University of San Diego’s Innocence Clinic is joining forces with the Innocence Center in Mission Valley to continue the work of freeing dozens of innocent people locally and thousands nationwide. “There is no better feeling any lawyer could ever possibly have than walking an innocent person out of prison,” said USD law professor Justin Brooks. He’s felt that pride himself 40 times. With the Innocence Clinic’s launch on Thursday, he hopes his students will eventually feel it too. Students will work pro bono to investigate cases and find innocent people in prison. Then, lawyers at the Innocence Center litigate those cases to get those people out. “Uriah Courtney was a San Diego case where there was a misidentification and, ultimately, we were able to find the real perpetrator using DNA testing,” Brooks said. Arrested in 2005, Courtney was freed in 2013. Kimberly Long’s case was another that got widespread attention. She was convicted in Los Angeles in 2003 and now lives in San Diego. “She came home and found her boyfriend beaten to death,” Brooks said, describing her case. “And, you know, she’s on the scene. And she had the unfortunate situation that they got in a big argument earlier that night in the bar, and she left, and he went home. Then she went home later on and found him dead. They got you on the scene. They got motive. They got opportunity. She’s convicted.” There’s been almost 4,000 exonerations nationwide and 200 people freed from death row. Brooks said there’s no telling how many more people have taken the fall for something they didn’t do and that it takes a lot of luck to exonerate someone. “Judges have to take time out of their calendar to review a case,” Brooks said. “Investigators have to preserve the evidence properly. You have to be able to prove it. So there’s a lot of people who are innocent present, who just can’t prove it either for procedural reasons or evidential reasons.” Brooks said it’s extremely difficult to come out of a correctional facility, particularly when you’re innocent. “Because when you’re innocent, you can never reconcile why you were there,” he said. “It’s like you wake up every morning in a surrealistic nightmare.” The Innocence Clinic is USD’s 13th clinic offering free legal services to the community. These services include appellate, civil, education and disability, entrepreneurship, federal tax, housing rights, immigration, state income tax, state sales and use tax, veterans, women’s, and workers’ rights. ...read more read less