Covering our clients’ stories and shining a light on injustice in the criminal legal system.
Our work in the news.
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Maurice Hastings in Newsweek: 'I Spent 38 Years in Prison for a Crime I Didn't Commit'
The day I was arrested it felt like the whole world had caved in on me. I'd read about these kinds of tragedies before; these acts of fate. The person standing on the corner, catching the transit bus, who gets shot and killed by a stray bullet. I wondered, was I one of those people? One of those people you read about and think: "It's sad that person lost their life." Would I be someone who was condemned to die in prison?
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LA Times Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s a stain on our justice system
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Wednesday found Maurice Hastings factually innocent of a crime that put him in prison for 38 years. Factual innocence is a high bar and it’s rare for courts to grant it. It means the evidence proves conclusively that he did not commit the crime. For Hastings, the ruling is an exoneration with exclamation points. For the Los Angeles County criminal justice system, it is a reminder of an enduring stain that may never be washed off.
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CNN: After serving 38 years for a murder he didn't commit, Maurice Hastings has finally been declared innocent
Maurice Hastings, a man wrongfully convicted of a 1983 robbery-homicide and sexual assault, has been declared innocent by a California judge. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan formally declared Hastings factually innocent and cleared the arrest and prosecution from his criminal record during a Wednesday hearing.
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LA Weekly: Maurice Hastings was no killer, and after 38 years in prison, he is rejoicing
No matter how long it took, a legal team at the Los Angeles Innocence Project were going to free Maurice Hastings. A small group of dedicated attorneys at the Los Angeles Innocence Project, and a quiet older Black man who lives in the South Bay, are rejoicing over the profound meaning of freedom after Maurice Hastings, 69, heard a judge say that he was factually innocent of a murder that kept him behind bars for 38 years.
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Cal State LA Newsroom: Los Angeles Innocence Project at Cal State LA launches groundbreaking new partnership to fight for the wrongfully convicted
A team of experienced post-conviction attorneys is establishing the Los Angeles Innocence Project (LAIP) at Cal State LA, bringing the fight to free the wrongfully convicted to the university. Through the new partnership, the litigators will work alongside faculty and students in the university’s California Forensic Science Institute and School of Criminal Justice and Criminalistics to identify and investigate cases of individuals with credible claims of actual innocence, and to litigate those claims where new evidence supports overturning a conviction.
