The Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) will host its annual Don Edwards Civil Liberties Award Event on Saturday, June 12, honoring the courageous and inspiring women who founded the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) and have made countless sacrifices to pursue exoneration, liberty and justice for innocent individuals who were wrongly convicted. Centered at Santa Clara University’s School of Law, NCIP’s mission is to create a more just and humane world through working to exonerate innocent prisoners and pursue legal reforms that address the causes and consequences of wrongful convictions.
Each year, the Chapter presents the award to a local leader who has done significant work to advance civil liberties in the Santa Clara Valley and beyond. The award is named for Bay Area Congressman Don Edwards who is known and respected for his support of civil liberties issues. This year, a high school student will also be awarded for his or her winning Demand Your dot Rights, Internet Privacy Essay.
Cookie Ridolfi founded the NCIP in 2001 and in 2004 co-founded the Innocence Network, a collaboration of 49 innocence projects in the United States and in four other countries. From 2004-2008, she served as Commissioner of the California Senate Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. She was a trial lawyer with the Defender Association of Philadelphia where she served in the Special Defense Unit. Ridolfi was a pioneer and innovator in the early development and application of social science to jury selection and a leader in the development of expert testimony for use in cases of battered women raising claims of self-defense. In addition to overseeing the work of the NCIP as Director, Ridolfi is also a tenured law professor at Santa Clara University Law School. She has received numerous accolades for her classroom work including the prestigious Russell Galloway Professor of the Year.
Linda Starr co-founded the NCIP in 2001 and serves as Legal Director. Starr was an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, New York, where she wrote and argued post-conviction matters before state and federal courts and was a supervisor in the Sex Crimes and Special Victims Unit. Ms. Starr worked as a staff attorney at the Sixth District Appellate Program in California and then privately represented indigent criminal defendants on appeal.
The Don Edwards Award presentation will feature Allen Hopper, Litigation Director of the ACLU’s Drug Policy Reform Project. On September 1, 2010, Hopper will move to the ACLU of Northern California as it’s Police Practices Director. Hopper has litigated constitutional challenges on behalf of medical marijuana patients and their doctors, victims of racially selective enforcement of drug laws, students denied financial aid as a result of drug convictions, and children victimized during drug raids and strip-searched while at school. Before joining the ACLU, Mr. Hopper worked in private practice focusing on criminal defense, prisoners’ rights and police misconduct litigation and was also a staff attorney for the California Appellate Project in San Francisco, established by the California Supreme Court and the State Bar to oversee and provide case assistance to the lawyers appointed by the Court to represent death row defendants in their state and federal post-conviction proceedings.
Quedellis Ricardo “Rick” Walker, who served 12 years for a murder he did not commit, will present the awards to Ridolfi and Starr of the NCIP. Walker was declared “factually innocent” and released from prison in 2003 after a courageous family friend and attorney, Alison Tucher, launched the four-year battle that ultimately led to his exoneration. Walker is also the subject of the 2007 documentary “Not Guilty: Life After Exoneration.”
The Don Edwards Award Celebration is free and will be held at West Valley Branch of the San Jose Library, 1243 San Tomas Aquino Road, San Jose. Doors open at 2:30 pm, and the award event will begin at 3 pm, followed by an informal reception.
The American Civil Liberties Union is a national organization that works to preserve and defend the individual rights and liberties of Americans which are laid out in the United States Constitution. The organization also works to extend rights to segments of our population whose rights have traditionally been denied, including women, communities of color, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people, prisoners, and people with disabilities. The Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the ACLU was founded in 1962 and represents those who live and work in the Santa Clara County communities of Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, and Sunnyvale. The Santa Clara Valley chapter operates under the auspices of the ACLU of Northern California. More information about the ACLU-SCV can be found on its website – http://www.acluscv.org
