The FA:IR Law Project
Launched in October 2021, the FA:IR Law Project works to address systemic failures and create a more fair, just, and humane criminal legal system. Specifically, the FA:IR Law Project seeks to: reverse, vacate, and prevent wrongful and unjust convictions and sentences and mitigate and prevent excessive sentences. The FA:IR Law Project is a product of our decade of experience representing people impacted by failures and injustices at every stage of Oregon's criminal legal system. Working together with our direct representation projects, including the Oregon Innocence Project, our work will encompass broad challenges based on, among other things, changes in science, laws, and community standards; best practices; and evidence of misconduct. This will be accomplished through individual casework, mass case reviews, data analysis, policy change, and community education.
Our mission
The FA:IR Law Project is committed to undoing past wrongs involving wrongful convictions and excessive punishments resulting from unfair, unjust, inhumane and/or inequitable laws and practices; ensuring that current and future laws and practices are more fair, just, equitable, and humane; working together with stakeholders in the criminal legal system to achieve these goals; and educating the public about the criminal legal system’s harms and viable, more humane alternatives.
Our work
The FA:IR Law Project is open to all work that advances our mission. This includes case and policy work.
We seek opportunities to illuminate, challenge, and change laws, policies, and practices that are unfair, unjust, inhumane and/or inequitable and thereby create a risk of wrongful and/or unjust convictions and/or excessive sentences. Examples of our work in this area may include policy reform, affirmative litigation, and amicus support.
We review groups of cases whose integrity may be undermined by a known source of misconduct, unreliability, bias, or other failure. As a part of such reviews, we may engage in direct representation of affected individuals. We are available to serve as an independent auditor/reviewer to assist stakeholders in such case reviews. If you are interested in the FA:IR Law Project serving as an independent auditor/reviewer, please contact Co-Director Brittney Plesser at [email protected].
The FA:IR Law Project will consider individual cases on a limited basis once we have fully built our capacity. These cases will meet the following criteria or otherwise advance the Project’s goals:
Post-conviction criminal cases originating in Oregon state and federal court that:
Involve wrongful and/or unjust convictions* and/or excessive sentences; and
Involve the application of laws and/or practices that were unfair, unjust, inhumane, and/or inequitable in their intent or effect; and where it is reasonable to assume the harm was experienced by other individuals who would be similarly entitled to relief.
Other cases that present significant systemic issues that might result in manifest injustices.
*In this context, wrongful and/or unjust convictions are defined as convictions of individuals: who are actually innocent of the charged crime; whose conduct did not meet all of the elements of the charged offense; whose convictions resulted from the abridgement of fundamental constitutional or statutory rights designed to protect the fairness of the criminal legal process and/or to prevent disparities in the application of the criminal legal process on the basis of race, gender, and other protected class status; whose convictions rests in whole or in part on evidence subsequently determined to be unreliable; or which otherwise constitute a miscarriage of justice.
For more information, contact us at [email protected].
Staff
Brittney Plesser, Co-Director
[email protected]
Steve Wax, Co-Director
[email protected]
Karen Newirth, Special Counsel
[email protected]
Claire Powers, Staff Attorney
[email protected]
Malori Maloney, Staff Attorney
[email protected]
Melissa Bennett, Paralegal
[email protected]