$15 Million Gift Is Biggest Ever Dedicated to Freeing Innocent Prisoners
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
September 14, 2016 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Cincinnati philanthropist Richard Rosenthal, a supporter of the Ohio Innocence Project since its inception, has made a $15 million gift to the nonprofit. It is believed to be the largest donation ever made to a program dedicated to securing the release of the wrongly convicted.
Since its founding in 2003, the nonprofit has helped win the freedom of 24 people who collectively served nearly 450 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.
“How can you not support something that truly saves people’s lives?” says Mr. Rosenthal, the former head of F&W Publications, a Cincinnati-based publisher of specialty books and magazines.
Mr. Rosenthal says he hopes the size of his gift, which he had originally planned to make through his estate, will inspire other philanthropists to support innocence projects in their communities.
Donor and Advisor
When University of Cincinnati law professor Mark Godsey and local attorney John Cranley, now the city’s mayor, launched the Ohio Innocence Project, they sent a letter to six prominent Cincinnati residents asking for help. One went to Mr. Rosenthal’s late wife, Lois, who met with the co-founders and got her husband involved.
In 2004, the couple made a $1 million gift to the University of Cincinnati College of Law to start the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Institute for Justice, the home of the Ohio Innocence Project.
But the couple’s support was about more than money, says Mr. Godsey, who directs the organization.
“Lois and Dick sort of adopted us,” he says. The longtime philanthropists coached the nonprofit novices on fundraising and spreading awareness of the group’s mission. Several times, for example, they sponsored plays at local theaters that addressed criminal-justice issues.
“They’ve been very heavily involved from day one,” says Mr. Godsey.
A Sister’s Gratitude
Mr. Rosenthal says working with the Ohio Innocence Project has been one of the most rewarding experiences of his life.
He chokes up when he talks about the letters he gets from the sister of Dean Gillespie, who was released from prison in 2011 after serving 20 years for a rape he did not commit. She writes every year, thanking Mr. Rosenthal for helping to make her family whole again.
“That I had a part in that,” he says, “is just a feeling that is inexplicable.”
