Innocence Project celebrates first victory

By Nate Swinton

More than 125 people attended a fundraiser for Santa Clara University's branch of the Northern California Innocence Project Thursday in the Adobe Lodge.

Those in attendance made donations at the door for auction items, helping to raise about $11,000 for the project, which was celebrating its one-year anniversary.

Headlining the event was speaker Ron Reno, a former inmate who was recently released from prison in late January. The Innocence Project took on Reno's case last spring, making him the first prisoner freed by the project.

Reno was freed in an order signed in Fresno Superior Court on Jan. 23. Reno, 39, had been in prison since his April 1996 arrest. On the advice of his trial attorney, Reno initially had pleaded guilty to a gun charge and had been sentenced to 25 years to life under the state's "three-strike" sentencing law.

Reno had always claimed that the gun belonged to another man. That man, Preston Marsh, could not be located, and Reno was pressured by his lawyer to plead guilty, Ridolfi said. The Northern California Innocence Project took over the case last spring, after Reno encountered Marsh in the state's Pleasant Valley Correctional Facility in Coalinga. Affidavits were obtained, legal research conducted, and Reno was freed.

"The wonderful coincidence with having just been successful with our first exoneration and having him there," Cookie Ridolfi, project director and Santa Clara law professor, said. "It puts such a wonderful emphasis on the significance of this work. We were instrumental in correcting such a gross injustice."

Ridolfi and project attorney Linda Starr worked on the case with Santa Clara Law students Ami Mudd and Marina Jorgensen. Reno was granted his release after an eyewitness in the case recanted his testimony.

Also speaking at the event was Peter Neufield, cofounder of the National Innocence Project.

Ridolfi said the money raised will go toward paying for costs associated with working on the various cases as well as the salaries of those affiliated with the project.

"This entire project has been the effort of several volunteers and many hours of hard work," Ridolfi said.

She added that the project has also been recently approved to receive state funding, making California the first state in the country to fund such a project.

The non-profit Northern California Innocence Project is one of 25 similar projects nationwide that provides free legal representation to prisoners hoping to prove their innocence. In addition to Santa Clara, the project also has a Bay Area site at Golden Gate Law School in San Francisco.