Miscarriages of Justice

A Symposium on New Strategies for Wrongful Convictions

Home Projects Miscarriages of Justice: A Symposium on New Strategies for Wrongful Convictions

Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ
Friday, January 27, 2023 | 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

On Friday, Jan 27. 2023, the Academy for Justice hosted Miscarriages of Justice: A Symposium on New Strategies for Wrongful Convictions. The symposium featured a diverse group of practitioners and scholars including members of a working-group process who created the Miscarriages of Justice: Litigating Beyond Factual Innocence Guide. The Guide provides concrete and implementable guidance on miscarriage of justice claims with the hope of better positioning litigators and incarcerated individuals to advocate for greater relief from wrongful convictions. The symposium discussed the working group’s findings and recommendations and unveiled the guide itself.

Miscarriages of Justice: New Strategies for Wrongful Convictions, January 27, 2023, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Agenda

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Location: Room 544, ASU Law Beus Center for Law and Society

4:45 – 5:00 p.m.

Welcome; Debut Miscarriages of Justice: Litigating Beyond Factual Innocence – Professor Valena Beety

5:00 – 6:30 p.m.

Book Event – Violence Against Women in the Criminal Legal System

Valena Beety, Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights

Leigh Goodmark, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism

Victoria Law, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

0.75 CLE credit hours available – Arizona and California

Friday, January 27, 2023

Location: Great Hall, ASU Law Beus Center for Law and Society

8:00 – 8:15 a.m.

Light breakfast and registration

8:15 – 8:30 a.m.

Welcome

8:30 – 9:20 a.m.

Panel 1 – Introducing Miscarriages of Justice: Litigating Beyond Factual Innocence

  • Valena Beety, Professor of Law, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice
  • Lisa Kavanaugh, Director of the Innocence Program at Committee for Public Counsel Services, Massachusetts
  • Karen Newirth, Founder and Principle, Newirth Law, PLLC
  • Karen Thompson, Civil Rights Attorney, ACLU New Jersey

0.75 CLE credit hours available – Arizona and California

9:30 – 10:20 a.m.

Panel 2 – Prosecutors, Conviction Integrity Units, and Miscarriage of Justice Claims

Moderator: Valena Beety, Professor of Law, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice

Panelists

  • Cynthia Garza, Chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit, Dallas County District Attorney’s Office
  • Emily Maw, Chief of the Civil Rights Division, Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office
  • Valerie Newman, Chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit, Wayne County (Detroit)
  • Carrie Sperling, Director of the Conviction Review Unit, MN Attorney General’s Office

0.75 CLE credit hours available – Arizona and California

10:30 – 11:00 a.m.

Networking break

11:00 – 12:00 p.m.

Panel 3 – Defense Attorneys and Litigating Miscarriage of Justice Claims

Moderator: Lisa Kavanaugh, Director of the Innocence Program at Committee for Public Counsel Services, Massachusetts

Panelists

  • Stephanie Roberts Hartung, Senior Attorney, New England Innocence Project
  • David Loftis, Attorney-In-Charge, Post-Conviction and Forensic Litigation, Legal Aid Society
  • Vanessa Potkin, Director of Special Litigation, Innocence Project
  • Cheryl Wattley, Professor of Law, Director of the Joyce Ann Brown Innocence Clinic, UNT Dallas College of Law

1.0 CLE credit hours available – Arizona and California

12:15 – 1:30 p.m.

Lunch and Keynote Speaker Rachael S. Rollins, United States Attorney, District of Massachusetts

1.0 CLE credit hour available – Arizona and California

1:40 – 2:30 p.m.

Panel 4 – The Power of Two: Coalitions and Incorporating Innocence Work at Trial Level Advocacy

Moderator: Karen Thompson, Civil Rights Attorney, ACLU New Jersey

Panelists

  • Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Executive Director of the Midwest Innocence Project
  • Jennifer Sellitti, Director of Training & Communications for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender

0.75 CLE credit hours available – Arizona and California

2:40 – 3:15 p.m.

Group brainstorming session led by Valena Beety and Karen Thompson

3:15 – 4:15 p.m.

Panel 5 – Judges and Miscarriage of Justice Claims

Moderator: Sharon Beckman, Associate Clinical Professor & Director of the Boston College Innocence Program, Boston College Law

Panelists

  • Barbara Hervey, Justice, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
  • Geraldine Hines, Associate Justice for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (Retired)
  • Kathe Tuttman, Associate Justice, Massachusetts Superior Court (Retired)

1.0 CLE credit hours available – Arizona and California

4:15 – 4:30 p.m.

Closing


CLE Materials

Book Event – Violence Against Women in the Criminal Legal System, Jan. 26, 2023


Miscarriages of Justice: A Symposium on New Strategies for Wrongful Convictions, Jan. 27, 2023


Event Speakers

Sharon Beckman headshot

Sharon Beckman

Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Boston College Innocence Program

Professor Sharon Beckman teaches Wrongful Convictions and leads the BC Innocence Program, a year-long post-conviction investigation, litigation, and policy reform clinic. She serves on the Supreme Judicial Court Standing Committee on Eyewitness Identification, the state-wide Conviction Integrity Working Group, and the Ethics and Best Practice Committee of the Innocence Network.

An honors graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Prof. Beckman was Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review. She served as a law clerk to the Hon. Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States and to Hon. Frank Coffin of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Prior to joining the BC Law faculty, she practiced criminal defense and civil litigation with Silverglate & Gertner in Boston and Jenner & Block in Chicago. Prof. Beckman has also taught the BC Defender criminal defense trial clinic and courses in criminal law and procedure, constitutional law, and the Supreme Court.

A former Captain of the Harvard Women’s Swimming and Water Polo teams, Beckman was the first New England woman to swim across the English Channel and was ranked first in the United States and third in the world among female marathon swimmers. She is a nationally ranked U.S. Masters swimmer.

Valeena Beety headshot

Valena Beety

Professor of Law, Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice

Valena Elizabeth Beety is professor of law at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the deputy director of the Academy for Justice, a criminal justice center connecting research with policy reform.  Previously, Beety served as a law professor and the founding director of the West Virginia Innocence Project at the West Virginia University College of Law. Her experiences as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and as an innocence litigator in Mississippi and West Virginia, shape her research and writing on wrongful convictions, forensic evidence, the opioid crisis and incarceration. She is the co-editor of the Wrongful Convictions Reader and the Scientific Evidence Treatise. Professor Beety has successfully exonerated wrongfully convicted clients, obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses, and served as an elected board member of the national Innocence Network, an invited board member of the Research Center on Violence, and an appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission. 

Read more about Valena Beety.

Tricia Bushnell headshot

Tricia Rojo Bushnell

Executive Director, Midwest Innocence Project

Tricia Rojo Bushnell is the Executive Director of the Midwest Innocence Project, which works to free innocent people convicted of crimes they did not commit. She is responsible for managing all aspects of MIP and serves as its lead attorney, representing clients in court and in clemency proceedings. Tricia believes in the power of community and what we can achieve together and is honored to serve as the current president of the Innocence Network, an affiliation of 68 innocence organizations around the country and the world.

A California native of Mexican descent, Tricia is the first in her family to go to college, receiving her B.A. from Bucknell University and her J.D. from NYU School of Law. She approaches problems with the belief that representation matters and that the solutions to problems must come from those directly impacted. She has engaged this philosophy in her previous work as an assistant clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, a fellow with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama, and an associate at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis in Los Angeles. She has also served as the president of the ACLU of Missouri and on the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s Diverse Business Committee.

Outside of work, Tricia loves exploring new destinations on foot or by bike, and you can catch her sipping coffee and eating gluten-free pastries at her favorite coffee shops around Kansas City.

Cynthia Garza headshot

Cynthia Garza

Chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit, Dallas County District Attorney’s Office

Cynthia R. Garza is the Special Fields Bureau Chief of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office’s and Chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU).  Ms. Garza graduated magna cum laude with a double undergraduate degree in Sociology and Psychology, with distinction, from Southern Methodist University in 2001.  She received her law degree in 2004 from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. 

Ms. Garza established her own law firm after graduation and later joined a criminal defense firm where she honed her skills in appellate and post-conviction criminal defense.  Ms. Garza joined the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office’s Appellate Division in 2008 and joined the Conviction Integrity Unit in January 2010.  Ms. Garza served as Acting Chief of the Unit for 10 months before being named the Chief of the CIU in July 2017.  She has been involved in a significant percentage of the Unit’s exonerations. 

Read more about Cynthia Garza.

Leigh Goodmark headshot

Leigh Goodmark

Marjorie Cook Professor of Law and Co-Director, Clinical Law Program

Leigh Goodmark (she/hers) is the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Frances King Carey School of Law. Professor Goodmark co-directs the Clinical Law Program, teaches Family Law, Gender and the Law, and Gender Violence and the Law, and directs the Gender Violence Clinic. Professor Goodmark’s scholarship focuses on intimate partner violence. She is the author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (University of California Press 2023); Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence (University of California Press 2018), and A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System (New York University 2012), which was named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of 2012. She is the co-editor of Comparative Perspectives on Gender Violence: Lessons from Efforts Worldwide (Oxford 2015). Professor Goodmark’s work on intimate partner violence has also appeared in numerous journals, law reviews, and publications, including Violence Against Women, the New York Times, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Harvard Journal on Gender and the Law, and the Yale Journal on Law and Feminism. From 2003 to 2014, Professor Goodmark was on the faculty at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she served as Director of Clinical Education and Co-director of the Center on Applied Feminism. From 2000 to 2003, Professor Goodmark was the Director of the Children and Domestic Violence Project at the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law. Before joining the Center on Children and the Law, Professor Goodmark represented clients in the District of Columbia in custody, visitation, child support, restraining order, and other civil matters. Professor Goodmark is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law School.

Stephanie Roberts Hartung headshot

Stephanie Roberts Hartung

Senior Attorney, New England Innocence Project

Prior to joining NEIP in 2022, Stephanie was a law professor in Boston for 19 years. As a faculty member at Suffolk and Northeastern Law Schools, she taught courses focusing on lawyering skills, wrongful convictions, appellate advocacy, and social justice. Her research and scholarship focused on wrongful convictions and criminal procedure. For the last ten years, Stephanie has also served on NEIP’s Board of Trustees, and has authored multiple amicus briefs and law review articles on issues relating to DNA testing, flawed forensic evidence, and the “confluence of factors” approach to post-conviction review of innocence claims. Before joining academia, she worked as a public defender in California, where she advocated for indigent people charged with criminal offenses. She brings a wealth of experience and passion to her new role at NEIP.

Barbara Hervey headshot

Barbara Hervey

Justice, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Judge Barbara Parker Hervey was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in November 2000. A native of New Jersey, Judge Hervey earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975 from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and her J.D. in 1979 from St. Mary’s University School of Law, where she is currently an Adjunct Professor and a past recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award. Prior to becoming a judge, Judge Hervey was in private practice for 5 years with the Law Office of M.M. Pena, Jr. of San Antonio. She was also an Assistant Criminal District Attorney in the appellate section of the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office for 16 years. Judge Hervey has been an author and speaker for over 150 lectures and legal seminars, served on the Governor’s Ad Hoc Committee to Rewrite the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, supervised continuing legal education training for attorneys in the D.A.’s Office, served as a Faculty Member of the National College of District Attorneys, and co-authored The Appellate Prosecutor: “Professional Responsibility on Appeal.”

Read more about Judge Barbara Hervey.

Geraldine Hines headshot

Geraldine Hines

Associate Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (Retired)

Geraldine S. Hines was born in Scott, Mississippi and grew up in the Mississippi Delta. She graduated from Tougaloo College in 1968 and the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1971. Upon graduation she became a staff attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, engaging in prisoner’s rights litigation, and then, from 1973 to 1977 practiced criminal law with the Roxbury Defenders’ Committee in positions of progressively greater responsibility culminating as the Director of the Committee.

Read more about the Honorable Geraldine Hines.

Lisa Kavanaugh headshot

Lisa Kavanaugh

Director of the Innocence Program at Committee for Public Counsel Services, Massachusetts

Lisa M. Kavanaugh is the director of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) Innocence Program, a unit of the statewide public defender agency in Massachusetts that identifies innocence cases and provides litigation support and funding for the investigation and expert resources needed. In addition to litigating cases and administering Innocence Program resources, Ms. Kavanaugh is actively involved in developing statewide training programs on flawed forensic evidence and other leading causes of wrongful convictions. In 2013, she formed a Working Group of criminal justice leaders to improve access to post-conviction DNA analysis and reform evidence handling practices. A frequent lecturer at local and national CLE training programs, she has also served as a Visiting Lecturer of Law at Harvard Law School, an Adjunct Professor with the Boston College Law School Innocence Clinic, and training faculty member for trial skills programs at Harvard Law School. She presently serves on the Supreme Judicial Court’s Standing Committee on Eyewitness Identification and heads the Running for Innocence Program.

Victoria Law headshot

Victoria Law

Journalist, Author

Victoria Law is a freelance journalist and author. Her books include Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press 2009), Prison By Any Other Name:The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reform (New Press 2020), and “Prisons Make Us Safer” and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration (Beacon Press 2021). She frequently writes about the intersections between mass incarceration, gender and resistance.

Victoria has over ten years of experience working with writers to shape and revise their works for publication. She is the co-editor of Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities (PM Press 2012) and has worked with other published authors to ensure that their ideas are clearly articulated in ways that engage a wide range of readers.

From 2003 to 2020, she has edited Tenacious: Art and Writings by Women in Prison. She has also worked with incarcerated women to develop their writings for other publications.

David Loftis headshot

David Loftis

Attorney-In-Charge, Post-Conviction and Forensic Litigation, Legal Aid Society

David Loftis is the Attorney-in-Charge of Post-Conviction and Forensic Litigation at the Legal Aid Society, New York City’s primary public defender service.  David heads multiple units and bureaus in this role, including the Criminal Appeals Bureau and the Parole Revocation Defense Unit.  David also oversees Legal Aid’s DNA and Digital Forensics Units, each of which have grown during his tenure to be the premier public defense forensic practices in the country.  Lastly David heads Legal Aid’s Wrongful Conviction Unit.

Prior to joining the Legal Aid Society in 2016, David spent 10 years as the Managing Attorney at the Innocence Project, where he supervised attorneys working to exonerate innocent clients and spearheaded the organization’s amicus curiae practice throughout the country.  A 1990 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, David has spent his career defending poor and underserved people.  His work includes serving as a commissioner on the New York State Commission on Forensic Science; serving as a clerk to the Commission of Inquiry in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he investigated the treatment of prisoners detained by the African National Congress; and serving as a public defender in Manhattan and the Bronx. David is a life-long New Yorker who raised two children in the City and pulls for the Brooklyn Nets, always.

Emily Maw headshot

Emily Maw

Chief of the Civil Rights Division, Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office

Emily Maw has been the Chief of Civil Rights Division in the office of Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams since it was created in January 2021. Previously, Emily worked with Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) for 16 ½ years, serving as its director for 13 of those. IPNO represents innocent prisoners serving life sentences in Louisiana and Mississippi. She also worked for Chief Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson on the Louisiana Supreme Court and spent four years as an intern and investigator on capital cases in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. She has served on the Board of Directors of The Innocence Network, the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Louisiana Justice Coalition and Resurrection After Exoneration, the first exoneree-led, prisoner re-entry program in the country. Emily was a Petra Foundation Fellow, a Phillips Brooks House Fellow at Harvard College and was named Edinburgh University’s Alumnus of the Year in 2007. Emily received her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Edinburgh and her Juris Doctor from Tulane Law School, where she has more recently been serving as adjunct faculty for several years. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, two ridiculous daughters, and more chickens than her husband believes they need.

Valerie Newman heashot

Valerie Newman

Director, Conviction Integrity Unit, Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office

Valerie Newman graduated from Wayne State University Law School. She began her career as an attorney with the State Appellate Defender Office where she practiced for over 23 years. She argued hundreds of cases before the Michigan and federal courts. She has been a regularly featured speaker at the Michigan appellate bench-bar conferences, law schools and other groups. She frequently taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School for over 15 years. She has trained, supervised and mentored new attorneys and law students for decades and has advocated for women’s rights and the professional development of women throughout her career.

In November 2017 Ms. Newman was hired as the Director of the newly created Conviction Integrity Unit of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. In this position Ms. Newman is working to strengthen the criminal justice system by investigating claims of wrongful conviction. In the three years that the Unit has been in existence it has received over 1500 requests for investigation. With a small staff of highly experienced attorneys and investigators, the Unit has reviewed over 500 cases and granted relief to 26 men, most of whom were serving mandatory life sentences. The work of the Unit has been positively featured in the New York Times, CNN, the New Republic and other publications – print, radio and television.

Read more about Valerie Newman.

Vanessa Potkin

Vanessa Potkin

Director of Special Litigation, Innocence Project

Vanessa Potkin is the Director of Special Litigation at the Innocence Project where she handles the Project ‘s complex exoneration litigation, with a focus on wrongful convictions based on faulty pathology and medical evidence as well as police misconduct and the cases of innocent individuals who have been sentenced to death. She joined the Project in 2000 as its first staff attorney, and has helped pioneer the model of post-conviction litigation used nationwide to exonerate wrongfully convicted persons. From 2015 to 2020, Vanessa led the team of attorneys responsible for the Innocence Project’s exoneration litigation, overseeing a state and federal docket of approximately 200 cases. Vanessa has represented and exonerated over 30 innocent individuals, from Louisiana to Nevada, who collectively served over 500 years of wrongful imprisonment, five of whom were originally prosecuted for capital murder. A nationally recognized expert on wrongful convictions and their systemic causes, she regularly serves on justice tasks forces and is consulted by attorneys, judicial and legislative committees, and media outlets. Vanessa developed and executive produced along with Viola Davis, the docu-series “The Last Defense” for ABC – examining the cases of two innocent individuals currently on death row.

Rachael Rollins headshot

Rachael S. Rollins

United States Attorney, District of Massachusetts

Rachael S. Rollins is the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. Nominated by President Joseph R. Biden on July 26, 2021 and confirmed by the United States Senate on December 8, 2021, Ms. Rollins is the chief federal law enforcement officer for the District of Massachusetts and the first Black woman to ever hold the position. The United States Attorney’s Office she now leads wasfounded in 1789, making it one of the oldest in our Country.

Prior to her confirmation, Ms. Rollins served as Suffolk County District Attorney (DA) for three years. She was the first woman to ever be elected DA in Suffolk County (Boston) and the first woman of color to ever hold the position of DA in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In that short time period, Ms. Rollins was responsible for undoing over 400 years of wrongful convictions.

Read more about Rachael Rollins.

Jennifer Sellitti headshot

Jennifer Sellitti

Director of Training & Communications, New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD)

Jennifer Sellitti is Director of Training & Communications for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), where she is responsible for teaching trial advocacy and substantive law to defenders in all the agency’s practice areas. She works on special projects that impact OPD clients including police accountability, jury selection reform, and pretrial justice reform. Jennifer created OPD’s Forensic Science Workgroup and oversees the agency’s burgeoning forensic practice. She serves as the agency’s media spokesperson and works to promote public policy issues. Jennifer also represents people charged with serious felonies at trial and advocates at resentencing hearings on behalf people serving lengthy sentences for crimes committed as juveniles.

Read more about Jennifer Sellitti.

Carrie Sperling headshot

Carrie Sperling

Director of the Conviction Review Unit, MN Attorney General’s Office

After spending more than two decades litigating on behalf of wrongly convicted clients, Carrie Sperling joined the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office to direct new Conviction Integrity Unit. Most recently, Sperling was a clinical professor, directing the Wisconsin Innocence Project at University of Wisconsin Law School. She and her students litigated cases that produced exonerations for innocent clients. Sperling was also a member of the clinical faculty at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University. She directed the Arizona Justice Project, where she led a unique collaboration between the Justice Project and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to provide Arizona inmates access to DNA testing.

Karen Thompson headshot

Karen Thompson

Civil Rights Attorney, ACLU New Jersey

Karen Thompson is a Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU of New Jersey. Ms. Thompson works on a wide range of issues, both civil and criminal, with a particular focus on racial inequality. She litigates in trial and appellate courts and advocates in an array of venues, including state agencies, school districts and municipalities.

Prior to joining the ACLU-NJ, she was a senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project, where she successfully represented clients in post-conviction and appellate proceedings, winning several motions for DNA testing and vacating the wrongful convictions of clients in Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, Arkansas and Pennsylvania. Ms. Thompson was previously the Director of Scholarship Programs at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, where she advanced and modernized the programs for students interested in pursuing racial equity and social justice. As an associate at Morrison & Foerster and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, she represented criminal defendants and asylum seekers as part of her rigorous pro bono practice.

Ms. Thompson is an adjunct professor at Rutgers School of Law, where she co-teaches a constitutional and civil rights clinic. She was named by the New Jersey Law Journal as the 2021 New Jersey Attorney of the Year.

Kathe Tuttman

Kathe M. Tuttman

Associate Justice, Massachusetts Superior Court (Retired)

Hon. Kathe M. Tuttman was appointed as an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court in 2006, and served for fifteen years, until her retirement in 2021. During her tenure, she served as the Regional Administrative Justice for criminal matters in Middlesex County, Chair of the Superior Court Judicial Education Committee, and Chair of the Superior Court’s Model Jury Instructions Committee. She was a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Model Homicide Instructions Committee and the Trial Court’s J2J Peer Mentoring Advisory Committee and Domestic and Sexual Violence Task Force. Judge Tuttman established a Changing Lives Through Literature reading incentive program for probationers in Middlesex Superior Court, which continues to run twice each year, and has many successful graduates. Since her retirement, Judge Tuttman has served as a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Conviction Integrity Task Force. Prior to her judicial appointment, Judge Tuttman was an Assistant District Attorney for Essex County, Massachusetts, where she prosecuted major felony cases and headed the Family Crimes and Sexual Assault Unit. She is a graduate of Suffolk University Law School and Brandeis University. She lives in Andover, Massachusetts with her husband, Alan Tuttman, a criminal defense attorney. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Cheryl Brown Wattley headshot

Cheryl Brown Wattley

Professor of Law, Director of the Joyce Ann Brown Innocence Clinic, UNT Dallas College of Law

Professor Cheryl Brown Wattley joined the inaugural faculty of the UNT Dallas College of Law from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where she served on the faculty from 2006 through 2013 and was Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Education. Professor Wattley teaches Criminal Law in the first-year curriculum. She also teaches the upper level courses, The Trial Process and Courtroom Advocacy. Professor Wattley serves as the Director of Experiential Education overseeing the law school’s externship program; the Community Lawyering Centers; the Joyce Ann Brown Innocence Clinic; and the law school’s Community Engagement Program. Professor Wattley graduated from Smith College, cum laude, with high honors in Sociology. She received her Juris Doctorate degree from Boston University College of Law, where she was a Martin Luther King, Jr. fellow and recipient of the Community Service Award.

Read more about Cheryl Brown Wattley.


Book Event: Violence Against Women in the Criminal Legal System