Manchester Innocence Project

Claire McGourlay

"The Manchester Innocence Project is only one of two projects in the UK affiliated with the USA Innocence Project network and provides students with first and experience that is challenging and rewarding. I love working with Undergraduate and Postgraduate students on the IP and also helping our clients”.

• Claire's research profile

Fintan Walker

"The Innocence Project provides students with a practical outlet for their study of criminal law, criminal evidence and miscarriages of justice. Students get a unique insight into the inner workings of the criminal appeals process and the opportunity to develop skills needed to practice law. For my part, I love seeing students fully invested in the review of cases and the search for fresh evidence."

Suzanne Gower - Lecturer, Seminar Tutor, PhD candidate and Criminal Defence Solicitor

Twitter - @scouselawyer

E-mail - suzanne.gower@manchester.ac.uk

Suzanne is an experienced criminal defence lawyer who specialises in miscarriages of justice. She is a Solicitor Advocate (non-practicing) who worked for many years as a duty solicitor in general crime as well as prosecuting and defending regulatory crime and inquests.

She was the Senior Case Officer on the legal team who represented 22 of the families of the Hillsborough disaster in the 2014-16 inquests which were the longest proceedings heard by a jury in British legal history. Suzanne has also worked in the Oklahoma City Public Defenders Office and The Center for Equal Justice in New Orleans on death row cases.

Suzanne was the Managing Director of the legal charity APPEAL from 2016-19. APPEAL is a charity law practice which is dedicated to fighting miscarriages of justice and demanding reform.

Suzanne is currently researching a PhD in wrongful convictions for historic sexual offences at the University of Manchester where she is teaching Miscarriages of Justice and Criminal Evidence and volunteers as a supervisor at the Manchester Innocence Project.

Nicola Campbell - PhD candidate

E-mail - nicola.campbell-4@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

Nicola has a Law degree (Claire McGourlay taught her many years ago!) and a Masters in International Criminal Law. Nicola has worked on Innocence Projects, has won awards for her writing on Joint Enterprise, and until recently was working for the Crown Prosecution Service. Nicola is now doing a PhD researching the Criminal Cases Review Commissions statements of reasons.

Clinical Lead

Siobhan Smith, Lecturer in Law

Siobhan has a law degree, a Masters in International Human Rights Law and Terrorism, and a PhD that examines the protection of the right to education during situations of armed conflict within public international law. She has also completed the Bar Professional Training Course, and has spent time shadowing criminal law barristers and judges in and out of court. Siobhan is currently working as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Manchester, and she has taught Criminal Law at multiple institutions.

• Eleanor Tomlinson, Ambassador for the Manchester Innocence Project
• California Innocence Project
• London Innocence Project
• Irish Innocence Project at Griffith College
• Cardiff University Innocence Project

Listen to the Director of the Manchester Innocence Project, Claire McGourlay, discussing our collaborations with supporters from the London Innocence Project and Cardiff University Innocence project on an 'Innocent talk' podcast episode.

• Say I'm Innocent: Innocence Projects, Evidence and Wrongful Conviction – Exonorees and founders of the Sunny Center Foundation, Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle, join filmmaker, Mark McLoughlin, to discuss the hit documentary ‘Fallout’. Followed by a talk from California Innocence Project founder, Justin Brooks.
• EU Innocence Network Webinar: Evidence Matters – UK barrister Mark George QC, joins ‘Making a Murderer’ attorneys Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin and exoneree John Kamara for the EU Innocence Network Webinar, hosted by the Manchester Innocence Project and the London Innocence Project.
• Wrongful Convictions: the Psychology of Human Error in Criminal Justice – Co-founder of the Ohio Innocence Project, Professor Mark Godsey, outlines the psychological flaws that lead to flaws in the Criminal Justice system. Mark is joined by Laurese Glover, who was wrongfully convicted of murder at age 16.
  
• CPS know the justice ain’t right, but the jury don’t  - Dr Eithne Quinn talks about procedural unfairness and racial bias in the use of rap in criminal cases.
• Pro Bono to Private Client – Bridging the Gap – Family lawyer Marilyn Stowe discusses her career from opening a single office age 27, through the development of her firm culminating in a multi-million sale to private equity of the UK’s largest family law.
• An Introduction to the Criminal Cases Review Commission - CCRC Commissioner David Brown and Head of Communications Justin Hawkins give an Introduction to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
• Rape: Why still misunderstood? - The challenges of prosecuting rape from the perspective of Charlotte Triggs, a former prosecutor and senior policy advisor.

Find us at

The Justice Hub, Law School, 
The University of Manchester
188 Waterloo Place
Oxford Road 
Manchester
M13 9PL

Tel: +44 (0)161 275 7976

Follow us on Twitter: @InnocenceMCR

To find out more about how you can get involved, or become a supporter of the Manchester Innocence Project, please contact free.legal@manchester.ac.uk.

Students at the University may apply to join the project every year.