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School of Law students and faculty will address \u201ca historic blind spot in the judicial system\u201d with the support of a major grant awarded to the school\u2019s Advocacy Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The $53,125 grant from the American College of Trial Lawyers, which represents a major investment from that invitation-only advocates\u2019 group, will be used to support a revitalized Innocence and Justice Project, with an initial mandate to represent incarcerated clients who have suffered serious abuse and have received harsh prison sentences for actions related to that abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is a significant milestone,\u201d says trial attorney Terrence M. Connors \u201971, who chairs the Advocacy Institute\u2019s National Advisory Board, which includes four ACTL members. \u201cTheir approval of our grant application recognizes that our Innocence and Justice Project, an arm of our Advocacy Institute, is incredibly worthwhile and is consistent with the mission of their foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To take on this project, the Advocacy Institute will collaborate with a new Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic, where students can work under the direction of Alexandra Harrington, who joined the law school this semester as an associate professor, to identify, interview and represent clients \u2013 predominantly women \u2013 who are in prison after suffering serious abuse. The work is made possible by the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, enacted last year in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The legislation, which draws on new understandings of the psychological underpinnings of such violence, allows state Supreme Court judges to significantly reduce some survivors\u2019 prison sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSentencing is supposed to be holistic,\u201d Harrington says. \u201cIn practice, without this law that gives specific recognition to domestic violence survivors \u2014 or laws that give specific recognition to people who were kids at the time of the crime \u2014 mitigating factors weren\u2019t always getting fair shrift at sentencing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ACTL Foundation recognizes programs whose principal purpose is to maintain and improve the administration of justice. \u201cNew York State\u2019s new Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act addresses a historic blind spot in the judicial system: the failure to recognize that some survivors were convicted precisely because their abuse stripped them of the ability to participate effectively in their own defense,\u201d says foundation President Joan A. Lukey. \u201cKudos to the School of Law for its willingness to help identify and assist the incarcerated survivors who are now eligible for resentencing. The ACTL Foundation is pleased and privileged to provide seed money for this important initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anthony O\u2019Rourke, Joseph W. Belluck and Laura L. Aswad Professor of Civil Justice who directs the Advocacy Institute, will serve as co-counsel with Harrington. He says the need is great for this kind of work \u2014 and close at hand. \u201cThe state\u2019s largest prison for women is virtually at our back door, in Albion,\u201d he says, \u201cand there\u2019s little infrastructure at this point for representing clients from Buffalo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He says Legal Aid attorneys already have developed a list of their clients who could potentially seek relief. The Advocacy Institute, O\u2019Rourke says, looks forward to partnering with Legal Aid to take on some of these cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to direct representation of clients, O\u2019Rourke says students in the project will conduct research to understand the scope of the legal need, and develop creative litigation strategies as the justice system begins to implement the new law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe real goal,\u201d he says, \u201cis to ensure that the statute is interpreted in a way that is faithful to the Legislature\u2019s goal of addressing the years of injustice faced by survivors of domestic violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019Rourke says the grant will provide the resources necessary for \u201ceffective and meaningful litigation work,\u201d including paying investigators and expert witnesses, training and travel for the purpose of litigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are extremely grateful to the ACTL Foundation for funding this important work,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harrington, who worked with several legal clinics as a student and later a fellow at Yale Law School, says she\u2019s excited about engaging her Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic students in work under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of context and history and life that comes before this one event that we\u2019re capturing at sentencing,\u201d she says. \u201cThis law acknowledges that maybe the way that we sentence people and the way that we condemn people to spend decades of their life in prison is not, in fact, a fair and just way to treat human beings, and does not credit our complexity or our capacity for change.<\/p>\n