A Legacy of Justice: Celebrating Tricia Rojo Bushnell’s Leadership

 

For the first time in 12 years, the Midwest Innocence Project will see new leadership at the top. Long-time Executive Director Tricia Rojo Bushnell is taking an opportunity to lead the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice.

 

Under Tricia’s leadership, 17 people returned to their loved ones, after a combined 392 years of wrongful incarceration. 

 

Tricia is usually quick to step out of the spotlight and shift focus to clients’ stories. Still, her impact on MIP as an organization, and the larger Midwest region, is undeniable. 

 

You don’t have to watch Tricia in a courtroom to know how fierce of a litigator and advocate she is. To be around her is to learn, to empathize, and to be inspired to action. Her intensity and conviction combine with a warmheartedness and generosity that have endeared her to her clients, colleagues, and MIP supporters. In her work at MIP, she hasn’t just been people’s attorney — she’s their family. She celebrates their birthdays, supports their businesses, and grieves the ones who have passed away. 

 

Tricia has also been instrumental in bringing the national — and even international — spotlight to MIP’s clients. She’s had guest appearances on CNN (The Lead), MSNBC (with Joy Reid), and Corruption Uncovered (a podcast series produced by Team Roc, Jay Z’s social justice organization). Other outlets, like Spanish newspaper El Pais, took interest in exonerations that happened under Tricia’s leadership, like Kevin Strickland.

 

Those platforms have been a boost to individual clients’ causes. But Tricia has also used those opportunities to educate the masses about root causes and policy failures that lead to wrongful conviction. 

 

Despite beginning law school — and continuing her career — knowing she wanted to be a litigator, Tricia increasingly recognized the importance of preemptive policy work. 

 

“I’m not one of the people that went to law school to do policy,” she said. “I was focused on litigation (at MIP at first), and then when the first person comes home and you see the issues that put them there in the first place … by the end of my time at MIP, I was doing a lot of policy work in all the different state houses across our region.” 

 

A focus on those front-end solutions rather than back-end fixes will now drive her work at the Quattrone Center. 

 

“(The Center) covers more than innocence cases and wrongful convictions. It’s about making the criminal legal system fair and reliable based upon objective data. It’s about the science of justice,” Tricia said. “Now is also an important time to remind everyone about the data that underpins the criminal legal system. Although policies change with administrations, we can all agree justice should rely on facts, not politics.”

 

Research shows that nearly half of the U.S. population is touched by incarceration, wrongful or otherwise. The policies that put those people behind bars is a core American issue — one that requires a lot of work in order to make it more fair.

 

“The latest studies say one in every two Americans has had an immediate family member who’s been incarcerated,” Tricia said. “So every single policy we’re talking about is impacting Americans. It’s about reminding people we all have these things in common, and why they’re important.”

 

By taking on the Quattrone Center role, Tricia felt she could make an even wider impact on the overall criminal legal landscape. 

 

But it was also the right time to step down at MIP: the organization is standing on its strongest foundation yet. 

 

Beyond those 17 clients’ freedom, one of the most important accomplishments of Tricia’s tenure was MIP’s internal growth. Since 2013, MIP has expanded from 4 full-time employees to a team of 17. That will be the team who will carry MIP’s work forward, under the leadership of new Executive Director Tahir Atwater. (Hear more from Tahir in June’s Dispatch article).  

 

“MIP is a solid, strong organization now filled with many experts on these issues in a way where MIP doesn’t need me,” Tricia said. “That feels really great, and I’m so proud of the team I’ve been able to work with. Watching them get phone calls from people around the country asking for their expertise is really incredible. And so I have no doubt MIP will continue doing great work. With that as a springboard, it makes it easy to say yes to an opportunity I think would allow me and the Quattrane Center to help more people.” 

 

Still, bittersweetness is unavoidable when leaving a position that’s as intertwined as Tricia and MIP have been for more than a decade. 

 

“There are no words I could ever give that will express how much I care about this community,” she said. “I’m so thankful for everyone who’s supported our work and our clients. If you had told me when I was moving here that Kevin Strickland and the work of our small organization would be on the cover of El Pais, I would be like, ‘What are you talking about?’ The whole world has cared so much. And even when we lost, and it was awful, you still knew everyone was with you.”

 

That community support, national attention, and internal organizational strength will all continue, even as Tricia moves on. The MIP team that she helped build will make sure of it — and Tricia will still be supporting from afar.

 

“I know the team is going to keep moving forward, and they’re going to educate so many interns and folks who come through,” she said. “To be a part of the legacy of success I know MIP is going to have is what I’m most proud of.”