Voices of the Innocent: Dreams of Freedom
September 10, 2025
6 PM | City Winery, Boston, MA

Voices of the Innocent: Dreams of Freedom is the New England Innocence Project's biggest annual storytelling event and fundraiser. Featuring the stories of those most impacted, Voices of the Innocent creates a unique opportunity to bring our community together in our fight against injustice. Help us raise $450,000 to free more people in the year ahead and ensure that the Exoneree Network can support families rebuilding in freedom. With your support, we can build on our twenty years of fighting for freedom, sustain this work in the years ahead, and create a future for all of us.

Funds raised through this event directly support the work of the New England Innocence Project by providing forensic testing, investigation, experts, an experienced legal team, and social service advocates to free innocent people, bring them home to their loved ones, and help them rebuild their lives in freedom. With your help, we can also educate and advocate for systemic change to prevent future tragedies.

2025 Voices of the Innocent Honoree

This year, we celebrate a man whose relentless support of a wrongfully convicted woman made her dreams of freedom come true and whose support of the New England Innocence Project for nearly a decade has helped us realize the dreams of so many others fighting for freedom. It is our distinct honor to present the 2024 ARC OF JUSTICE award to:

Al Kaneb

Al Kaneb is a quiet leader, creating lasting impact and impressions without seeking (and indeed, rejecting) recognition for his many contributions. His leadership in business is known, but his leadership in supporting individuals and community organizations, both local and international, is often unseen except to those of us who witness it first-hand.

When Al learned about Nancy Wagner, a woman wrongfully convicted of murder in Massachusetts and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, Al became a fierce advocate for her freedom. His relentless support of Nancy, both during and after her thirty years of incarceration, has made a profound impact on her. Al has also been instrumental in ensuring the strength and stability of the New England Innocence Project, becoming a trusted advisor in some of the most difficult times and helping NEIP grow to what it is today.

Al is beloved and revered by his four adult children, 17 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. He has touched the lives of so many he knows, as well as many he does not, across New England and the world. Through his persistent and generous spirit, Al continues to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

About the New England Innocence Project
We free innocent people from prison, support families impacted by incarceration, and
fight to end the oppressive harms of the criminal legal system throughout New England.