Nonstop Nonprofit

From the courtroom to the boardroom: How Innocence Project sustains their drive toward long-range change

Episode Summary

Christina Swarns · Executive Director, Innocence Project | Christina Swarns is a badass lawyer who has made advocacy her calling card. From arguing her cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to exonerating clients through cutting-edge science, and most recently as the ED of Innocence Project, she's a force for big, lasting, long-term change. Hear how she does it in this conversation with Justin Wheeler, Funraise CEO and Co-founder.

Episode Notes

You won't find a lawyer who'll argue that a person innocent of a crime should do the time. It's not a negotiation. With this in mind, in 1992, Innocence Project embarked on a simple, yet revolutionary mission: use DNA to exonerate innocent people who have been incarcerated and turn those pardons into policy to prevent others from being wrongfully convicted. Fast forward to 2021, and Innocence Project is responsible for 232 of the 375 people who've been freed based on DNA evidence. Sounds like a win for everyone, right?

But these problems go deep, and as Christina noted, there's no one thing we can all do, and Boom!, no more innocent people convicted. These solutions go beyond the lifetimes of anyone working on them. So, how does she provide the Innocence Project team with the patience, focus, and optimism needed to stay this long, difficult course?

Listen in to hear how Christina does it; in her words, "We've got to remember that even the small wins are making a big difference in the big picture of this work." The excitement exonerees feel going outside to look at the stars just because they can. The flood of emotions as someone walks to true freedom. The beauty behind every Innocence Project team's efforts, win or lose—these are the short-term wins that fuel this long-range work.

It's estimated that 2% of the prison population—hundreds of thousands of people—are anticipated or expected to be wrongfully convicted in the United States. If you're interested in helping exonerate innocent people, get involved with the Innocence Project today.

Episode Transcription

Hello, I'm Justin Wheeler, and welcome to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit! 

Christina Swarns is a badass lawyer who has made advocacy her calling card. From arguing her cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, to exonerating clients through cutting-edge science, and most recently as the ED of Innocence Project, she’s a force for big, lasting, long-term change. She’s also my guest today on the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast and I am STOKED to speak with her.

You won’t find a lawyer who’ll argue that a person innocent of a crime should do the time. It’s just not a negotiation. With this in mind, in 1992, Innocence Project embarked on a simple, yet revolutionary mission: use DNA to exonerate innocent people who have been incarcerated and turn those pardons into policy to prevent others from being wrongfully convicted. Fast forward to 2021, and Innocence Project is responsible for 232 of the 375 people who’ve been freed based on DNA evidence in the U.S. Sounds like a win for everyone, right?

But these problems go deep, and as Christina noted, there’s no one thing we can all do and BOOM, no more innocent people convicted. These solutions go beyond the lifetimes of anyone working on them. So, especially after my time working with Liberty in North Korea, I had to know: how does she provide the Innocence Project team with the patience, focus, and optimism needed to stay this long, difficult course?

Listen in to hear how Christina does it; in her words, “We’ve got to remember that even the small wins are making a big difference in the big picture of this work.” The excitement exonerees feel going outside to look at the stars just because they can. The flood of emotions as someone walks to true freedom. The beauty behind every Innocence Project team’s efforts, win or lose—these are the short-term wins that fuel this long-range work.
 

Justin Wheeler Hey, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Nonstop Nonprofit. Very excited to be joined here with Christina Swarns, the Executive Director of The Innocence Project. Christina, thank you so much for joining us today.

Christina Swarns Thank you. Justin, I'm so excited about this conversation.

Justin Wheeler Me too. I've been looking forward for a long time to it. I think I told you in an earlier conversation, my wife and I are supporters of The Innocence Project. It's one of Funraise's favorite partners to work alongside. And so it's really an honor to have you on the podcast to talk about your work. And today that the topic that I'm so excited to talk about, which is around sort of the long-term patience being strategically patience to achieve long-term impact. And I think The Innocence Project is such a great example of this. I'm really excited to kind of dig in and get into that with you today.

Christina Swarns Sounds good. Let's do it.

Justin Wheeler Absolutely. So before we do that, I know that you have a long background as a lawyer. So can you tell us a little bit about just your background in your career prior to joining The Innocence Project?

Christina Swarns Sure. So I have spent my entire career representing, largely or overwhelmingly, poor people who have been charged with or convicted of crimes. I started out as a public defender in Manhattan just representing people charged with crimes. They did that just for a short couple of years. And then I went to Philadelphia, where I served as an assistant federal defender representing people on death row, people who had been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. While I was there, I represented a gentleman named Nick Yarris, who was the first case. I actually was assigned. My very first death penalty case. And he turned out to be, after seven years of litigation, the first death sentence prisoner in Pennsylvania to be exonerated by DNA evidence. And I did that case at the federal defender's office but walking really hand in hand under the guidance of The Innocence Project, because I knew they were the experts in figuring out how to handle these kinds of cases. So that was really my first work with The Innocence Project and relationship to The Innocence Project. So after leaving the federal defender, I went to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and I ran the Criminal Justice Project where we did, you know, death penalty cases. We did juvenile life without parole cases. We did policing cases. We just did sort of a broad range of criminal justice reform litigation. And then I was promoted to be the litigation director at LDF. And while I was litigation director, I argued a death penalty case in the United States Supreme Court. The case was called a Buck vs. Davis, and we won that case in a six to two decision with Justice Roberts writing for the majority. So that was a huge and exciting win. After that, I ran a office here in New York called The Office of the Appellate Defender, which was an office that just did direct appeals and for people who were convicted of felonies in Manhattan, and in the Bronx. And while I was working there, I got the extraordinary opportunity of a lifetime, which was to come to The Innocence Project and serve as its Executive Director. And so, you know, once that opportunity presented itself, obviously, I thought, well, there is no bigger platform, no more exciting opportunity, no more powerful stage from which to do criminal legal system reform than The Innocence Project. So I jumped at the opportunity and I have been in the seat since September.

Justin Wheeler Since September, and how has that transition been? I mean, you have devoted your life to really vindicating the innocent. And so how does it feel to kind of transition from the courtrooms to the Executive Rooms at The Innocence Project?

Christina Swarns That's a great question. So, you know, I think actually I have previously not focused on innocence. Right. I've represented innocent people, but not exclusively. And so that was a transition to go from representing all comers to specifically focusing on representing the innocent. And I did that sort of realizing the power of reform that comes from people seeing the injustices that innocent people have experienced. Right. I think that, you know, there's just no debate. There's no negotiation. There's no one in the world that says that someone who is innocent should be convicted of a crime, should be should lose their liberty, should spend decades in prison, should be condemned to death. There's just no arguing about it. And so it really is. So it was a transition going from representing everyone to representing just innocent people. But really, the power of that conversation is so, you know, so huge that it has been a pretty easy transition. Going to an Executive Director position is, you know, it's fun. I think, you know, I like doing the Executive Director work. You know, I think, I like anyone that does an executive director job has to admit that they like challenges. Like figuring out, you know, how to make systems work and how to make, you know, an organization really succeed at its highest level and to do that here, right. In an organization that is already succeeding at such a high level. Right. To take it to, you know, into the stratosphere is just a gift. Are you kidding? It's a gift to do that?

Justin Wheeler Yeah. And I imagine, spending 12 years working in the nonprofit space myself, it's the exact role or any leadership role in the nonprofit, it's often you're both hands are tied behind your back. There's lots of restrictions or limitations. And so not only is it hard to be a leader, but in the nonprofit space, I think has some unique challenges, which I'm sure you've been navigating as you've transitioned into this role. For our listeners who maybe aren't super familiar with the Innocence Project, would you mind giving us a quick sort of background on who Innocence Project is and what the goals are of the organization?

Christina Swarns Yeah, thanks for that. That's a great question. So Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. It was originally at the Cardozo School of Law here in New York. And its founding mission and its current mission has been pretty simple and revolutionary. It is to use DNA to exonerate people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes A but also think, which is equally important, to learn the lessons from those cases and to promote policy reform to ensure that no one else is convicted of crimes they didn't commit. So we sort of have a two track mission, right? Not only do we want to get the people who are currently incarcerated, who are currently wrongfully convicted out and their convictions vacated and get them to freedom. But we also really, really, really want to make sure that just doesn't happen to anyone else. And so we have a robust commitment to doing policy reform, legislatively and otherwise, and education. Sort of in the judiciary and in the bar to make sure that everyone understands sort of the factors that contribute to wrongful convictions so that we can make sure that no one else goes into the system wrongfully.

Justin Wheeler Wow. And it seems I mean, you know, I've I followed along with a lot of Innocence Project successes. Like you often hear of an individual being released after 15 years or twenty five years, however long they served before they were vindicated. Could you describe what that moment when the individual hears that they're free, they've been vindicated of of these wrongful convictions? What is that like in the courtroom? What is that like when you've been working so hard on a case to see all this come together to fruition in such a powerful way?

Christina Swarns Such a great question. You know, so many of our clients have served decades. Right. Multiple decades in prison. But I will say to you that those folks have known they were innocent from the beginning. Right. So all in all we are doing is demonstrating a fact of which they are acutely aware and have been acutely aware, you know, for their entire conviction and time in the legal system. So usually those specifically what happens is if it's a DNA exoneration, you know, we get notification from the expert and the notification to the client is often by phone or by a prison visit. It's not usually for the first time in a courtroom. Right. And I can say to you, you know, when I think of my own personal exoneration case, when I told Nick Yarris in Pennsylvania, you know, it's like a ton of bricks, right, being lifted off your back. Right. It's you know, even though he knew, even though he was unrelenting. Right. In his assertion that he was innocent and his belief that DNA was going to be the key to his exoneration. You know, the day that I was able to call and say, Nick, you know, it's done like this is, this is going to happen now. You know, he cried. You know, there's just an overwhelming sense of relief and really, right, you can finally see, my client, Nick, for example, could finally see, you know, the end of a nightmare. Right. You could see the door, right. You could see the path out the door at that moment. So it's often just overwhelming. It is, you know, tears. It is excitement. And I will say it's also often coupled by anxiety, right? The fear that something will go wrong. Because my clients have been through a trial where they believe they'd be exonerated on appeal, where they believe the conviction was vacated, right? There's a lot of years of hopes being dashed. And so I think that from the day the exoneration comes, right in science, to the day they walk out of the door is a period of enormous anxiety that something's somehow right. Somehow this will not come to fruition. So really, it is also a powerful moment, right, of walking someone out. Right. That's like when someone experiences freedom for the first time knowing that it is real freedom, right? Nothing else, no more oversight, no more contact from this point forward is just, there's nothing like that.

Justin Wheeler I can't even imagine. Is there, like do we know how many innocent people are behind bars today? Is that is there any sort of stats or data around that? Like how big, I mean, we know that, you know, systemic racism is a ginormous problem. How many innocent people or how big of a problem is this here in the United States?

Christina Swarns You know, we can only estimate. Right. How many innocent people are in prison, but it's about estimated about 2% of the population, the prison population. So hundreds of thousands of people are anticipated or expected to be wrongfully convicted in this country. And most of them, although we do DNA cases. Right, most of the people in prison don't have DNA. You know, they don't have their cases, don't involve biological evidence. And so, you know, there is, it's really important that we all understand that lots of those people can't be freed with the DNA technology and that we have to be open to, right, thinking creatively. And we are, as an organization, thinking creatively about how to get to everyone that is wrongfully convicted today.

Justin Wheeler Today is Innocence Project focused on specifically on the DNA technology or you mentioned getting more creative? So are you using other sort of tools?

Christina Swarns So historically, that's where we were founded. Right. And we have this organization specifically has freed over 200+ people using DNA evidence since we were founded and we participated in, there's 375 people in this country that have been freed based on DNA evidence, and we are responsible for just over 230+ of them. But, yes, we do really think it's important for us to learn the lessons of those cases. So one of the things that we've learned looking at those cases is that first, eyewitness identification is often wrong. Right? We have these you know, all of us, I think, in our heads think that if we're ever the victim of a crime. I'm going to study the face and I'm going to be able to perfectly identify the person. But what the science of DNA showed us is that people are often wrong, totally well-intentioned, totally doing their best right to make the right ID. But they are getting it wrong for totally understandable reasons, right? The anxiety of being right in the middle of a crime. Right. There's all sorts of factors that go into that. So, for example. Right, we think now today, should we look at eyewitness ID cases? Should that be a factor that we consider in our case selection? Another factor that has come, that's been exposed to us when you start going through the patterns that emerge from the DNA exonerations that so many of them involve faulty forensics and bad science, right, beyond DNA. So we see things like bite mark evidence, which is not science of any kind. It's just garbage. Right. And there are other categories of sort of faulty forensics and pseudo-science that is going into courtrooms and people are being convicted on that basis. And so we are currently, for example, looking at cases that we know are based on pseudo-science or poor forensics, and we are currently working to get those folks out. So, for example, we had earlier this year a gentleman named Eddie Lee Howard, who was convicted of capital murder in Mississippi and spent decades north of 30 years on death row there on the basis of a bite mark evidence. And he was just freed and exonerated. So that's a perfect example of us going beyond just DNA. That was a bite mark exoneration.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, wow. You know, I think it was last summer, my wife, I sat down and watched the Central Park Five series on Netflix. And I remember after finishing it, we both wanted to throw a brick through our TV.

Christina Swarns Yeah, right?

Justin Wheeler And it was so infuriating and this estimate that you shared, roughly 2% of people are innocent. And when you're thinking about an individual life, right. That margin is just absolutely unacceptable. So how do we tackle this problem and why are so many people wrongfully convicted as you look at this problem? Like what would you say was the underlying cause of wrongful convictions?

Christina Swarns Right. That's a great question. So it's you know, there's not one answer. Right. I want to say to you, if we just do one thing that no one innocent will be convicted anymore, but it's not right. It's much more complicated than that. And it's a variety of factors going into wrongful conviction. So like I said, what we've learned looking at the exoneration cases is eyewitness identification is often wrong. We've learned, and these are things I feel like when I started practicing right, that this is new in my lifetime or sort of clearer in my lifetime as a practitioner. A second factor that we've really learned about is that people do actually falsely confess to crimes. They confess to crimes they didn't commit, which I think is just, you know, a thing that people don't realize. Right. I think all of us think and I know I think it right, I would never, ever, ever confess to a crime that I didn't commit. But the reality is people do. Mostly it's the young. Right, young kids like in Central Park. That's a perfect example. Young kids who are terrified, who are being interrogated by expert police interrogators. Right. Who are often being confronted with false facts. Right. The police are allowed to, you know, use deception in interrogation. They can say, hey, Justin, just FYI, we have DNA showing that you committed this crime, even though they know it's false. But those kinds of false facts, especially when you're talking to a kid, are very powerful and they do influence young people and vulnerable people, whether it's, you know, people with intellectual disabilities or people who are under the influence. Right. To confess falsely. And that has, that's a huge contributor to wrongful conviction. So but I just want to flip the script and say, so what's important about those, for example, those two key contributors to wrongful conviction is that we write as the Innocence Project, sort of us as a community in the world, really need to work to do reform around what we know contributes to wrongful convictions. So, for example, the Innocence Project was working really hard this year on legislation in Illinois to ban deception and interrogation for kids. Right. So you shouldn't, police officers just shouldn't lie to kids when they're interrogating them because we know what happens. Right. They will falsely confess. And we're happy to say that legislation has passed. And so we're going to see reform in that regard. And so for, you know, the community that's listening to this, you know, that's kind of the things that like everyone can get involved in. Right. So when you see and hear, you know, sort of these kinds of legislation being pushed in your state, you want to be supportive of those. Right. Reach out to your legislature, you know, express how important that is. And the Innocence Project website offers sort of those kind of opportunities to engage around the various pieces of legislation that we're moving across the country.

Justin Wheeler Got it. Wow. Congrats on that victory. It's kind of, it's a great sort of transition to maybe the second half of this conversation. You know, one of the things that really stands out when I think about Innocence Project and what is accomplished, especially when we get the updates about someone being exonerated, we know it's, as you mentioned earlier, spent decades in prison. Right. And so seems from the outside, you know, reforming the legal system, it takes a lot of patience. It's going to take a lot of hard work. And so when you think about the nonprofit community, nonprofit workers who are so mission-focused as a leader, how do you keep your team really focused on the long-term vision of what Innocence Project is trying to accomplish?

Christina Swarns That's a great question. So I think the first way that is accomplished is through giving folks the opportunity to interface with our clients themselves every single time someone is exonerated and there they come home within days of their release, they are now on a zoom to the entire office and everyone gets to sort of clap them home and really hear and experience what it's like. Right. Those first few days of freedom, what they are like. You know, I can tell you that within a week of my first day on this job, you know, I had the pleasure of seeing Robert Duboise, who was exonerated in Florida after spending 30 something years in prison there for a rape he did not commit. And listening to him talk about, you know, just small things like going to CVS and being blown away by, oh, my gosh, how many things are there. Right. These little moments or, you know, other you know, I've seen other clients come. I'm talking about how excited they were to just wake up in the middle of night, put their shoes on and just walk outside and see the stars because they could, right? Rosa Jimenez, freed recently got to hug the child who was in her belly when she was arrested for the first time right upon her release. So many of these like these are small but not small to them. Right. These extraordinarily powerful moments, you know, listening to them sort of over and over again is the most powerful way for us, I think, to inspire our staff to keep going right, you see, and you feel and you experience how important this work is, like over and over and over again. That said, right, we also do other things sort of organizationally right, to inspire our staff and to keep them sort of committed to the work. Right. We are, you know, committed to providing, you know, various supports, like with art therapy in the office. We have a psychologist, the psychiatrist that comes and talks to us about self-care and secondary trauma. You know, we're really trying to take a very holistic view of this work because we know that it is taxing, right. To be constantly be fighting for people's freedom. And so we I am very intentional about providing people with support and resources for being able to do this work for the long haul.

Justin Wheeler Got it. Yeah. That seems so, so powerful to be able to experience. Sort of like I said, clapping them home. Reminded me of when I was at Liberty in North Korea. We had an operation where we'd help North Korean refugees that were on the border of North Korea and China. We would help them 3,000 miles to Southeast Asia. And then there we had a shelter which we would legally process them to the US or South Korea. And it was the first time we'd meet face to face with many of these individuals. And the reality of, so many times of individuals and women and men, children close to my age and to thinking, I mean, the fact that I was born in one place and you were born somewhere else, our lives are so different. The freedoms that we have are so different is just a reminder that this world is pretty broken. But there's organizations like Innocence Project that, you know, one person at a time are changing it, changing the world for one person at a time, especially. I imagine, you kind of touched on this at the end, just sort of the trauma of how emotionally involved we can get into this work as well. I can imagine. So how is it on the flip side of that when, you know, aside from winning an exoneration? What about, do you ever lose a case where, you know, there's not enough evidence or for whatever reason, you have to keep fighting? How does your team handle that? And how do you keep going at it even after a setback like something like that?

Christina Swarns Yeah. You know, one of the most frustrating experiences I think our staff has is that we get requests for representation from people who present really extraordinarily compelling claims of innocence. And then we have an intake team that goes out and does the work to confirm the availability and the existence of the biological evidence. And often, unfortunately, right, that biological evidence has been destroyed. It's lost. It's missing. And so we can't do right. So this may be a person who DNA evidence would exonerate if it were available, but it's not. And so I can tell you that specifically for the intake team who does, right, build relationships with folks who are asking for help and who often view the Innocence Project as their last chance. It's heartbreaking, right. It's really difficult for that group in particular to say, I'm sorry to say the evidence has been destroyed and there's nothing we can do. And so we really do provide a lot of support and resources to those teams and others. Right. The attorneys litigating to make sure that, you know, they have perspective and room and space and that they are not overwhelmed by the fact that the truly right, the majority of the time, that group, particularly the intake group, is saying no, but reminding them right in the big picture, right, the yeses are so transformational and that should help. But also like learning the lessons of those nos. So we then write will say so biological evidence is being destroyed, so our policy team is then should be out there saying we need to set make sure that there are protocols in place to make sure that in the future the biological evidence is not being destroyed so that the next person that comes through is not experiencing, right, that kind of trauma. Right. We're always trying to learn the lessons of the cases, and the experiences that we have, to make sure that they don't happen to someone else.

Justin Wheeler Got it. I came across a story on your guy's blog and I just started digging into it. His name is Malcolm Alexander. And I think he had spent something like over 30 years in prison and was exonerated, you know, with Innocence Project's help. And this got me thinking, you know, when you think about the accomplishments and the victories your organization has had, how can it scale? Right. I mean, you guys have scaled over the last five, six, seven, eight years. I mean, you're continuing to grow. Is it more people? Is it more money? Is it more resources? Is it more attorneys? What sort of, when you think about scaling the organization, the overall impact. Is it possible to do? And is it a lack of something or, you know, from your perspective, what's the best way people can come, come alongside Innocence Project and support the important mission to help scale the impact and continue to see amazing victories?

Christina Swarns That's such a great question. Thank you. So, you know, the first answer is none of us, right, can scale to the problem of this of wrongful conviction in this country because there's still right. I often think of it as like a faucet, right. There's a faucet that's running, right, and there's still innocent people coming into the system constantly right now. Right. And until we can turn the faucet off. Right. And that's sort of with the policy work. Right. The reform work, we'll never be able to catch up. But that said, yes, of course, we could use more of everything. But the ways that we try to deal with the scale problem is through various ways. First, where the headquarters of a nationwide network of innocence organizations that are working together to address this problem. We are the National Innocence Project. But there are innocence projects in states throughout the country who are doing this work right with us. Second, right, we partner with large law firms who help us in so many different ways. Right, they partner with us to litigate cases. They partner with us to help on our intake process and screening requests for assistance. Right. They partner with us on amicus briefs. So many different ways that give us additional capacity that we just wouldn't otherwise have. Third, we also rely heavily, right, on our supporters to engage around the topics that we are talking about. So, again, we have our policy team is moving legislation in states throughout the country on a range of issues. Right. We're trying to improve compensation to economies when they come home. We're trying to build accountability structures and in the legal system to ensure that when someone is wrongfully convicted, there's meaningful accountability to those who caused the wrongful conviction. You know, we are trying to address eyewitnessed. We're still trying to address, right, eyewitness identification procedures and laws. There are so many ways that we're moving reforms. And so having our supporters join and express their support for that legislation. So people in Nebraska should be supporting the legislation we're moving in Nebraska. People in New York should be supporting the legislation we're moving in New York. Occasionally, also, we call for assistance around specific cases. Specifically, most notably the death penalty cases. Right. And we had last year a case in Tennessee, Purvis Payne, who was very close to execution notwithstanding, really powerful evidence of innocence. And we did a call for support and we were just blown away by the support we received. I think over 750,000 people answered our call for support in that case. And so all of those ways are we are maximizing sort of the imprint that we are making. Right. In terms of all the ways that we were engaging. So both in litigation and in policy. We need the partnerships with organizations and individuals to do the work that we're doing.

Justin Wheeler Wow, awesome. My very last question over the last couple of years, I've met with a lot of how would describe tired executive directors, individuals who've committed their lives to the causes and the important change that they've been working on. The results have been steady, slow and steady. And so what would you say to help, maybe inspire, motivate these types of individuals who are doing incredible work, important work? But, you know, just the prospect of making long-term change, it obviously takes time and maybe it doesn't happen in our lifetime, which is hard to think about. But we're pushing the ball forward, so to speak. And so for those that are tired, maybe on the brink of even just giving up any thoughts or words of encouragement that you would share from your own experience working on such a heavy issue that obviously is going to take some time to resolve

Christina Swarns Such a great question. So, yes, I think everyone that sits in the Executive Director chair at times feels like you're pushing a boulder up a mountain, right? And sometimes that boulder is really too heavy. So for me, I could just say what I do. Right. I try very hard to focus on the wins that you get. Right. And it's not often most of the time, it's not a big win in the Supreme Court. Most of the time it's not an exoneration. You know, sometimes it's I've managed to find a psychiatrist to come in and do second work with my organization. And the staff loves her. Right. That's a huge win because ultimately that's going to make it possible for these people, this one hundred people, to stay in the long game of this organization. And this work. And this fight. For fairness in the criminal legal system, you know, I really do try to celebrate even really small wins, small in air quotes, because I really do recognize that all of them are contributing to the long, the long arc. But I know it is so hard, so, so, so hard. And I'm in it with everyone else, but that's what I do. I try very hard to remember that even the small wins are making a big difference in the big picture of this work.

Justin Wheeler Well, thank you for sharing that. For those listening, I think another opportunity you can check out Innocence Project's website, www.innocenceproject.org. And I would encourage you, one very tangible, concrete way today to get involved is to click that donate button, make a contribution, become a recurring donor. I know that they have an army of recurring donors that are helping in their fight for the innocence. Please take action, do something and at least start with a donation to this amazing organization. Christina, thank you so much for your time. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate spending first part of my morning, your late morning with us today. Thank you so much for joining Nonstop Nonprofit.

Christina Swarns Thank you so much, Justin.

 

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