case was being reviewed by the law school students and having to notify others that the OIP could not help them due to circumstances of their particular case. I cannot fathom the pain of waiting for justice while serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit.
The most significant part of my experience at the OIP was having the opportunity to meet Rico Gaines, Dean Gillispie, and Ricky Jackson—three OIP exonerees. They had all forgiven the witnesses and victims who falsely identified them, jury participants who convicted them, and others who played a role in their failure of justice. I was amazed at their positive attitudes after spending decades behind bars for crimes they did not commit. Instead of prison breaking their spirit, they maintained faith that the passionate attorneys and law students at the OIP would free them from their nightmare.
Interning at the OIP further pushed me in the direction of law school by showing me the real impact I could have on people’s lives with a law degree. This semester opened my eyes to the reality of wrongful convictions and was an invaluable experience that I will never forget.
Along with taking an 18 credit hour course load, spring semester of my sophomore year included a part-time, volunteer internship at the Ohio Innocence Project (OIP) at UC College of Law. The mission of the OIP is to free innocent people from prison and prevent future wrongful convictions. Since Professor Mark Godsey and Mayor John Cranley founded the OIP in 2003, the OIP has freed 24 innocent men and women. The 24th exoneree, James Parsons, was freed on my last day in the office.
My primary responsibility as a volunteer intern at the OIP was to evaluate requests for assistance and present suggestions to the Administrative Director. I also corresponded with inmates and their families through mail and phone calls regarding the status of their cases. The two most difficult parts of my internship were telling inmates and their families to be patient while their case was being reviewed by the law school students and having to notify others that the OIP could not help them due to circumstances of their particular case. I cannot fathom the pain of waiting for justice while serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit.
The most significant part of my experience at the OIP was having the opportunity to meet Rico Gaines, Dean Gillispie, and Ricky Jackson—three OIP exonerees. They had all forgiven the witnesses and victims who falsely identified them, jury participants who convicted them, and others who played a role in their failure of justice. I was amazed at their positive attitudes after spending decades behind bars for crimes they did not commit. Instead of prison breaking their spirit, they maintained faith that the passionate attorneys and law students at the OIP would free them from their nightmare.
Interning at the OIP further pushed me in the direction of law school by showing me the real impact I could have on people’s lives with a law degree. This semester opened my eyes to the reality of wrongful convictions and was an invaluable experience that I will never forget.
While interning at OIP, I learned more about the dangers of erroneous eyewitness testimony and false identification than I had ever learned before in a classroom setting. At OIP, I had the opportunity to meet men who had been convicted of crimes they did not commit because someone else falsely identified them as a rapist or murderer. Some of these innocent men spent up to 30 years in prison. During the same semester of my internship, one of my criminal justice classes required that I write a paper regarding a criminal justice topic of interest. The paper below is an essay I wrote for the class about the complications that eyewitness testimony can present within the legal field.
hamilton.alesha_reflection_paper_2.docx | |
File Size: | 27 kb |
File Type: | docx |