December 2003

WRONGFULLY CONVICTED
Barry Scheck Uses DNA to Set the Innocent Free

By Paula Bernstein

On March 20, 1987, an intruder broke in to a Billings, Montana home and brutally assaulted an 8-year-old girl. After gagging the child and attacking her repeatedly, the man fled into the darkness of the night.

Time passed without any serious leads on the case until a police officer noticed that Jimmy Ray Bromgard, a local 17-year-old who was in jail for getting into a fight after school, resembled the description of the assailant. Bromgard appeared in a lineup of suspects and was identified by the victim. In December 1987, the teenager was put on trial and after just one hour of jury deliberations, Bromgard was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Case closed, except for one problem: Bromgard was innocent. The young girl who identified him said at the time that she was only 60-65% confident that he was the man who attacked her. Then, at trial, Bromgard's attorney was woefully unprepared. He made no opening statements or closing arguments and didn't cross-examine all of the prosecution's witnesses. To make matters worse, the state's chief forensic scientist testified that there was just a 1-in 10,000 chance that hairs found at the crime scene had not come from Bromgard when, in fact, there are no such statistics available when it comes to matching hair samples.

Bromgard is one of over 130 ex-convicts nationwide—including 12 who were on Death Row—who have been exonerated through new DNA evidence. Collectively, these people have served more than 1,373 years in jail not because they were guilty of any crimes, but because of false confessions, malicious prosecutors, sloppy police work, mistaken eyewitnesses and a host of other reasons.

Like Bromgard, many of these exonerees owe their newfound freedom to The Innocence Project, a New York-based nonprofit legal clinic which seeks the release of wrongly convicted people through DNA testing. Since it was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld, The Innocence Project has helped to exonerate over 80 people, and has taken up the cause of hundreds more.

	Thanks to Scheck, Eddie Joe Lloyd (right) was released from prison in 2002. Lloyd was wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl in the '80s

Although DNA testing of crime scene evidence has been used since the late 1980s, there have been significant advances in the technology over the past decade that now make it possible to examine minute specimens. As a result, old cases like Bromgard's are being re-examined. The DNA test that proved Bromgard's innocence was not yet being widely used at the time of his trial.

"DNA helps identify the guilty. It helps exonerate the innocent," explains the fast-talking Scheck, 54, over a double espresso at a French café in New York's Greenwich Village. "DNA helps teach us about the danger signs of wrongful convictions. All these innocents being freed from prison are a wakeup call that we have to be far more careful in the way we prosecute cases."

Scheck, best known for his role as the ace DNA expert on O.J. Simpson's "Dream Team," estimates that there are thousands of innocent people in the nation's jails. Bromgard was one of the lucky ones. If he hadn't been watching TV in his cell block when a newsmagazine aired a segment about The Innocence Project, he would still incarcerated in a maximum security prison. "They're like angels, my guardian angels" Bromgard says of The Innocence Project.

	Kirk Bloodsworth (left) spent 9 years in prison and Clyde Charles (right) was on Death Row 18 years before Scheck (center) used DNA testing to prove their innocence

In addition to working to clear the wrongly convicted, Scheck and Neufeld are advocating The Innocent Protection Act, a bill in Congress that would provide DNA testing nationwide for inmates who could reasonably prove their innocence. The two also serve on the New York State Commission on Forensic Science and lecture to police departments and prosecutors across the country about the proper handling of DNA evidence.

"It's never happened before in the history of our jurisprudence system that so many people have been proven innocent in such extraordinary numbers. We have to learn from this," says Scheck, who has worked towards social justice for most of his life.

Born September 19, 1949 in Queens, New York, Scheck was raised in the shadow of show business. His father George was a dancer-turned-talent manager, who guided the careers of singers including Connie Francis, Bobby Darin and Odetta. As his clients prospered, so did George, who moved the family to Long Island, New York. The family's idyllic suburban lifestyle was shattered in 1959 when their house burned down, killing Barry's only sibling, a sister three years his junior.

With dreams of making the world a better place, Barry attended Yale University in the late 1960s where he excelled at his studies while working for an array of political causes. He participated in the National Student Strike after the shootings at Kent State, attended Vietnam War protests and conducted jury research for the trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale in New Haven.

After graduating from law school at the University of California at Berkeley in 1974, Scheck became a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society of New York, the city's law firm for the poor, located in the Bronx. It was there that Scheck met fellow attorney Peter Neufeld, who would become his closest friend and co-founder of The Innocence Project. When they left Legal Aid, Scheck become a professor at Cardoza and Neufeld went into private practice focusing on civil rights cases.

In addition to working together at The Innocence Project, Scheck and Neufeld are partners, along with fellow O.J. defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, in a small civil rights law firm in Manhattan. The firm represented Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was allegedly sodomized by New York City police officers in 1997. Scheck also advised Colorado police investigators on medical evidence in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

"We have two careers, but both careers are full-time, so instead of working 40 hours a week, we each work 80 hours a week," says Neufeld. "I'm the guy who is up at six in the morning and Barry is the guy who doesn't go to sleep until six in the morning. That way there is 24-hour coverage for everything."

Even off-duty Scheck and Neufeld, who live near each other in Brooklyn, are inseparable. Their families have vacationed together in Maine and the two friends have co-written numerous screenplays (several have been bought, but none have made it to the screen). In 2000, along with Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jim Dwyer, Scheck and Neufeld co-wrote Actual Innocence, a nonfiction book which recounts the stories of some of the people Scheck and Neufeld have helped to free over the years.

Married for 30 years to Dorothy Rick, a psychiatric social worker for the New York City Department of Mental Health, Scheck is the father of two children, Gabriel, 24, who teaches in a New York City public school in Harlem, and Olivia, 16, an actress who writes and directs short independent films. "We have great hopes that she's going to be a female version of Woody Allen," says Scheck.

So how does Scheck manage to represent clients, teach students, lecture around the country about the uses of DNA evidence and still spend time with his family? "It's hard not to have a lot of energy when one is uniquely and luckily in the position to be involved with so many inspiring cases," says Scheck. "There's no greater satisfaction that anyone in the legal profession can have than exonerating an innocent person and correcting an injustice."

But Scheck knows that just getting the innocent out of prison doesn't solve everything for them. "So many of our clients find that when they get out of jail, there's nothing for them," he says. "They are suffering from some real emotional and mental difficulties from having been wrongly convicted."

Earlier this year, The Innocence Project spawned The Life After Exoneration Project, an organization designed to help the wrongly convicted after they are out of prison. Jointly run by The Innocence Project and the DNA Identification Technology and Human Rights Center of Berkeley, California, The Life After Exoneration Project is working to help the exonerees find housing, health insurance, medical care and vocational training. Former inmates have met for support groups and each has been given a free AOL account with instructions on how to connect with other exonerees online.

	Jimmy Ray Bromgard leaving Yellowstone Courthouse in 2002 as a free man

"We got a nice big front yard and you walk outside and there are so many trees, you don't even know you have neighbors," says Bromgard, who does his best not to be angry about the time he lost in prison. "If I was resentful, I'd be mad all the time. I wouldn't be able to enjoy myself. Life goes on. Why be mad about something you have no control over? It wouldn't do me any good." (Meanwhile, the real perpetrator of the rape has never been found.)

Inspired by the work of The Innocence Project, around 30 other Innocence Projects have sprung up around the country at law schools, journalism schools, undergraduate colleges and public defenders' offices. Some are assisting inmates trying to prove their innocence in cases that don't involve DNA evidence. "We started out with the very modest goals of walking a few people out of prison and it has mushroomed into an emerging civil rights movement that is trying to make the criminal justice system much more reliable," says Neufeld proudly.

Scheck is satisfied with the success of The Innocence Project, but he knows it will take a long time for all of the wrongly convicted to be exonerated. "I don't think within my lifetime will the work here ever be done," he says. "I don't think I'll be retiring anytime soon. My job gives me energy and fulfillment. If you can't have a passion for justice, what can you have a passion for?"

PAULA BERNSTEIN FREQUENTLY WRITES FOR THIS MAGAZINE.

Copyright © 2003 Biography Magazine.