[3] Starting from his earliest years as an attorney representing clients at New York's Legal Aid Society, and teaching trial advocacy at Fordham School of Law from 1988 to 1991, he has focused on civil rights and the intersection of science and criminal justice.

[9] As a teenager, he was active in both civil rights and antiwar movements and spent time in southeastern Kentucky as a member of the Encampment for Citizenship.

The case was filmed and released as a documentary on British television where it helped leverage the creation of safe houses for women victimized by domestic violence.

In 1989, in People v. Castro, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck won an unprecedented pretrial hearing, precluding the use of inculpatory DNA evidence that at the time had not been validated for use in criminal prosecutions.

The court's ruling and attendant experts' consensus report led to the National Academy of Sciences establishing a panel to develop scientific standards for forensic DNA analysis.

[14] In 1991, in People v. McNulty, et al., Neufeld, with his wife Adele Bernhard, defended several Irish immigrants who had been beaten, falsely arrested and charged by the police in Yonkers, New York.

In 1996, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck and Johnnie Cochran established the law partnership Cochran Neufeld & Scheck, with a focus on representing plaintiffs victimized by the excessive force of state actors, those who were wrongfully convicted, and others who claimed their civil rights were violated by the police or the government.

[19] To date, 343 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 20 who served time on death row.

The Innocence Project's full-time staff attorneys and Cardozo Law School clinic students provide direct representation or critical assistance in most of these cases.

[20] Neufeld has lectured throughout the world on the causes of wrongful convictions and appropriate remedies and specifically on the fundamental lack of scientific rigor in much of forensic science.

Taslitz, "Promoting Accuracy in the Use of Confession Evidence: An Argument for Pre-Trial Reliability Assessments to Prevent Wrongful Convictions," Temple Law Review (2013).

Garrett & Neufeld, "Invalid Forensic Science Testimony and Wrongful Convictions," Virginia Law Review, Vol.

Hall & A. Vatner, "Bringing Reliability Back In: False Confessions and Legal Safeguards in the Twenty-First Century," Wisconsin Law Review, Vol.

Neufeld, "The Near Irrelevance of Daubert to Criminal Justice and Some Suggestions for Reform," American Journal of Public Health, Vol.

Neufeld & Scheck, "DNA and Innocence Scholarship," in Wrongly Convicted: Perspectives on Failed Justice, Rutgers University Press, Saundra Westervelt and John Humphrey, Eds., 2001.

Scheck, Neufeld & J. Dwyer, Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, And Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted, Doubleday, February, 2000.

Neufeld, "Admissibility of New or Novel Scientific Evidence in Criminal Cases," DNA Technology and Forensic Science, 32 Banbury Report, 1989.