The Cincinnati Enquirer reports:

The University of Cincinnati's Center for Law and Justice is being awarded a $1 million endowment from local benefactors Lois and Richard Rosenthal. The gift will be announced today at the start of Innocence Week. Other events include a speech by attorney Barry Scheck, a member of the O.J. Simpson defense team, and the local opening of the play The Exonerated.

The Center for Law and Justice, to be renamed the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Institute for Justice today, was founded at the University of Cincinnati in 2002. The institute approaches many social-welfare projects in the city but is best known for the Ohio Innocence Project started in 2003, which seeks to exonerate wrongly imprisoned inmates by using new information and new technologies such as DNA identification.

"The Innocence Project is truly a passion we have," said Lois Rosenthal. "When you are of (financial) means, you can hire careful representation. But when you are poor or not knowledgeable about the law, you are not represented as well."

At the performance of the Exonerated today, talk-show host and former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer will read one of the roles.