Cases such as Wednesday's release of a Kentucky inmate who was cleared of rape after 13 years have helped propel the movement for more Innocence Projects across the country.

        Ohio is among six states working to create similar programs to free people who are wrongly convicted.

        There are 30 others across the nation, including in Indiana and Kentucky, where the work of two students at

        Northern Kentucky University's Chase Law School freed 31-year-old Herman May Jr. from prison Wednesday.

        Proponents want more accountability in a criminal justice system that lately has seen its share of mistakes. Even so, some critics are reluctant to embrace Innocence Projects, saying they undermine the judicial system.

        Barry Scheck, who helped defend O.J. Simpson on murder charges, helped found the original Innocence Project in 1992 as advances came in DNA technology.

        Across the country, Innocence Projects and similar groups have successfully campaigned for the release of 112 inmates, most of them cleared through DNA tests on evidence. Their work even prompted a temporary moratorium on executions in Illinois.

Gallagher

        “No one wants to see innocent people rot away in prison for something they didn't do,” said Cincinnati attorney William R. Gallagher, who is a key player in the Ohio venture. Earlier attempts to start an Ohio Innocence Project fell apart because of a lack of coordination, he said.

        Swamped with cases, Mr. Scheck lobbied Ohio lawyers in May to join the growing Innocence movement.

        Efforts are also under way to form Innocence Projects in Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, the Austin and Dallas areas of Texas and two regions of Pennsylvania, said Aliza Kaplan, deputy director of the original Innocence Project created in 1992 at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

        “The more that people hear about the injustices in the criminal justice system, the more people want to do something,” she said.

        In Ohio, that catalyst was Anthony Michael Green, who, after 13 years in prison, was exonerated last year in the rape of a woman being treated for liver cancer at the Cleveland Clinic.

        Mr. Green, who goes by Michael, will celebrate the first anniversary of his release from an Ohio prison on Oct. 9. The 37-year-old Cleveland man could have been incarcerated for another 37 years.

        “I was wrongly incarcerated for 13 years. It was hell. I had accepted it. I knew there was nothing I could do.”

        Mr. Gallagher said an effort four years ago to start an Innocence Project in the Buckeye State generated 200 letters from prisoners.

        Ms. Kaplan said the New York project has thousands of requests for help from all over the country.

        Mr. Green's release came four years after a fellow inmate told him about the Innocence Project. Mr. Green sent a letter to New York to find out what he had to do, then enlisted the help of his father, Robert Mandell.

        The retired postal worker from Cleveland tracked down physical evidence in his son's case. He paid $6,000 for DNA testing on a semen-stained washcloth that eventually cleared Mr. Green.

        Mr. Green recently landed a job in a program for troubled youth. He plans to work as an advocate to help Ohio's Innocence Project move forward.

        His presence, along with his father and Mr. Scheck, at a national conference for criminal defense lawyers in Cincinnati in May grabbed enough attention that the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys picked up the cause.

        “We had a live example there to show what can happen if you have the Innocence Project and someone working with them,” Mr. Mandell said. “It's possible to get other people out.”

        Ohio lawyers are planning fund-raisers and a fall summit of defense attorneys, law school deans and others to get their Innocence Project going.

        Jeff Liston, president of the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the organization hopes to win commitments from law schools in major Ohio cities, including Cincinnati, to review and work on convictions that can be overturned using DNA evidence.

        Jack Chin, a law professor at the University of Cincinnati, said UC is interested.

        “We would love to be able to do this, but we want to be confident it is something that is going to be institutionalized, and that means money,” Mr. Chin said.

        Typically, Innocence Projects are based at law schools, Ms. Kaplan said.

        That was the case for Beth Albright and Debbie Davis, the Florence duo whose work freed Mr. May.

        The Frankfort man had served 13 years of a 20-year sentence for the rape of a woman who picked him out of a lineup. A judge ruled that new evidence in the case — advanced DNA testing on a hair — was so decisive that “it probably would change the result” if a new trial were conducted.

        “He's one of the few I've met that I really believed,” Ms. Albright said of Mr. May. “At year 10 he had the opportunity to get out. He just had to say he did it and agree to take some counseling. He refused to do that.”

        The former teacher said she went to law school with the thought of someday becoming a prosecutor. Her work with Kentucky Innocence, which is coordinated by the state Department of Public Advocacy, hasn't changed her plan.

        “Prosecutors really hold the key. If they do their homework, they can find out these guys are innocent before they put them in jail,” she said.

        A spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery said his boss doesn't object to such an initiative. Joe Case pointed out that Ms. Montgomery already has established a program that makes DNA testing available to some death row inmates. She favors expanding it to inmates incarcerated for other crimes, but the state budget is too tight for that to occur anytime soon, he said.

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