What are the criteria for acceptance with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project?
The Pennsylvania Innocence only takes on cases for those who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime, and who have already exhausted their direct appeals. By wrongfully convicted, we are limited to cases where the inmate is factually innocent of the crime. This is different from the many cases where an inmate may be legally innocent of the crime (such as a case involving a claim of consent instead of rape, or self-defense rather than murder), or where the inmate has serious constitutional or procedural grounds for reversal of his conviction. As important as all of those issues are, we are simply limited in our resources and in the scope of assistance we can offer.
