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Innocence Clinic
Students in the Innocence Clinic investigate claims of wrongful conviction by Nevada state prison inmates referred from the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center (RMIC), which is the innocence project for the states of Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. At the conclusion of this two-semester clinic, students recommend to the RMIC whether to close investigation, continue investigation or proceed to litigation. Through their examination of police investigatory materials, trial materials and witness interviews, students learn to carefully and skeptically analyze facts, to search for information that is not contained in a case record, and to assess how the same events might generate conflicting or competing stories. In the fall semester, the clinic seminar focuses on systemic causes of wrongful conviction, such as mistaken eyewitness identification, false confession, faulty forensic science, prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel, and ways to reform the criminal justice system to mitigate these causes. In the spring semester, the seminar critically examines the goal of reliability in the criminal justice system and the postconviction legal remedies available to correct wrongful convictions in cases of actual innocence.
