The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project (MAIP) is a non-profit organization that provides investigative and legal assistance to incarcerated people who have been wrongly convicted. MAIP, which was founded in 2000 as the Innocence Project of the National Capital Region, has a permanent legal staff of two and is run through a network of attorneys and law students throughout Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Under the supervision of professors and local attorneys, students investigate claims of innocence from prisoners in cases involving DNA evidence or other newly discovered evidence of innocence. Pro bono attorneys then take over those cases in which the students have found a potentially demonstrable claim of innocence.

We also work to educate judges, lawmakers, and the public on the causes of wrongful convictions. The wave of post-conviction DNA exonerations in recent years has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that wrongful convictions occur with alarming regularity. DNA exonerees are, in a sense, the "fortunate" ones who were accused of crimes in which the actual perpetrator left biological evidence at the scene. The vast majority of crimes do not involve biological evidence, but they pose the same risk of wrongful convictions. With these crimes, the wrongfully convicted defendant may never find a way of proving his or her innocence. Thus, even though DNA testing now is widely conducted before trial rather than after conviction, reducing the risk of wrongful conviction in cases involving biological evidence, it is still absolutely essential that we as a society address and remedy the causes of wrongful conviction that can play a role in any case. We believe that progress can be made through improved laws, an educated judiciary, and an informed public.

Our mission is to seek the exoneration and release of persons who have been convicted of crimes that they did not commit in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.