One of my most memorable experiences as a law student

During winter break of my first year as a law student at Notre Dame, I participated in a program called Group Alternative Live-In Legal Education, and better known as “GALILEE.” GALILEE is a unique, one-credit course during which law students form small groups and select a city in the United States, then schedule a number of visits to various organizations, with the goal of gaining a better understanding for different types of public interest and public service legal work. During the visits, students generally have the opportunity for one-on-one discussion with attorneys who have experience in these fields. Examples of organizations visited often include the offices of public defenders, county courthouses, legal aid offices, immigration law clinics, non-profit organizations that offer some element of legal assistance and pro bono divisions of for-profit law firms. The program is a great chance for law students to get a feel for different potential career paths early on in their legal education and to get a first-hand understanding of the need for social justice work in our legal system nationwide.

My GALILEE group visited a number of legal organizations in Chicago. While I really enjoyed each experience, and learned a lot about some areas of law and career options I had never really considered before, there was one visit that will always stick out in my mind as being especially memorable and meaningful. We started one of our days off with a visit to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, at the Northwestern University School of Law (http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/). The Center on Wrongful Convictions is akin to what many people know as an “innocence project,” and, by its own assertion, is dedicated to work that seeks to “reform the criminal justice system” and “to identifying and rectifying wrongful convictions and other serious miscarriages of justice.” (http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/aboutus/). These objectives are primarily achieved through representation of inmates in post-conviction efforts, research on the causes of wrongful convictions, and policy reforms aimed at minimizing future wrongful convictions. The Center is run by a number of staff attorneys who supervise and work with Northwestern law students, as well as pro bono attorneys. Second and third year law students at Northwestern have the opportunity to enroll in the Center as a clinical course, and gain a hands-on experience, reinvestigating crimes, speaking to clients, reviewing evidence, drafting briefs and other legal documents, and appearing in court, among many other things.

In addition to the staff and student attorneys, the Center also benefits from volunteers. Following an introduction from several staff members at the Center, my GALILEE group then sat down for a talk from a woman who was a volunteer there at the time. In a calm and very well-spoken manner, this woman proceeded to walk us through one of the most horrifying things that could happen to a person, detailing her recollection of a brutal physical attack and forcible sexual assault she had endured many years earlier. She stated that she remembered during the attack her promise to herself to remember every detail of the man who was responsible, so that she could help police find him and prosecute him. She explained the many times during the course of the criminal case against this man where she was required to provide descriptions, and that she felt confident in her memory and description each time. She told us how the man was eventually found guilty of her assault, and imprisoned. Then she told us about how, after the man had already served well over a decade of his sentence, advancements in testing of DNA evidence established that this man was not, as she had long believed, her assailant. The woman told us of her shock in learning of this development, and the many emotions she experienced as a result. She was so honest in her descriptions, and I will never forget her telling us how she encountered the man who she had believed for so long had hurt her, and apologized to him, asking his forgiveness, which he granted and they shared a hug. She went on to discuss the possible reasons for her own, and many other, incorrect eyewitness accounts which have contributed to wrongful convictions over the years, and how this experience inspired her to become a victim advocate and participate in the efforts of the Center and other “innocence projects” to rectify and prevent wrongful criminal convictions across the United States.

Most memorable about this discussion, however, was the woman’s comments at the end of our talk. She told us that the man who had wrongly served an 18 year prison sentence was back in prison, this time for the murder of a young woman. She said that the whole situation really raised some of the fundamental issues surrounding wrongful convictions. On the one hand, it was possible that the 18 years that this man spent behind bars had actually prevented him from committing other crimes during that period. On the other, it is also possible that spending 18 years in prison cultivated violent tendencies or otherwise contributed to the commission of later crimes after he was released. She didn’t comment much more on the specifics, but reiterated that these are reasons that wrongful conviction work is so important to our criminal justice system and society.

Years later, while watching the popular and controversial Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, I heard the very same story that I had hear from this woman during my GALILEE visit to the Northwestern Law School Center on Wrongful Convictions. The woman volunteer that I had been privileged to meet with during my GALILEE visit was Penny Beernsten, the victim of the sexual assault which resulted in the wrongful conviction of Steven Avery, who is the subject of the documentary series. While it was incredible to recognize such a significant personal connection to the series, I found myself drawn most of all to my memories of Ms. Beernsten as an advocate and volunteer at the Center. Her courage and strength, and desire to invoke positive changes in the social and justice systems in our country, arising out of terrible tragedies such as sexual assaults and wrongful convictions, is something that wasn’t captured by the documentary series. I am all the more grateful for my visit to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, and the opportunity to hear Ms. Beernsten speak, and hope that others who may have watched Making a Murderer, or other true crime television series, keep in mind that these types of shows, while designed primarily for entertainment, also present serious issues which continue to surround our criminal justice system nationwide.