Biography

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Barry C. Scheck is best known as the DNA expert on the defense team of the O.J. Simpson trial.  He was also part of the defense team for Louise Woodward, a British au pair accused of murdering 8-month-old Matthew Eappen in Massachusetts. For 19 years he has been a Professor of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. He teaches Legal Ethics and is the Director of the Criminal Education and Trial Practice Program. 

 

In 1992, as a result of his six years of landmark litigation setting standards for use of DNA evidence in courts throughout the country, he and Peter Neufeld created the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School. The Project utilizes DNA evidence to assist wrongly convicted inmates in overturning their convictions. In the past decade, the Innocence Project has either represented or assisted in the representation of 218 men who were exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing. Many of those set free were on death row. 

 

Scheck is a frequently sought-after expert by many federal agencies, including the FBI.  He has served as counsel in a variety of civil and criminal cases including the Hedda Nussbaum case--one of the first cases to bring the issue of battered women to the nation's attention--and the Abner Louima sexual assault case, which has become a lightening rod for the issue of police brutality.

 

Scheck serves as a Commissioner of the Forensic Science Review Board for New York State, an organization that oversees all state crime labs including DNA labs. He is affiliated with many organizations, including the Forensic Science Review Board, which proposes rules and sets standards for labs nationwide,  and the American Bar Association's Committee to counsel judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers in high profile cases.  He also provides expert assistance to law enforcement officials investigating unsolved crimes, such as the JonBenet Ramsey murder.  

 

The author of several publications on DNA evidence, Scheck co-authored Raising and Litigating Claims of Electronic Surveillance. He also has covered the Oklahoma City Bombing and other high profile trials for NBC News, where he is a Legal Analyst. Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted, was published in 2000 by Doubleday. This non-fiction book grew out of the cases and stories of the Innocence Project. In 2003, Scheck and Neufeld published The Innocents, a book of portraits of former inmates who have been exonerated. The book was accompanied by a traveling exhibit of the same name mounted by the Innocence Project.

 

Scheck received his B.S. from Yale University in 1971 and his J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1974. He was a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society in New York for three years before he joined the faculty at Cardozo Law School.

 

He has been honored for his work by the New York State Bar Association and the New York State Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Scheck serves on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 1996 he received their highest award as the Most Outstanding Criminal Defense Lawyer in America.

 

Barry Scheck is married and has two children.