Barry Scheck
Lawyer
Best known as one of the criminal defense attorneys for football star-turned-murder suspect O.J. Simpson, this American lawyer also helped found The Innocence Project, an organization devoted to using DNA evidence to free people imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.
After graduating from Yale University in the early 1970s, he earned both a law degree and a master's degree in urban planning from the University of California-Berkeley.
He represented such their clients as murder suspects/nannies Hedda Nussbaum and Louise Woodward; Duke University lacrosse player and accused rapist Reade Seligmann; and Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz (both wrongly convicted of murder).
He was born and raised in the Queens and Bronx neighborhoods of New York City.
He accepted a faculty appointment at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardoza School of Law (named for the former United States Supreme Court Justice).