AT THE STATE PRISON in Reidsville, Ga., associate professor Jessica Cino leads two law students to the visiting room to meet Devonia Inman. Incarcerated since 2001 for the murder of a Taco Bell manager, Inman has always maintained his innocence. His case has caught the attention of the Georgia Innocence Project. When the students sit at the booth and lift the receiver, he flattens his hand against the glass.

“I’m so glad somebody took a chance on me,” he says, “because I feel like I’m gonna die in here.”

For Cino, this is the moment her students understand the power they wield and, as a consequence, their responsibility to society.

“That crystallizes it,” she says. “That’s when the lightbulb goes on: ‘Somebody’s depending on me.’”

For most law students, a legal education comes in two distinct components: learning how law is supposed to work and learning how it actually works. This spring, a handful of law students encountered this divide head-on when they worked on cases like Inman’s with the Georgia Innocence Project, an Atlanta nonprofit dedicated to securing the release and exoneration of men and women imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. The students worked under the guidance of Cino, professor Russell Covey and Georgia Innocence Project Interim Director Clare Gilbert.

This was the university’s first collaboration with the Georgia Innocence Project, the brainchild of Jill Polster (J.D. ’01) and September Guy (J.D. ’01), who grew passionate about wrongful conviction as Georgia State law students. They founded the nonprofit in 2003 and hired fellow alumna Aimee Maxwell (M.Ed. ’83, J.D. ’87) as its first executive director. Since then, the Georgia Innocence Project has proven the innocence of six men serving time for the misdeeds of other people.

Inman is one of the lucky. Every year, the Georgia Innocence Project receives hundreds of letters from inmates pleading for help. Because of limited resources and the high hurdles that must be cleared to take on most — and mostly cold — cases, the Georgia Innocence Project is highly selective of its clients.

From the beginning, Polster and Guy, both of whom have gone on to lead distinguished careers as public defenders, struggled to convince people an innocence project was a worthwhile investment. Pollster says the innocence movement “did not have the same notoriety or track record it has today.” According to her estimation, the national total for DNA exonerations back then was in the “low double digits.”

Just 15 years later, the National Registry of Exonerations has tallied around 350. Countless Americans now know not only what an innocence project is, but why their community might need one. And yet, Polster says exoneration remains a herculean task.

“Defense law is a tough sell,” she says, “and indigent defense is always a tough sell, particularly with people who have already exhausted their appeals. I’m glad we didn’t feel that way.”

Even when innocence work catches the public’s imagination, Polster says, we tend to focus on the happy ending and not the years of painstaking work that made it possible, often undertaken with few resources and little hope of success.

“People want to hear that story about a guy walking free after 20 years,” she says. “What did he eat? Where did he sleep? What did he wear? That’s what’s exciting. How you get to that point — I don’t know people are quite as interested.”