Loyola Project for the Innocent Launches Investigative Initiatives with Grant Support

The Loyola Project for the Innocent (LPI) at LMU Loyola Law School (LLS) has secured a multiyear grant of up to $450,000 from the Audrey Irmas Foundation for Social Justice to support two critical new initiatives: LPI's Memory Science and Misidentification Initiative and its Death Row and Life without Parole (LWOP) Innocence Initiative.

The grant includes a generous matching gift component, providing supporters with the opportunity to double the impact of their philanthropy in support of LPI. Thanks to donors such as the Irmas Foundation, LPI is currently litigating three cases involving eyewitness misidentification and actively investigating many others, directly confronting one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions.

"This is a transformative gift that will allow LPI to help those who have been wrongfully convicted," said Laurie L. Levenson, LPI founding director and professor at LLS. "This generous grant is the key that can open the door to justice."

"Eyewitness testimony can be extraordinarily compelling at trial, but memory can be contaminated, just like physical evidence at a crime scene," said Joseph Trigilio, Judy and Steve Page Executive Director of LPI. "For too long, identification procedures have failed to protect memory from contamination. The science has caught up, and we're grateful to have the resources to bring that science into court when it shows that someone was wrongfully convicted."

The Memory Science and Misidentification Initiative addresses cases in which mistaken eyewitness identification and contaminated memory evidence have contributed to wrongful convictions. The work draws on modern scientific research concerning the reliability of eyewitness memory and the ways identification procedures can influence or contaminate that memory. Funds will support expert consultation, case screening, investigation, and litigation costs.

Beyond eyewitness misidentifications, experts estimate that roughly 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent. The Death Row and LWOP Innocence Initiative will help LPI evaluate claims of factual innocence for people condemned to death or sentenced to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) in L.A. County. As part of this initiative, the Irmas Foundation will fund investigation, expert consultation, and field work in these complex and serious cases.

The Irmas grant represents the first dedicated funding for LPI to sustain innocence investigation of death row and LWOP cases in L.A. County. It will allow LPI to expand its extensive post-conviction work, which has helped exonerate over 24 individuals since 2011.

"The Irmas Foundation grant allows LPI to do what innocence work requires at the highest level: find the overlooked cases, follow the facts wherever they lead, and fight relentlessly for people who should never have been convicted in the first place," said Trigilio, who is an associate clinical professor of law at LLS.

Problems with California's death penalty and LWOP sentences are particularly acute in L.A. County, which generates the largest share of California's death penalty and LWOP sentences. As of 2025, nearly 400 individuals on California's death row remain without counsel. Approximately 5,100 Californians are serving LWOP sentences - a population with no statutory right to post-conviction counsel - and as many as 500 of those individuals may be innocent.

With increasingly limited funding avenues, private philanthropic support of the kind extended by the Irmas Foundation has become essential to sustaining this work.

"California has the highest number of defendants with sentences of life without parole or capital punishment," Levenson said. "With this grant, LPI can step up to identify innocent defendants on death row and help them before it is too late."

The matching component of the Irmas Initiative means that every dollar contributed to LPI will be doubled by the Audrey Irmas Foundation up to $100,000 per year. More information about supporting this work is available at lls.edu/LPI.