Record $15 million gift will help free innocent people from prison

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The Ohio Innocence Project at the University of Cincinnati College of Law has helped free 24 people who were imprisoned for crimes that they didn’t commit, and now, it has received a record-breaking $15 million to keep up the good work.

“This is a complete game-changer,” said Mark Godsey, the director of the Ohio Innocence Project. He said that the donation, made by longtime supporter Richard “Dick” Rosenthal, was the largest in history to any innocence program. The amount was around triple what the program had been able to raise in over a decade.

In a statement explaining his generous donation, Rosenthal said that the Ohio Innocence Project “has a laudable mission.”

“I’m proud to help ensure its life-saving work continues now and forever,” Rosenthal said. “Thank you to everyone who has helped make the OIP so successful in its mission – I’m inspired daily by the students, faculty and staff who work tirelessly in the pursuit of justice.”

In addition to the help of single donors like Rosenthal, Godsey said that there has been increased public interest in innocence project thanks to shows like “Making a Murderer” and “Serial.”

“I think these shows have been tremendously helpful in making the public aware of the problem,” Godsey said. “To be honest with you, I’ve got many cases that are just as interesting and fascinating and crazy as ‘Making a Murderer,’ but nobody was there filming them. When I’d talked about them, the public is in disbelief, because the public is sort of in this fog that the system is nearly perfect and doesn’t need reform. But now when I talk about these cases, they understand the problem and they’re nodding along, and that is extremely helpful.”