After I got to know my Brooklyn tennis buddy Peter Neufeld, I found that his college advisor at Wisconsin was Dr. Harvey Goldberg as he had been mine at Ohio State. Harvey charged his student mentees with the task of righting the wrongs of the world. A publication of the University of Wisconsin states:
Above all, Harvey Goldberg wanted to instill in his students an awareness of the historic struggles of the weakest for justice. He inspired his students to engage actively in the social issues of the day.
Peter told me that he spoke at a Wisconsin graduation about Harvey’s influence on his life.
In the 1970s, Peter and Barry Scheck became friends while working together at the Legal Aid Society. In the early eighties, Peter taught trial advocacy at Fordham Law where he developed an interest in science and the law. Barry started the criminal defense clinic at Cardozo Law where he was deeply interested in the problems of the underrepresented criminal defendant. By 1986, the two friends learned of and became interested in the use of DNA in immigration and criminal investigations in England. In 1987, they heard about the Castro case, the first case in New York City in which the prosecution attempted to introduce DNA evidence to incriminate the defendant. Peter and Barry successfully suppressed the DNA evidence because at that time the private labs offering the service to the police lacked any meaningful quality assurance and control and the quality of the evidence was poor. The case triggered an investigation by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. The report published by the National Academy in the early 1990s established quality standards eventually adopted throughout the country.
Thereafter, Peter and Barry worked together to establish a clinic at Cardozo Law to develop the use of DNA evidence to reopen old convictions where DNA testing could prove innocence. They realized that there was likely a significant portion of the prison population who could be exonerated through the use of DNA evidence. After a daytime television show featured their work, requests from inmates around the country began pouring in. Thus, the Innocence Project was born. Since those initial years, the Innocence Project counts two hundred and fifty victories, with two hundred and two clients who have been exonerated through the use of DNA.
As founders of the Innocence Project, Peter and Barry are also known for their work on the “Dream Team,” representing O.J. Simpson during his 1995 murder trial. There, they played a significant role in discrediting the prosecution’s forensic evidence, raising questions about the collection and testing of the evidence. By the time of the Simpson trial, they had almost ten years of experience understanding the systemic problems with forensic evidence and police crime labs and five years of using DNA to exonerate individuals who had been wrongfully convicted. The case was a wakeup call for crime labs around the country to improve their methods.
Peter notes that when the DNA exonerations were deconstructed, many of the original wrongful convictions had relied on unvalidated and unreliable forensic methods. There was little to no regulatory oversight to set quality assurance standards for forensic labs. He contrasts this to the heavy demands that the federal government placed on clinical labs, such as the Food and Drug Administration regulations or the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments. Peter attributes this gap to politics and money, explaining that the population of those most affected by forensic science “doesn’t have the same clout” as the population affected by clinical lab medicine.
Ramifications
This disparity may have huge ramifications for individuals convicted based on forensic evidence. Unlike clinical drugs or tests which must first be approved by organizations like the FDA and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services before they are introduced to the market, a forensic method can be proffered by a prosecutor with little to no oversight, with only a judge – who often lacks any scientific expertise – to decide on its admissibility. Without rigorous standards governing the collection and testing of forensic evidence, countless individuals have been wrongfully incarcerated.
Peter credits the publicity stemming from the compelling narratives of the exonerated with calling attention to this disparity, as it encouraged Congress and state legislatures to begin to enhance forensic science standards and ensure that methods of gathering and testing forensic evidence are scientifically validated. In part, due to the Innocence Project’s advocacy, the National Academies of Science undertook a major investigation that culminated in the release of a landmark report in 2009 shedding light on how to reform forensic science. The National Institute of Standards and Technology now takes the lead on improving forensic methods. But there is still a long way to go before we can be assured that forensic methods are scientifically validated and reliable.
Peter notes that there is work to be done. Many forensic labs are part of police departments and their employees do not always function as scientists, but rather as part of the prosecutorial team – an approach that he finds antithetical to principles of scientific neutrality. The Innocence Project continues to advocate for the creation of more independent labs to reduce the chances of cognitive or implicit biases.
Peter notes that there are structural challenges within the legal system that burden the Innocence Projects’ clients, including the difficulty of obtaining relief through habeas petitions with the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) in 1996. He advocates that AEDPA, coupled with court created doctrines such as harmless constitutional error and Strickland’s two prong test for vacating a conviction based on ineffective assistance of counsel deprive factually innocent people of justice. He argues that Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), “makes a mockery of the notions of due process.” In Strickland, the Supreme Court held that the appropriate standard for ineffective assistance claims required a showing of both the lawyer’s deficient performance as well as a reasonable probability that a competent lawyer would have led to a different outcome.
Peter points out that all of the Innocence Project’s exonerees who raised Strickland claims, were denied relief even where the courts found the quality of lawyering abominable.
In those instances, the courts acknowledged that the lawyer’s performance was objectively unreasonable, but that there was nevertheless other overwhelming evidence of guilt and that the claim should therefore be denied under the Strickland test. But that “overwhelming evidence of guilt” was more than ten years earlier in these cases, negated through the use of DNA evidence.
Peter continues to be a tireless advocate for those wronged by the criminal justice system through both his criminal defense and civil rights practice as well as his efforts to educate the public and policymakers. The Innocence Project’s work has fostered the “emergence of a civil rights and human rights movement.” There are more than fifty state and regional innocence organizations that handle both DNA and non-DNA cases in the United States and another two dozen all over the world. The Innocence Network’s most recent annual conference was attended by over 1,300 people. Peter’s and Barry’s commitment to due process and fairness leave behind a legacy that will continue to be carried out by future generations.
Editor’s note: Aneesa Mazumdar, a 2022 graduate of Columbia Law School, assisted with the interview of Peter Neufeld and the drafting of this article.