Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice

Laura and Ike Perlmutter have long been advocates for criminal justice reform, evolving their interest into a passion. After contributing to the Innocence Project and the National Forensic College, they partnered with attorney Josh Dubin to establish the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo School of Law with a $15-million donation from their foundation.

The Center has two main components: the Perlmutter Freedom Clinic, which fights wrongful convictions due to misuse of scientific evidence and seeks clemency for unjustly incarcerated individuals, and the Perlmutter Forensic Science Education Program, offering advanced education in scientific evidence for practicing attorneys. The Center builds on Cardozo’s Forensic Science College’s longstanding success.

The Center is led by Executive Director Josh Dubin, a top civil rights attorney, and Deputy Director Derrick Hamilton, a legal strategist and paralegal who was wrongfully imprisoned for over 20 years before his exoneration. The Center aims to correct the frequent wrongful convictions caused by forensic evidence misuse, focusing also on harsh sentences and systemic issues like racism, social inequity, and the misuse of “junk science” that disproportionately affects communities of color.