Joshua Tepfer, a community member and Oak Park and River Forest High School parent, is an attorney who founded the Exoneration Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to representing wrongfully convicted people. As a part of his work at the Exoneration Project, Tepfer uses investigative techniques to overturn wrongful convictions and free those who have been unjustly incarcerated. Tepfer and his team have helped bring justice to over 300 people throughout the United States over the years.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: I grew up in Highland Park. My main experience with OPRF had been getting my butt kicked by the OPRF Men’s tennis team over and over again.
Q: Why did you choose to move to Oak Park?
A: We were living in the city, and we had three kids, and we decided we wanted to move to a suburb, and it was really in tune with our values. There’s everything we learned about, it was very intentional of the diversity in the community and environment.
Q: Did you always know that you wanted to go into law? How did you become interested in law and in founding the Exoneration Project?
A: No, not at all. I didn’t really know I wanted to go to law school until the year I applied, and honestly, I’m not entirely sure I even knew I wanted to go back, but this is how I always describe this: I kind of just always had this feeling that the world was a lot bigger than the area I grew up in. I always had a real motivation to meet different people from different parts of the world, who grew up with different challenges than me. I just kind of had that idea, and I’m also kind of pragmatic, so I really wanted to do something that would help people with the problems they are having. I can’t solve all of the world’s problems, but that’s what drove me to pick law school. If I can serve communities and I can help them through free legal services that seemed like something that practically would be valuable.
Q: Could you please share about the Exoneration Project’s work and the purpose of it?
A: We represent individuals who have been convicted, usually in prison, but at least convicted of crimes that they say they didn’t do. It’s clear that the criminal justice system is flawed in many, many ways, like by disproportionately affecting people of color. Police treat people differently. Sentences, in my view, are too long. The death penalty is horribly flawed, but there is a real fundamental flaw in that it actually convicts people who are innocent, like factually innocent at somewhat of an alarming rate. So it is challenging, because while you have a presumption of innocence all the way through trial, once you are convicted, that presumption goes out the window and it’s extremely difficult to get courts to sort of do a do-over and be like “everyone got it wrong,” but that’s what we do.
Q: You’ve said that it’s tied back to what you’ve always wanted to do, but was it always the issue about wrongful incarceration that you were passionate about?
A: No, not at all. I didn’t even know about it at all, nothing about the criminal justice system. It wasn’t until I started at Northwestern Law School at the Center on Wrongful Convictions in 2008 and that was really the eye-opening thing to me that yeah all these flaws in the criminal system, but also people are innocent too, and they’re sitting in prison.
Q: Were you alone in starting the idea of this project?
A: No, the innocence revolution with DNA post-conviction, and it was actually started by two of the individuals who represented OJ Simpson. They realized after he was acquitted. We’re not talking about OJ Simpson being innocent or anything like that, but we’re just saying the power of DNA could be used to free the innocent or show that the system got it wrong in some cases.
Q: Is the Exoneration Project a non-profit organization?
A: Yes, we are a state non-profit. Most post-conviction innocence types of organizations are federal non-profits or through a university or something like that. Ours is a slightly unique setup in that it’s funded by a civil rights law firm… Jon Loevy is my boss. He had success after cases had been overturned, and suing police officers and making people a lot of money, and he would get a contingency fee. So he used the money he was getting from those successes to fund the non-profit that I’m doing to free more people.
Q: Many who pursue criminal law struggle with the idea of possibly representing clients that may not be innocent. How does the organization confront this issue?
A: I don’t think we have a way that we confront the issue, but I can tell you how I feel about it. My belief is that people should not be defined by the worst thing they’ve ever done, nor by the greatest. These are people I sit down with and meet in jails, talk on the phone with. So they’re human beings to me. And so I feel very good knowing that I am doing everything I can to ensure that the system acts fairly for that person, whether they are guilty or not. The system can only work fairly if someone is advocating for that individual as hard as they can. That’s what I try to do.
