Photo by Charles Barry, Santa Clara University

Issue: Autumn 2004

Alumni Profile - Linda Starr

Innocence Found

A vision of law as a “wonderful tool for change” is what first attracted Linda Starr JD ’84 to a legal career more than two decades ago.

“I went to USC Law School to learn how to change things and make them better,” she says. So when client John Stoll, a Bakersfield, Calif., resident wrongfully convicted of child molestation, walked out of prison a free man in May after serving almost 20 years behind bars, Starr saw her vision realized.

As legal director of the Northern California Innocence Project, an organization that she co-founded with director Cookie Ridolfi in 2001, Starr has been instrumental in four exonerations, including Stoll’s. She and Ridolfi first took on the case in 2002 when a fellow lawyer referred them to Stoll’s cause. Collaborating with another group, the California Innocence Project, Starr, Ridolfi and their staff examined court records, trial testimony and other evidence in Stoll’s case.

“The more we learned, the more we were convinced of Stoll’s innocence,” says Starr, standing with a rested and rejuvenated Stoll. Photo by Charles Barry, Santa Clara University

“The more we learned, the more we were convinced of Stoll’s innocence,” says Starr. Two years of hard legal work culminated in a dramatic fifth-month hearing in which four of Stoll’s accusers, now grown men, recanted their childhood testimonies. A judge overturned all convictions.

For Starr, the road to such career fulfillment wasn’t easy. With a degree in entomology from Ohio State University, Starr entered USC Law School understanding more about ladybugs than litigation. “I didn’t know what torts were,” she says. “I thought they were something you ate, and here I was taking an entire course in them.”

Starr quickly found her sea legs. During her USC stint, she served as both class representative and class president and was heavily involved in the National Conference on Women and the Law, an alternative legal conference committed to social change and equity. In 1984, she was awarded the Loren Miller-Earl Johnson Award for her commitment to civil and social justice.

Starr’s legal career has included working for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, where among other duties she prosecuted sex crimes. She’s also done plenty of appellate work for indigent clients. But for the last two years, her full-time work and passion has been with the Northern California Innocence Project. At the moment, however, the project’s grant has ended, and she and Ridolfi are currently seeking major funding to stay afloat.

Starr sees an urgent need for the continuation of the program.

“If an innocent person has been convicted,” she says, “there’s no board to look at what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again…they just give the guy 20 bucks and send him on his way.” That’s why, when Stoll was released, Starr invited him to stay temporarily in her guesthouse. “Once we were responsible for getting him out,” says Starr, “we felt responsible for helping him get to the next stage of his life.”