Since 2017, Megan Baca has helped to free ten individuals who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit and who cumulatively spent nearly 250 years in prison.

 

Prior to founding California Innocence Advocates, Ms. Baca worked as the Assistant Legal Director and Director of Investigations at Loyola Project for the Innocent (LPI).  Before serving as a director at LPI, Ms. Baca served as a post-conviction investigator in 2017 and went on to become a staff attorney in 2018.  There, Ms. Baca trained and supervised scores of law students and taught classes on wrongful conviction, and post-conviction investigation and litigation.

 

Ms. Baca’s work focused on investigating and litigating claims of wrongful conviction.  Her work has incorporated the use of a diverse range of experts, including gang, human perception and memory, eyewitness identification, false confession, blood stain pattern analysis, investigative genetic genealogy, DNA, police practices, tire-mark, tool-mark, fingerprint, and ineffective assistance of counsel experts.  In addition to her work as an attorney, Ms. Baca trained law students and volunteers in post-conviction investigation and habeas proceedings, and led the program in community outreach and client relations.  Ms. Baca was also the recipient of the Innocence Project’s Spanish Language Support grant which she used to increase access to post-conviction representation to Spanish speakers incarcerated in California.

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She has attended numerous trainings through the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Innocence Network, and the Western Regional Innocence Organizations. Megan has also worked as a Post-Conviction Specialist for a number of law firms and legal organizations, and has done multiple direct appeals for indigent appellants through the California Appellate Project-Los Angeles. 

She is a member of the Steering Committee of the District Attorney Accountability Coalition in Los Angeles where she has organized District Attorney candidate debates and community education symposiums, aiming to educate the public about the power of elected prosecutors.

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Ms. Baca attended Santa Clara University, School of Law in order to pursue a career in innocence work.  During law school, Ms. Baca interned at the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office, the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, and the California Appellate Project-San Francisco. Ms. Baca also worked as research assistant at the Northern California Innocence Project where she investigated the innocence claim of a man who spent 40 years in prison based on the testimony of an eyewitness who had undergone hypnosis to create a composite drawing of the alleged perpetrator. 

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Following law school, Ms. Baca worked on the ACLU-SF Bay Area’s What a Difference a D.A. Makes project and taught criminal law and procedure to youth incarcerated in Santa Clara County through Fresh Lifelines for Youth. 

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She studied Spanish-English Court Interpretation and Translation at San Francisco State University and has received certifications for Advanced Spanish Language and Spanish for Lawyers from the University of Wisconsin and American University, Washington College of Law.  Prior to law school, Ms. Baca worked as a translator and Consular Assistant at the Venezuelan Consulate. 

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