Christina Swarns is the Executive Director of the Innocence Project, which works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Its work is guided by science and grounded in anti-racism. The Innocence Project uses DNA and other scientific advancements to prove wrongful conviction. To date, we have helped to free or exonerate more than 240 people who, collectively, spent more than 3,600 years behind bars. Our efforts have led to the passage of more than 200 transformative state laws and federal reforms.
Christina previously served as the President and Attorney-in-Charge of the Office of the Appellate Defender, Inc. (OAD), one of New York City’s oldest providers of indigent appellate defense representation. Prior to joining OAD, Christina was the Litigation Director and Criminal Justice Project Director for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where she oversaw LDF’s economic justice, education, political participation and criminal justice litigation, organizing, public education, communication and other advocacy strategies.
Christina argued, and won, Buck v. Davis, a challenge to the introduction of explicitly racially biased evidence in a Texas death penalty case, in the United States Supreme Court. In a February 2017 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 6-2 majority, vacated Mr. Duane Buck’s death sentence and denounced the “noxious strain of racial prejudice” that infected the case after an expert witness testified that Mr. Buck was more likely to commit criminal acts of violence in the future because he is Black. Christina was the only Black woman to argue in that Supreme Court term, and is one of the few Black women to have argued before the nation’s highest court.
Prior to joining LDF, Christina served as a Supervising Assistant Federal Defender and Assistant Federal Defender at the Capital Habeas Unit of Philadelphia’s Federal Community Defender Office where she represented numerous death-sentenced prisoners whose convictions and/or death sentences were vacated, including Nicholas Yarris, the first death sentenced prisoner in Pennsylvania to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Christina began her legal career as a Staff Attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division in New York.
Christina speaks and writes about race and criminal justice. She has authored multiple op-eds, including “The Supreme Court Should Reject Arizona’s Death Penalty Gambit” and “Dylann Roof Shouldn’t Get the Death Penalty,” both of which were published in the New York Times; “Why the Dangerousness Standard is Racist,” which was published in the New York Daily News; and “Black people are wrongly convicted more than any other group. We can prevent this,” which was published in the LA Times.
Christina earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from Howard University.
