Conviction Integrity Program

In October of 2015, the district attorney launched the Conviction Integrity Program (CIP), designed to provide a mechanism to review cases where a convicted defendant claims to have been convicted of a crime that he or she did not commit, or to have been convicted of a crime that was grossly disproportionate to the criminal conduct that the defendant committed.

Under the CIP, the executive assistant district attorney in charge of the Special Projects and Community Affairs Bureau reviews claims of innocence and over-conviction, and in cases where a plausible claim is made, refers those cases to a CIP Committee, which is made up of several of the district attorney’s staff, two police chiefs, and two Orange County criminal defense attorneys.