Barry Scheck
Barry Scheck | |
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Barry Scheck at the LBJ Presidential Library
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Born | Queens, New York, U.S. |
September 19, 1949
Barry C. Scheck (born September 19, 1949) is an American lawyer. He received national media attention while serving on O.J. Simpson's defense team, helping to win an acquittal in the highly publicized murder case. Scheck is the director of the Innocence Project and a professor at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.[1]
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Early life
Scheck was born in Queens, New York, and grew up in Port Washington, New York. He graduated from the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, New York in 1967. He went on to receive a B.A. from Yale University in 1971, majoring in Economics and American Studies, and a J.D. and Master of City Planning (MCP) from UC Berkeley's School of Law in 1974.
Cases he defended
Before becoming nationally-known, Scheck became the personal lawyer for the Hedda Nussbaum case, in 1987. He both defended her and assisted in getting the charges against her dropped, while also assisting in ensuring Joel Steinberg's arrest and suing him in the civil case, Nussbaum vs. Steinberg.[2] Scheck was part of the team that defended O. J. Simpson in his 1995 trial. He was associated with clearing in 1999 of Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson who had spent 11 years in prison of wrongful murder convictions.[3] He was also the lead lawyer who defended British au pair Louise Woodward in her 1997 murder trial. More recently, he served as attorney of the wrongly accused Duke University lacrosse player Reade Seligmann to represent him in a civil lawsuit filed on October 5, 2007 against the city of Durham, North Carolina, and its former district attorney, Mike Nifong. He also was responsible for clearing John Restivo, Dennis Halstead, and John Kogut after 18 years in prison for the 1985 Lynbrook rape and murder of Theresa Fusco, when DNA evidence proved them innocent and implicated others.[4]
Innocence Project
Scheck co-founded the Innocence Project in 1992 with Peter Neufeld, also his co-counsel on the O.J. Simpson defense team. The Project is dedicated to the utilization of DNA evidence as a means to exculpate individuals of crimes for which they were wrongfully convicted. As of December 1, 2015, 334 wrongful convictions have been overturned by DNA testing thanks to the Project and other legal organizations.[5] The Innocence Project does not use legal technicalities to challenge convictions; the Project accepts only cases in which newly discovered scientific evidence can potentially prove that a convicted person is factually innocent.
Scheck is a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he established the first Innocence Project. He is Director of Clinical Education for the Trial Advocacy Program and the Center for the Study of Law and Ethics, and a former staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of New York. From 2004–2005 he served as president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 1996 he received the Robert C. Heeney Award, the "NACDL's most prestigious award... given annually to the one criminal defense attorney who best exemplifies the goals and values of the Association, and the legal profession"[6]
Selected bibliography
- Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer. Actual Innocence. New York: Doubleday, 2000. ISBN 0-385-49341-X.
- Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld, and Taryn Simon. The Innocents. New York: Umbrage Editions in association with The Innocence Project, 2003. ISBN 1-884167-18-7. [Photographs and Interviews by Taryn Simon; commentary by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck.]
See also
- Conviction - in this film based on a true story Peter Gallagher portrays Barry Scheck who helps to vacate Kenneth Waters's conviction.
- Barry Scheck appears as himself in Season 2, Episode 9, of the CBS drama series The Good Wife, in a plot involving the Innocence Project. Also, he appeared in Season 5, Episode 1 in an Eighth Amendment violation case.
References
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- ↑ http://dig.abclocal.go.com/wtvd/duke%20lax%20lawsuit.pdf
- ↑ http://www.innocenceproject.org/
- ↑ NACDL website "Awards" section
External links
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- Pages using infobox person with unknown parameters
- Infobox person using religion
- Articles with hCards
- 1949 births
- American Jews
- American lawyers
- American legal scholars
- Cardozo School of Law faculty
- Criminal defense lawyers
- Horace Mann School alumni
- Living people
- New York lawyers
- O. J. Simpson murder case
- People from Queens, New York
- University of California, Berkeley School of Law alumni
- Yale University alumni
- Wrongful conviction advocacy
- Public defenders
- College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley alumni