Attorney Richard 'Rick' Fried
Long-time Hawai’i attorney L. Richard ‘Rick ‘Fried Jr., one of the state’s most successful litigators, has joined the Hawai‘i Innocence Project as a volunteer co-director replacing emeritus Law Prof. Randy Roth.
The Hawai‘i Innocence Project at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai’i is one of the most popular legal clinics for law students.
Fried joins co-director Faculty Specialist Kenneth Lawson, under whose leadership HIP has expanded to accept a greater number of cases and to involve many more attorneys from the community.
Each year student teams and supervising attorneys review hundreds of requests from prisoners claiming innocence. To date, three Hawai‘i men have been released from prison through the efforts of the Innocence Project.
Fried, who already has been involved in assisting with HIP as a volunteer supervising attorney, said that he hoped to be able to add expertise from his decades of experience as a litigator.
“I was very surprised to learn how many innocent people were incarcerated for crimes they did not commit,” he said. “Many of these people are wrongfully incarcerated due to misidentification at a line-up or picked out from photographs.”
Lawson said that Fried will bring a whole new level of expertise to HIP.
“Rick has had a hugely successful civil practice, and he is well known as one of the best litigators in the United States,” said Lawson.
“Without a doubt, Rick’s experience as a trial attorney is second to none, but it’s his passion for justice and his commitment to go the extra mile for his clients that make him the perfect fit for HIP.”
Both Lawson and Fried said that over the last few years Fried has shown a growing interest in the Hawai‘i Innocence Project and in exonerating people in Hawai’i’s prisons who may be factually innocent but wrongfully convicted.
Fried is already looking ahead with the expectation that the project will accept more cases. “As more people become exonerated, that will spur more people who believe they’ve been wrongfully incarcerated to come forward to ask for help from HIP,” he said.
Fried said that he hopes his participation in HIP will also spur other lawyers, especially young attorneys just starting out in practice, to become involved in volunteering “to help those paying the ultimate price – wrongful incarceration.”
“As our society has become more and more fractured in recent years, I feel that the criminal justice system has come to reflect this same unequal application of justice,” said Fried. “More and more, the poor and disadvantaged have less voice and receive inequitable treatment. Just as I have made a career in civil law bringing reparations to those who have been unjustly harmed, I feel that everyone should have access to good legal representation, and not suffer wrongly due to lack thereof.”
The Hawai’i Innocence Project recently won a $567,206 federal grant to assist in DNA testing that often provides conclusive evidence of innocence in disputed cases. Lawson explained that the grant application was particularly impressive because student enrollment over the past several years has increased threefold, the number of volunteer attorneys has increased fourfold, and a new fundraising campaign has raised over $100,000 in unrestricted funds to help the project.
In addition, HIP has innovated by asking a distinguished panel of volunteer former prosecutors to listen to and to assist law students as they begin to build their cases.
Richardson Law School Dean Avi Soifer noted, “The Hawai‘i Innocence Project has grown considerably since Professor Virginia Hench launched it some years ago. The work of volunteer cooperating attorneys has been instrumental in its ongoing success.”
Soifer added, “Professor Randy Roth and now attorney Rick Fried have also contributed a great deal to the learning experience of the law students and to the overall success of the project - and Faculty Specialist Ken Lawson’s leadership has been invaluable.”
The Hawai'i Innocence Project team, with Dean Avi Soifer, are from left, associate director Jennifer Brown, co-director Ken Lawson, retired co-director Emeritus Professor Randy Roth, and new co-director Rick Fried.