Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck presented Nichols Lecture at Stetson Law March 27

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project and co-counsel on the O.J. Simpson defense team, presented the Nichols Foundation Prominent Speaker Lecture March 27 at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport.

At the lecture, Scheck talked about the importance of using DNA evidence to help evaluate peoples’ guilt or innocence in capital crimes. “This is life or death. We’re putting people away for the rest of their lives and in some instances executing them,” said Scheck.

A longtime advocate for DNA testing, Scheck co-founded the Innocence Project in 1992 with his colleague Peter Neufeld. This non-profit legal clinic has used DNA evidence to exonerate more than 150 wrongfully imprisoned people, some of whom were on death row or incarcerated for decades.

The Nichols Foundation Prominent Speakers Series was established at Stetson in 1995. The series namesake is Perry Nichols, among the nation’s most successful trial lawyers and past president of both the American Trial Lawyers Association and the International Trial Lawyers Association.