Strategic Litigation

Lauren Gottesman joined the Innocence Project’s strategic litigation department as a staff attorney in May 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, Louisiana. 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.

As the director of strategic litigation (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’ 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.

Mitha Nandagopalan joined the Innocence Project’s strategic litigation department 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.

Zawar Ahmed joined the Innocence Project in 2024 as a Strategic Litigation paralegal. He assists the department’s attorneys in issues related to eyewitness misidentification and coercive police interrogation. Before joining the Innocence Project, Zawar worked as a litigation paralegal at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where his pro bono work focused on racial justice, law enforcement misconduct, and immigrant advocacy. He is a graduate of Yale University. In his free time, Zawar loves to make oil paintings and read books on the subway.