Grant Will Allow the Wisconsin Innocence Project to Look Back and Reinvestigate Past Cases

Tuesday, January 21st, 2025 -- 9:01 AM

(Sarah Lehr, Wisconsin Public Radio) A three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Justice will allow the Wisconsin Innocence Project to look back at its past cases and reinvestigate them using recent advancements in DNA technology.

According to Sarah Lehr with Wisconsin Public Radio, at $1.5 million, the grant is the largest in the Wisconsin Innocence Project’s History. Rachel Burg, who directs the legal clinic, said it could be a game-changer.

“DNA testing is really expensive,” Burg said, adding that the project has gotten price quotes for forensic testing ranging from $15,000 to $30,000 per case. “I don’t think people generally know how expensive it can be.”

The grant will allow the Innocence Project to hire three additional full-time staff members, an investigator and two attorneys. Each year, the project gets around 100 applications to revisit convictions.

Burg hopes the grant will allow the project to fully investigate 10 to 12 cases, leading to litigation in five or six of them. “Every single year that somebody is waiting for our assistance is a year of their life that they are missing in their communities and with their families,” Burg said.

As part of the reexamination process, the project will dedicate a special focus to past convictions of Black, Latino and Indigenous Wisconsinites. “Wisconsin disproportionately incarcerates people of color, and we know that those disparities run from the very start of a criminal process at the stops and arrests of folks all the way through incarceration,” Burg said. “That trickles through into our wrongful conviction cases.”

When DNA testing first emerged as a method to solve crimes in the late 1980s, it was much more limited, and often required samples of blood, saliva or semen, Burg said.

New, more sensitive methods are helping scientists analyze genetic material from hair. And so-called “touch DNA” is emerging as a way to identify suspects from a small sample of sweat or skin cells that were left on an object that was handled at a crime scene.

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