The Innocence Project Policy Director to Speak

03.17.2010

LONGMEADOW, Mass.— Through the Program for Leadership and Integrity in Action, as well as ethics courses in specific majors, Bay Path College undergraduate and graduate students are given the opportunity to develop their ethical “tool box” through awareness, case studies, and discussion. Funded by local businessman T. Marc Futter, the Program is the cornerstone of the College’s efforts in ethical learning and leadership, and annually welcomes speakers to address various ethics-related topics. Bay Path will welcome Stephen Saloom, policy director for The Innocence Project, as the 2010 speaker on Tuesday, April 6, at 4 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be held in Mills Theatre, Carr Hall on the Longmeadow Campus, 588 Longmeadow St. in Longmeadow, MA.

Saloom will discuss his organization’s involvement in freeing individuals who have been wrongly convicted. A national litigation and public policy organization, The Innocence Project works to reform our country’s criminal justice system. To date, The Innocence Project has exonerated 251 clients through DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release. The Innocence Project is an independent nonprofit organization closely affiliated with the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. Its mission is to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.

Prior to joining the Innocence Project, Saloom directed state policy efforts for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He has also served as executive director of the Massachusetts-based Criminal Justice Policy Coalition, intake-attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, and lobbyist at the Connecticut legislature on behalf of numerous nonprofit organizations. Saloom was also an adjunct professor in the graduate program in criminal justice at Suffolk University, where he taught the courses Criminal Justice Policy and Legal Issues in the Criminal Justice System. Saloom holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of Connecticut, and a J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law.

For more information contact Ellen Rustico at 413.565.1459 or e-mail erustico@baypath.edu.