- January 12, 2023
Stan Fisher and his wife Jenny Wilder moved to North Hill in 2019.
They have myriad interests and stay so active on campus that he once joked that he and Jenny are so busy now that they’ve moved here, they need to find a place to retire from North Hill!
Stan’s most passionate interest is The New England Innocence Project (NEIP), which he helped found in 2000, and where he served as a trustee for a number of years. NEIP uses law students and lawyers to investigate and litigate claims of innocence by prisoners who might be exonerated by DNA testing or other means. BU Law students have worked on NEIP cases under Professor Fisher’s supervision when enrolled in his Wrongful Convictions Clinic. In 2003, the Massachusetts public defender agency gave Professor Fisher the Thurgood Marshall Award for his service “as a champion of zealous defense of the poor.”
As Professor of Law at Boston University Law School for many years, Stan Fisher specialized in criminal law and procedure, prosecutorial ethics, and wrongful convictions. On sabbatical leaves in practice, he represented juvenile defendants in the Boston area, and served both as an Assistant District Attorney in Norfolk County, and a Public Defender in Boston. He also taught law in Ethiopia and in Eritrea.
Stan is Emeritus Professor of Law at Boston University, an acknowledgment of his distinguished career at the Bar and his fight for justice. Despite his busy schedule, he found time to give two presentations at North Hill about the Innocence Project and the miscarriages of justice that have resulted in wrongful convictions. He notes, with cautious optimism that in the twenty-plus years since courts began accepting DNA test results into evidence, many wrongfully convicted prisoners have been exonerated. There are still some obstacles to reform in the Justice System, but thanks to Professor Fisher and others like him in the New England Innocence Project, more who are wrongly accused can have hope that true justice will prevail.