Lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld founded the Innocence Project at Cardozo School of Law in New York City in 1992, using post-conviction DNA testing to investigate and overturn wrongful criminal convictions. The organisation revealed systematic failures in evidence gathering — false confessions, eyewitness misidentification, junk forensic science, and suppressed evidence — that had sent innocent people to prison. By 2024 the Innocence Project had exonerated over 375 wrongfully convicted people in the United States.

The Innocence Project generated a major body of literature, journalism, and documentary film about wrongful conviction and evidentiary failure. It powerfully influenced contemporary crime writing by introducing the narrative of systemic institutional failure rather than individual detective brilliance. Writers including Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy) and a generation of documentary poets engaged with Innocence Project exonerations as texts about race, justice, and the politics of evidence in America.