KNOXVILLE Tenn. – University of Tennessee law students have completed their first year of a clinical program designed to explore the provable innocence claims of inmates and help set them free.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that the Innocence Clinic, operated as an academic clinical program within the college’s Legal Clinic, began in fall 2009 and allows third-year law students to work with a supervising attorney to investigate claims of innocence.
“We look at cases where someone’s made a claim of innocence, and we determine whether it’s viable,” said Steve Johnson, a trial attorney and partner with Knoxville firm Ritchie, Dillard, & Davies, P.C.
The students have been working on three murder cases and a rape case.
Johnson could not discuss specifics about the cases because of professional rules of conduct. But he said some of the cases already are being challenged in the courts, while others soon will be.
“Those students have gotten more work done in the past nine months than the Innocence Project did in four to five years,” Johnson said.
Students work with one of four adjunct professors and supervising attorneys for the clinic as well several private attorneys.
