It was revealed that California's 1st university-run...

It was revealed that California's 1st university-run clinic to represent death row inmates, part of a growing national trend to help provide better legal representation for the condemned, will open this year at Boalt Hall law school in Berkeley. With million-dollar backing from a pair of Silicon Valley death-penalty opponents, law school officials decided to launch the clinic because of mounting concerns about fairness in the capital punishment system and California's chronic shortage of lawyers who are qualified and willing to handle death row appeals. There are more than 580 inmates on California's death row, the largest in the nation. At least 150 of them are without lawyers.The Western School of Law in San Diego has also set up what advocates call an innocence project to handle appeals, including those of condemned inmates. The clinic is being funded by 2 valley-based death penalty opponents, entrepreneur Peter Davies and Nick McKeown, a Berkeley alumnus and now a Stanford University engineering and computer science professor. The 2 men have donated $1 million and plan to fund the clinic for 5 years.