It's the first time the Ohio Innocence Project, started at UC in May 2003, has taken a case to court.

Now, it's up to Stark County Common Pleas Judge Lee Sinclair to decide if Christopher Bennett will be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea, paving the way for a new trial.

The Paris, Ohio, 28-year-old - Young's neighbor and best friend - has spent 18 months in prison on charges of vehicular homicide and driving under the influence for causing the May 2001 accident.

The students took up Bennett's case after he wrote to them for help.

Attorney Mark Godsey, the group's faculty adviser, and Cincinnati Councilman John Cranley, the project's director, argued on Bennett's behalf.

They called on Bennett and witnesses - an accident reconstructionist, a forensic psychiatrist, the first person to see the accident, and a student who had blood samples from the car tested for DNA - in an effort to reconstruct what happened the day of the accident.

"I'm innocent and it's wrong to keep an innocent man in prison," Bennett said during his testimony Friday. "I just want my day in court."

Bennett explained that he suffered a head injury when the van he was in crashed into a barn off a rural highway.

"I couldn't remember anything," Bennett said.

A Stark County grand jury eventually charged Bennett. And as details of the accident remained fuzzy, Bennett agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a nine-year prison term.

But Bennett said he's always had a nagging feeling he was the passenger, a feeling he says was later confirmed when he began recalling details of the accident.

The Innocence Project tracked down evidence they say supports his claim.

In court Friday, one of the students, Mary Macpherson, testified that a small cluster of Bennett's hair still attached to a piece of scalp was found in the van's defroster vent on the passenger side - just under a spider web break in the windshield as if the head had struck it.

Ricky Stansifer, an accident reconstructionist hired by the students, testified that the law of physics made it impossible for Bennett to have been in the driver's seat based on the position in the van where Bennett was found unconscious.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol sergeant who handled the accident insisted that Bennett was driving. Sgt. Toby Wagner disputed Stansifer's theory, but could not explain how the windshield cracked. Wagner testified on behalf of the state.

The hearing continues Monday with witnesses for the prosecution.

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