Jamie Newton & Alicia Kaufmann '27
Staff Editors
On Tuesday, September 3, the Innocence Project Pro Bono Clinic hosted a kickoff meeting for interested students. Students heard from the Innocence Project Clinic Staff Attorney Payal Sampat ’23, Virginia Innocence Project Student Group (VIPS) leaders, and others about various opportunities to get involved in the program. To clarify, VIPS and the Pro Bono Clinic are functionally the same, and they offer pro bono hours to those who volunteer. They are distinct, however, from the year-long Innocence Project Clinic where students receive credit for participation. Do not fret if you were unable to attend! Here are the important topics that were discussed.
Sampat outlined seven different teams where students can get involved, all with varying levels of commitment. First, there are three ancillary teams: intake, policy, and reentry. The intake team reviews all of the applications that are submitted to the clinic and makes recommendations as to whether they should be assigned a case team. The VIPS co-leaders explained that intake team members are the first to see clients’ applications and are responsible for writing a memo that evaluates whether the client has a case for actual innocence. The student leaders emphasized that although this team is the lowest commitment, with most of the work performed asynchronously at your own pace, it is extremely important. Around 280 applications have been submitted that they have not yet been able to review, so your help could make a huge difference!
The policy team conducts advocacy work in an attempt to make the process of proving innocence or wrongful conviction easier. There are two major projects that the policy team is collaborating on this year: rectifying the issues caused by faulty Virginia forensic scientist Mary Jane Burton and investigating eyewitness lineup procedures and police eyewitness policies. Juliet Hatchett ’15, one of the directors of the clinic, described the day-to-day work on this team as a “mixture of research and advocacy,” with the second project being more research-heavy. Sampat estimated a commitment of thirty-to-fifty hours per semester, including weekly one-hour meetings.
The last ancillary team, reentry, is new to the program this year. The leader of the team specified that they will work on mental health counseling and housing assistance for clients after they have been exonerated. This team will also have hour-long weekly meetings and a semester commitment of roughly thirty-to-fifty hours.
Probably the most rewarding yet intense pro bono opportunity VIPS offers law students is its case teams. There are currently four case teams for students of all years to participate in. Although a lot of the details of each case are protected by confidentiality requirements, Sampat and student team leaders further explained the background of each case, often accompanied by a “trigger warning” due to the sensitive nature of the alleged crimes like assault and homicide. Notwithstanding the delicate topics many of these cases broach, Sampat emphasized the decided belief each team and the organization as a whole has in their clients’ innocence.
These teams provide students with insight into, and involvement with, the full exoneration process. VIPS has been working on some of these cases for a number of years, while others are “more preliminary” and involve a greater focus on investigatory work. Some cases are older, such as one from 1985, while others are much more recent. No matter the case, students will receive opportunities to draft briefs and petitions, hone their investigative skills, work directly with clients and witnesses, and meet attorneys from outside the law school assisting on certain cases. Given the possible necessity of travel out of Charlottesville to meet with clients or witnesses, one of the team leaders, Isabel Cook ’25, underlined that access to a car or inability to travel would not impede any student’s ability to work on a case team. Carpooling is always an option, and students can always find work to contribute to beyond these specific facets of casework.
Many of the team leaders found their current positions through work in the Innocence Project Clinic, which Sampat referred to as VIPS’s “full-time classroom component” of their pro bono extension. Each participant in VIPS with prior experience with the organization, either through clinic work or other pro bono opportunities, emphasized just how important this work was to their law school experience—“a great way to do actual legal work that matters.”
While the ’24-’25 application deadline already passed at the end of last week, VIPS will always be around for law students. Keep this opportunity in mind in the coming semesters and years when looking for pro bono hours, ways to involve yourself in public service, or if you just have a hankering to help rectify one of our justice system’s greatest wrongs—the conviction and incarceration of the innocent.
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