Strategic Litigation

Bhavan Sodhi

Bhavan Sodhi

Chief Program Officer

Bhavan Sodhi

Bhavan Sodhi

Chief Program Officer Intake

Bhavan Sodhi

Chief Program Officer Intake

Bhavan K. Sodhi is the Chief Program Officer at the Innocence Project. In this capacity, she is responsible for the oversight, management, and supervision of all six programmatic departments: Client Intake and Evaluation, Post-conviction Litigation, Data Science & Research, Strategic Litigation, Social Work, and Public Policy Reform.

Prior to this role, she served as the IP’s Director of Intake & Case Evaluation. Bhavan comes to the IP with deep experience in innocence work, having served as the Legal Director at Innocence Canada, where she is now a member of its Case Review Committee and Executive Board. She was also the Executive Director of the Osgoode Innocence Project in Toronto and an Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, teaching wrongful conviction and forensic science. Bhavan also co-founded and instructed the Wrongful Conviction Clinic at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law for many years.

Bhavan has served as a Board Member of the international Innocence Network and has experience working as both a prosecutor and defense attorney in Toronto. Bhavan has written extensively about criminal justice and wrongful convictions and regularly presents on these topics. She is deeply passionate about and committed to addressing injustice and the systems that foster it.

Jever Mariwala

Jever Mariwala

Paralegal

Jever Mariwala

Jever Mariwala

Paralegal Strategic Litigation

Jever Mariwala

Paralegal Strategic Litigation

Julia Boland

Julia Boland

Paralegal

Julia Boland

Julia Boland

Paralegal Strategic Litigation

Julia Boland

Paralegal Strategic Litigation

Lauren Gottesman

Lauren Gottesman

Staff Attorney

Lauren Gottesman

Lauren Gottesman

Staff Attorney Strategic Litigation

Lauren Gottesman

Staff Attorney Strategic Litigation

Lauren Gottesman joined the Innocence Project’s Strategic Litigation Department as a staff attorney in May of 2020, where she focuses on suggestive identification practices and police interrogation. Prior to joining the Innocence Project, Lauren was a public defender at the Legal Aid Society’s Manhattan Criminal Defense Practice. During her last year at the Legal Aid Society, Lauren worked in their Decarceration Project, where she provided consultation, training, and direct advocacy regarding pre-trial detention issues. Before her work at the Legal Aid Society, Lauren clerked for two years for the Honorable James L. Dennis on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, LA. During law school, Lauren interned with the Innocence Project’s post-conviction litigation unit for a full academic year. Lauren graduated from Cardozo Law School in 2013, and from Trinity College in 2008.

M. Chris Fabricant

M. Chris Fabricant

Director of Strategic Litigation (Joseph Flom Special Counsel)

M. Chris Fabricant

M. Chris Fabricant

Director of Strategic Litigation (Joseph Flom Special Counsel) Strategic Litigation

M. Chris Fabricant

Director of Strategic Litigation (Joseph Flom Special Counsel) Strategic Litigation

As the Director of Strategic Ligation (Joseph Flom Special Counsel), Chris Fabricant leads the Innocence Project’s Strategic Litigation Department, whose attorneys develop and execute national litigation and public policy strategies to address the leading causes of wrongful conviction. Chris is one of the United States’s leading experts on forensic sciences and scientific litigation. He is a former longtime public defender and law professor, frequently serves as a public speaker on law reform issues, and is widely published in both legal scholarship and in mainstream media. In his new book, Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System, Chris examines the role that faulty scientific evidence has in continuing and strengthening an unjust and racial biased criminal legal system.
Matthew Wasserman

Matthew Wasserman

Staff Attorney

Matthew Wasserman

Matthew Wasserman

Staff Attorney Strategic Litigation

Matthew Wasserman

Staff Attorney Strategic Litigation

Matthew Wasserman is a staff attorney in the Innocence Project’s Strategic Litigation Department, focusing on law reform efforts around eyewitness identification evidence.

Before joining the Innocence Project, Matt was a staff attorney at the Bronx Defenders, where he represented hundreds of people accused of crimes ranging from misdemeanors to violent felonies. He also has worked as an appellate public defender at the Office of the Appellate Defender and as an associate at a civil rights firm. Matt clerked for the Honorable Allyne R. Ross of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York and the Honorable Jane B. Stranch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has a J.D. from New York University School of Law, a master’s from the Sorbonne, and a B.A. from Reed College.

Mitha Nandagopalan

Mitha Nandagopalan

Staff Attorney

Mitha Nandagopalan

Mitha Nandagopalan

Staff Attorney Strategic Litigation

Mitha Nandagopalan

Staff Attorney Strategic Litigation

Mitha Nandagopalan joined the Innocence Project’s Strategic Litigation Department as a staff attorney in February 2023 to work on the Neighborhood Project, focusing on the community impacts of racialized police surveillance and mass misdemeanor arrests. Before joining the Innocence Project, Mitha represented individuals facing criminal charges as an assistant public defender at the Law Offices of the Public Defender of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Prior to that, they clerked for Justice Susan Carney on the Alaska Supreme Court in Fairbanks. They graduated in 2018 with a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where their clinical work focused on representing indigent tenants facing eviction and housing discrimination, and they hold a Master’s from Hunter College and a B.A. from NYU.

Tania Brief

Tania Brief

Senior Staff Attorney

Tania Brief

Tania Brief

Senior Staff Attorney Strategic Litigation

Tania Brief

Senior Staff Attorney Strategic Litigation

Tania Brief is a senior staff attorney in the Strategic Litigation Department, where she focuses on strategies to address the misapplication of forensic sciences as a leading cause of wrongful conviction. Prior to joining the Innocence Project, Tania worked for nine years at The Bronx Defenders, where she represented clients charged with crimes in all stages of litigation. She was also a member of the Forensic Practice Group, where she consulted with attorneys and conducted trainings on digital forensics. Before working at The Bronx Defenders, Tania served as a law clerk to the Honorable William H. Pauley III, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, and as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Tania graduated from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a student attorney in the D.C. Law Students in Court clinic, representing low-income clients in landlord-tenant court. She received her B.A. from Yale University.

Join us in our efforts to advance criminal and racial justice.

Apply Now