On Tuesday April 30, 2024, long-time Innocence Project of Florida client Leo Schofield, Jr. walked out of Everglades Correctional Institution in Miami, Florida after wrongfully spending more than 36 years in prison for the murder of his wife that he did not commit. Leo is the 32nd person released with the help of the Innocence Project of Florida.

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 While Leo’s legal team is thrilled that he has been reunited with his family, he will still have to spend his first year out in a halfway house and labor, for an indefinite period of time, under onerous conditions of parole meant to reintegrate rehabilitated murderers back into free society. In short, while physically not in custody, Leo is not truly free. The fight for Leo’s freedom is not over.

 

Thus, the work continues. IPF will work with Leo’s legal team to finally exonerate him and permanently lift the decades-long stain of having been wrongfully convicted for killing his wife. We will not stop fighting until Leo fully achieves freedom.