When Fears was released last week, McClendon invited him in to live at his house, to help with his adjustment back into society. The response from McClendon to freedom has been to do what he can to support others who are innocent but behind bars. Instead, he has been returned to family life, exulting in the joys of a large group of friends and family who supported his case. McClendon said without the efforts of DDC and OIP, he would still probably have been in prison on Thursday, waiting for 2013 to arrive when he would have been released. DDC is very committed to helping the Ohio Innocence Project with these efforts on these cases. In prison as innocent men, they were leading lives that were in turmoil and agony. In introducing them, Moskovitz, DDCs president and CEO, said, These are two very special visitors.

McClendon and Fears shared embraces with DDC leadership upon arriving at the firms headquarters, which employs 200 people and completes 80 percent of the DNA testing done in the United States.Īfter a tour of lab space where McClendon and Fears learned more about the science that played such a key role in their lives, the men spoke to an assembly of DDC personnel. There has been no other example of corporate citizenship rising to this level. Since this movement started 15 years ago, no other lab has stepped up to this level in any other state, OIP Faculty Director Mark Godsey said.

The joint project sought to identify cases of current inmates that could be decisively determined through DNA advances.ĭDC has agreed to perform all of the DNA testing pro bono in those cases, the largest commitment of services that any Innocence Project in the country has ever received. McClendon was the first of 30 cases identified in a joint project between the OIP and the Columbus Dispatch newspaper to be processed through DDC. I know that this could not have happened without a joint effort. This is such a humbling experience for me, McClendon said later, in addressing a gathering of DDC personnel in the companys lunchroom. Heinig in particular oversaw almost all of the DNA testing in McClendons case. Julie Heinig, DDCs assistant laboratory director in charge of forensics, and other key DDC personnel. Ellen Moscovitz, the president and CEO of DDC, Dr. Representatives from OIP accompanied McClendon and Fears as they met Dr. There, UC law students worked on the legal aspects of preparing their cases and setting the stage for the DNA testing.

McClendons release indirectly set in motion a chain of events again hinging on DNA evidence that resulted in Fears release from prison last week after he served 25 years.īoth McClendon and Fears had turned for help with their plights to the Ohio Innocence Project (OIP), based at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. The occasion was a visit by Robert McClendon and Joseph Fears to DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC) in Fairfield, the facility that performed the DNA testing that set the stage for McClendon to be released from prison last August after serving 18 years for a crime he did not commit.

Dna diagnostics center ddc