After a troubled childhood on the streets of Los Angeles, Louie B was convicted of a crime in 1997 when he was 16 years old and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. At the time, he fully expected to die in prison. That changed in 2016, when students in the Juvenile Innocence & Fair Sentencing Clinic advocated for Louie to be resentenced to a parole-eligible sentence.

At the time, it was unprecedented for law students to litigate high-stakes sentencing cases in L.A. Superior Court. It’s not unprecedented anymore. After years of additional work by JIFS students, Louie is now one of the 50+ JIFS clients released from prison and living successful lives, often working with youth with similar childhoods. More>>

Six years of continuous work by staff attorneys and students at the Loyola Project for the Innocent (LPI) paid off in May 2022 when a judge granted the prosecution’s motion to dismiss the murder charge against LPI client Jane Dorotik, who has spent the last 22 years trying to prove her innocence. This came after the LPI successfully proved significant problems with the evidence presented at trial.

Even though prosecutors admitted Ms. Dorotik was wrongfully convicted and wrongfully incarcerated for almost 20 years, they embarked on a two-year campaign to re-convict her. In 2021, the prosecution called 29 witnesses at a preliminary hearing that spanned nearly a year and revealed numerous additional problems with the prosecution’s case. More>>

Anne Kitchens ’22 and Jake Feiler ’22,  students in the Ninth Circuit Appellate Clinic, won an appeal this spring, representing a Cuban dissident seeking asylum in the United States. As part of their work in the clinic, Kitchens, Feiler and other students wrote and filed appellate briefs and argued their cases before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. Feiler and Kitchens are pictured here with Adjunct Professor E. Martin Estrada after their argument, which persuaded the court to overrule a decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals and remand their client’s asylum case for reconsideration. More>>

The Youth Justice Education Clinic continues to fight for students left behind during the pandemic, when many of its clients were without education at all for months, and then continued to struggle with lack of access to technology and special education services until schools physically reopened. These include clients like TC, a Deaf student who has lost access to key supports like specialized academic instruction, speech and language services, and counseling, and as a result has not earned any credits toward his diploma since 2020. Thousands like him are in similar situations.