Adjunct/Affiliated Professor
Legal Director, Innocence Project of Minnesota
Julie Jonas is the Legal Director for the Innocence Project of Minnesota (IPMN). She has worked for IPMN since 2003. In addition to her work for the Project, she teaches at Minnesota law schools where her focus is on the prevention of wrongful convictions and working with clinical students to screen and investigate cases of potential innocence.
Ms. Jonas completed her undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Minnesota. After law school, she practiced with the Ramsey County Public Defender’s Office in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In her current position, she has successfully worked to secure the release of seven innocent men from prison who were incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. She also works on policy issues. Her work was instrumental in Minnesota’s passage of its 2014 Imprisonment and Exoneration Remedies Act awarding compensation to Minnesota exonerees. Under that law, she secured compensation for her innocent clients. In 2020, she worked to secure passage of a law that requires law enforcement throughout Minnesota to use best practices in conducting eyewitness identifications in order to increase reliability of identifications of actual perpetrators and decrease wrongful convictions.
