Nonprofit takes up work to overturn wrongful convictions after closure of Idaho Innocence Project

Charles Fain says his three favorite letters in the alphabet are D-N-A. 

In 2001, Fain was exonerated and released from an Idaho prison after nearly 20 years on death row for a rape and murder he did not commit, using DNA analysis spearheaded by the Idaho Innocence Project.  

That project has been shuttered for more than two years because of a lack of funding. However, on Sept. 17, Fain joined Innocence Project founder Greg Hampikian and fellow exoneree Amanda Knox to usher in a new group continuing the work of overturning wrongful convictions. 

Knox sits on the board of The Innocence Center, a nonprofit, free law firm based in San Diego that will take on cases in Idaho to try and free wrongfully convicted inmates. 

Hampikian, a forensic DNA expert, also lent his expertise to Knox’s defense team in the highly publicized case and helped free her from an Italian prison after she was wrongfully sentenced for the murder of her roommate while studying abroad. 

“It would be a desperate situation if these projects didn’t exist,” Knox said in an interview last week in Boise. “And when I heard that the Idaho Innocence Project was shutting down, I was really, really worried for the state of Idaho, because who else is going to do it?” 

The Innocence Center Executive Director Mike Semanchik was admitted to the Idaho bar on Sept. 18 so that he may work as an attorney for these cases in Idaho. 

“We’re committed to making this happen and making sure that wherever there are innocent people in prison, there’s an organization to support them,” Semanchik told a small gathering last week to kickoff the new work. 

Hampikian said he personally selected The Innocence Center to take up the work. 

“My last great act, after 20 years of the Innocence Project, was to choose a successor,” Hampikian said. “… (Semanchik) said, ‘I’ll get barred in Idaho, and I’ll take the cases until we raise the money.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s got skin in the game.’” 

Edward Stevens, who was sent back to prison after being released, will be first case

Semanchik announced that the center’s first Idaho case to review would be for Edward Stevens — a man convicted of the 1996 killing of an 11-month-old in Ada County, who was released in 2018 and sent back to prison in 2019, the Idaho Statesman reported. 

Hampikian, who was not involved in Stevens’ case but knew his mother, walked Stevens back into prison. 

“We drive to the prison on a Sunday afternoon, and nobody could face walking back in except me,” Hampikian told the Idaho Capital Sun. “It was just a horrific experience.”

Idaho’s prisons are full. Corrections agency will request $45.3 million to open 3 new facilities.

Stevens was caring for his girlfriend’s 11-month-old son in late December of 1996 when the child sustained a serious head injury and died the next day in the hospital, the Associated Press reported. 

Prosecutors said Stevens shook the child and hit the child’s head on the bathtub. Stevens has said the child was injured in an accidental fall down the stairs. 

Stevens previously appealed his murder conviction and lost, and appealed again to Idaho’s U.S. District Court in 2014. A U.S. magistrate judge later ruled that Stevens had to be released or re-tried because prosecutors failed to disclose some favorable evidence to Stevens’ attorney.

A panel of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges overturned the release in 2019, ordering him back to prison. Stevens is serving a life sentence at a prison in Orofino, according to Idaho Department of Correction records. 

Wrongfully convicted individuals can apply for assistance from the Innocence Center by filling out its application form. To qualify, they must have received a conviction and are currently incarcerated, are factually innocent, and have new, strong evidence of innocence. 

After review, the firm will decide whether to take on the case. 

Semanchik: It ‘takes a village’ to free a wrongfully imprisoned person 

Semanchik told the gathering last week that community support would be crucial to continuing where the Idaho Innocence Project left off. 

“This work takes a village,” he said. 

The Innocence Center has freed 43 people. The average time the center’s clients spend in prison before being released is about 16.5 years, he said. Some are released after more than 30 years, he said.

Hampikian said he ran into problems with funding because a full-time lawyer needs to be on staff. Over the two decades he ran the Idaho organization, he had to pause work a couple times because of funding gaps. In 2024, he had to cease work completely. 

The project operated with about $100,000 a year, he said. 

“Those were very, very, very difficult times,” Hampikian said. “I am hopeful that I will never run a nonprofit again in my life. I much prefer doing science.” 

Knox said that, despite spending four years in prison for a murder she didn’t commit, she had an easier time being released than many of her counterparts in the U.S. She noted that appeals of Italian criminal convictions are easier to obtain, and juries there must provide a “motivation” for the sentence. 

That motivation document gave her defense team something to work against. 

“You have to get out to make your life back, and it is so hard to get out once you’ve been convicted,” Knox said. “I have to say one thing for the Italian justice system: It’s actually a lot easier to get out once you’ve been convicted.”

Knox noted that the work to free people in the U.S. can take decades, and it’s not easy. 

“It is heartbreaking work,” she said. “It will take and take and take from you, but in the end, there is another human being and another life that is saved on the other side.”