Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Mississippi Innocence Project, Part 2

Following up on my post yesterday, here is a link to an article in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger about last night's Mississippi Innocence Project fundraiser. The article provides additional information about the dinner and the Innocence Project, and it reports that John Grisham and Scott Turow will be speaking on Wednesday, October 24, at my alma mater, Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. (See link to event notice here.) It's also worth noting that my former Professor Larry Marshall, now at Stanford, was also involved (along with Scott Turow) in the Jeanine Nicarico case (see my previous post). Marshall served as counsel for defendant Rolando Cruz.

With high profile scholars, practitioners and celebrities involved in the Innocence Project nationwide, and with dedicated personnel and supporters on the ground here in Mississippi, I sincerely hope that leverage can be brought to bear in Mississippi on the subject of wrongful convictions. Historically, the subject has not been a high profile issue here.

For a striking recent image from Mississippi's sole maximum security prison, Parchman Penitentiary, see this link. For more information about Parchman, which is a work farm, see here. Parchman is where wrongfully convicted Cedric Willis (see my last post) served time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It appears as if the University of Alabama School of Law may actually ban laptop use in classrooms. There is a committee meeting this week to vote on the policy.

As for now students have been reminded of the current policy:

The current policy permits laptop use in class, but gives faculty members the freedom to adopt their own guidelines. Several solutions have been proposed including:

· A no-laptop policy: a ban of laptop use (in-class)

· Honor Code Violation: any non-authorized laptop use will constitute an honor code violation; likewise, failure to report a fellow student’s non-authorized laptop use will also constitute an honor code violation

· Absence: professor may mark students absent for non-authorized laptop use

· Grade Deduction: professors may lower students grades for non-authorized laptop use


I figured this would be timely to your blog. I'll post more as I hear it.