The Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Experience

Instruction

General Information

• Required Orientation
• Time
• Conflicts of Interest
• Investigation

Open House

Selection Criteria/
Application Process

Current Students

**SUPPLEMENTAL** APPLICATION

The Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic (CDPAC) offers students an intensive experience in indigent criminal defense and prisoner advocacy in the District of Columbia.  Through client representation, classroom lectures and discussion, simulations and exercises, small group “case rounds,” and individual supervision meetings, students will obtain a rich understanding of the culture and ethics of indigent criminal defense, and develop expertise in criminal trial advocacy and the representation of prisoners in administrative proceedings.      

We live in a time of mass incarceration.  The United States currently incarcerates a greater percentage of its citizens than anywhere else on earth—a total of 2.3 million people.  The US has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.  When you include probation and parole, there are 7.3 million people under the control of our criminal justice system, or 1 in every 31 adults.  Unfortunately, those who initially manage to avoid incarceration through probation often wind up serving time.  Those who get out on parole often return to prison.  Moreover, our incarceration practices have a disproportionate impact on certain populations.  According to recent figures, one in two young African American men is either in jail or prison or on probation or parole in the District of Columbia.   

Students in the Clinic represent ­indigent defendants facing trial in misdemeanor cases in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia, and those convicted of crime in parole and probation hearings. Caseloads are flexible and attuned more to the quality of cases than to quantity, but the expectation is that students will maintain a caseload of at least two cases and a special ongoing “project” at any given time.  Students are appointed to cases in the Superior Court at preliminary arraignment.  The most common pretrial charges include ­­assault, threats, drug possession, theft, unlawful entry, destruction of property, and minor weapons offenses.  Students “first chair” these cases (act as lead counsel), supervised by Clinic faculty and fellows.  Students in the Clinic also represent clients in parole revocation hearings before the U.S. Parole Commission.  Parole cases, which include serious felonies, are assigned by the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS), and supervised by attorneys in the agency’s Parole Division.  Students first chair these cases as well.  Students also act as lead counsel in representing misdemeanor clients in probation violation (“show cause”) hearings in the Superior Court under the supervision of Clinic faculty and fellows.           

Clinic students are expected to take on an additional project to enrich and broaden their clinical experience, and to help fill a need in the community.  The projects include:  working on a parole, clemency, or pardon application for a long-serving DC prisoner; working with a recently released prisoner on re-entry issues; contributing to an amicus brief on prison conditions; and creating a student-run legal or educational project for prisoners.

The abiding principle of clinical legal education is that students learn best—in the deepest and most engaged way—when theory is applied in practice, and students reflect on their role as lawyers in the broader context of law and society.  During the school year, the Clinic meets for class twice each week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:30-5:30 p.m.  Through a wide range of readings—case law, trial advocacy manuals, legal ethics treatises, law review articles, timely magazine and newspaper articles, literature, poetry, and cartoons—coupled with the regular use of movie and television clips, classes focus on topics such as the role and professional responsibilities of a criminal defense attorney; broader systemic issues (racism, poverty, violence, drug addiction, mental illness, the reliance on mass incarceration over any other anti-crime strategy); pretrial skills (interviewing, counseling, investigation, negotiation, and developing a case theory); trial skills (opening statements, closing arguments, witness examination); sentencing advocacy (developing a sentencing theory, collecting supporting materials, and drafting and delivering an effective sentencing argument); and the law of evidence, criminal procedure, parole, and probation in the District of Columbia.

Before the year is over, students will have inter­viewed and counseled clients, investigated cases, drafted and argued motions, examined witnesses, made bail and sentencing arguments, and in some instances conducted complete trials.  Because each case is unique, and many factors are beyond our control, we ­cannot promise that every student will have a trial.  However, it is expected that most students will conduct a suppression hearing (challenging police conduct on constitutional grounds), many will have a probation violation (“show cause”) hearing (challenging probation officer testimony and engaging in sentencing advocacy), and every student will conduct a parole revocation hearing (examining witnesses and making argument).  Moreover, every student will have an opportunity to devote themselves to an interesting prisoner advocacy project of their choosing. 

Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic students accept full respon­sibility for their cases.  Part of that responsibility is making effective use of the experienced lawyers and teachers whose role is to ensure both that students benefit from an ex­traordi­nary educational experience and clients benefit from extraordinary representation.  The students will be intensively supervised by Professor Abbe Smith, Visiting Professor Vida Johnson, Prettyman Fellows Jacob Howard and Cassandra Snyder, and attorneys from the PDS Parole Division.  Professional inves­tigator Lindsey Dressler oversees all Clinic investigation.

Working with poor people accused or convicted of crime is often exhilarating, sometimes grueling, and never boring.  For some, it is life changing.

Professor Abbe Smith is Director of the Clinic, Co-Director of the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program, and Professor of Law.  She joined the Georgetown faculty in 1996.  Prior to coming to Georgetown, Professor Smith was the Deputy Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, where she was also a Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law.  In addition to Georgetown and Harvard, Professor Smith has taught at City University New York Law School, Temple University School of Law, American University Washington College of Law, and the University of Melbourne Law School, where she was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2005-06.  Professor Smith teaches and writes in the areas of criminal defense, legal ethics, juvenile justice, and clinical legal education.  In addition to law journal articles, she is the author of Case of a Lifetime: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Story (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), co-author with Monroe Freedman of Understanding Lawyers’ Ethics (4th ed., Lexis-Nexis, 2010), and a contributing author of We Dissent (Michael Avery, ed., NYU Press, 2008) and Law Stories (Gary Bellow & Martha Minow, eds., University of Michigan Press, 1996).  Professor Smith began her legal career at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where she was an Assistant Defender, a member of the Special Defense Unit, and a Senior Trial Attorney.  She continues to be actively engaged in indigent defense practice and frequently presents at public defender and legal aid training programs in the United States and abroad.  Professor Smith is on the Board of Directors of The Bronx Defenders and the National Juvenile Defender Center.  She is a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Lawyers Guild.  She is also a published cartoonist.

Visiting Professor Vida Johnson has been teaching in the Clinic since fall 2010.  Prior to coming to Georgetown, she was a supervising attorney in the Trial Division at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS), where she worked for eight years. At PDS, Professor Johnson was assigned to “felony one” cases, the most serious felonies, and her experience included numerous trials in D.C. Superior Court representing indigent clients facing charges including homicide, sexual assault, and armed offenses. Ms. Johnson’s responsibilities at PDS also included supervising other trial attorneys and serving as one of the agency’s two representatives to the D.C. Superior Court Sentencing Guidelines Commission. In 2009, Ms. Johnson was a Visiting Associate Professor in the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. Before joining PDS, Professor Johnson was an E. Barrett Prettyman fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. As a fellow she represented indigent adults in the D.C. Superior Court and supervised students in the Criminal Justice Clinic. Ms. Johnson earned her law degree from New York University Law School in 2000 and she earned her B.A. in American History from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1995.

Teaching Fellow Camilla Hsu Camilla received a B.A. in Literature from Yale University in 2006 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2011. Prior to law school, she worked on prisoners’ rights and death penalty cases as part of the Community Services Team at Holland and Knight LLP. While in law school, she represented indigent clients in the Boston criminal courts as a student-attorney with the Criminal Justice Institute, and served as student-attorney for the Prison Legal Assistance Project, and training director/student-attorney for the Harvard Defenders. During her law school summers, she interned with the Federal Defenders of New York for the Southern District and the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia.

REQUIRED ORIENTATION

Students are required to return to school one week earlier than other students to participate in an intensive orientation program.  Participation in Orientation is a requirement of the Clinic, and no exceptions will be made.  Orientation gives students the opportunity to become immersed in making the transition from students to lawyers without the usual distractions. 

TIME

The Clinic is demanding and time consuming.  As indicated, students are required to return to school a week early for Orientation, with reading assignments prepared over the summer.  Although the Clinic requires a substantial time commitment, the consensus of students has been that anyone with good time management skills can successfully combine the Clinic and part-time employ­ment.  Our students generally find that there is a greater overall time commitment in the clinic during the fall semester than in the spring, as they are devoting more time to learning the essentials of criminal defense and prisoner advocacy for the first time.  (For this reason, the credits allocated to the clinic are 9 for the fall semester and 5 for the spring semester.)  Students are encouraged to arrange their sched­ules so that one day each week (prefera­bly a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday) is completely free from class or employment responsibilities.  All students are responsible for cases over class breaks and finals, but we can usually schedule around these times. 

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

A strict federal conflict of interest statute precludes students who are employed by the Federal Government from participating in the Clinic, because the United States is the prosecuting authority in the District of Columbia.

INVESTIGATION

To be a competent attorney, it is essential to learn how to conduct fact investigation.  Lindsay Dressler, our experienced staff investigator, will train students in the fundamentals of investigation, including interviewing witnesses and taking statements.  Included in the training are techniques and procedures for minimizing danger.  Students investigate in pairs and follow established guidelines designed to ensure safety.  Howev­er, given the nature of the work and the location of urban crime scenes, investigation carries some risks.  We believe that overall, investigation is safe, and supervisors regularly go into the field to investigate their own cases.  If, however, you are reluctant to take on the responsibility of investigating your cases, you should not enroll in this clinic.