Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic

This is a year-long clinic. Students are enrolled for four credits in the first semester and three credits in the second semester. Students may choose to enroll for additional semesters with permission of the instructor. Students meet twice weekly for scheduled seminars in addition to weekly team supervisions with the clinical professor and/or staff attorney to discuss their case work. Students also engage in intensive fieldwork outside of class time. A large portion of this time includes visiting incarcerated clients at prisons in Western and Upstate New York.  Clinic work also involves interviews with clients, clients’ family members, witnesses, attorneys, and community organizations; researching legal issues that arise in the client’s case; drafting correspondence; conducting investigations and discovery; reviewing case records; writing legal briefs or other advocacy documents; and—depending on the stage of the case—arguing the client’s case in court.

Students work in teams of two or more, and some projects may allow for collaboration with students from other law schools’ clinics. Student attorneys are expected to take the lead on their cases, under the supervision of the clinical professor and staff attorney. Student attorneys learn to build client relationships; interview witnesses; conduct investigation; develop mitigation evidence; work with experts; and engage in oral and written advocacy before the courts, parole boards, and legislature.

In addition to our work on the DVSJA, the clinic has launched a parole advocacy and reform project with significant assistance from the Tow Foundation. Students work with clients who are appearing before the Board of Parole and who are appealing a denial of parole. Student attorneys meet with their clients to prepare for their parole interviews and work together to compile a packet of materials in support of parole release. Where clients have been denied parole, students draft administrative appeals, as well as appeals that are filed with the Supreme Court and the Appellate Division. Multiple students have argued their clients' appeals before Justices of the Erie County Supreme Court.

The clinic has helped five clients obtain release on parole. All of them were serving indeterminate life sentences for second-degree murder, and with one exception, they all appeared at multiple hearings before they were released. Collectively, these clients had served more than a century in prison. In one instance, the client was released on parole at an early parole hearing granted for significant programmatic achievement while in prison. Such release at this first, early hearing is almost unheard of given the client’s conviction. In another case, the clinic helped a client win her administrative parole appeal after being denied parole. This win resulted in a new parole hearing after which the client was granted release. This client, who was 70 years old, had been incarcerated for almost three decades.