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Faceless No More
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OLLI at Duke Fall 2020: Criminal Justice, Social Justice: Faceless No More
Wednesdays, 9:00-10:15 A.M. September 16-November 18, 2020
Registration for OLLI at Duke's Online Learning Fall 2020 program is now open.
To learn more about the OLLI at Duke program, go to https://learnmore.duke.edu/olli
To learn more about the OLLI at Duke program, go to https://learnmore.duke.edu/olli
Recent events have highlighted problems with the criminal justice system and our larger social fabric, both locally and across the country. This 10-week online course will provide new insights and perspective about the situation. Students will meet former prisoners, activists and others who know the criminal justice system well. Expert speakers will discuss the human and financial costs of our current system, the history of our laws and possible new approaches. We will also examine our civil rights history, which is tied closely to the criminal justice system, and hear from people and organizations involved with civil rights landmarks. Class sessions will include presentations from Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative and The Legacy Museum, a museum in Alabama that displays the history of slavery and racism in America. This course builds on an OLLI at Duke spring class and summer online class that both received rave reviews from OLLI members.
Class Schedule & Presenters
Class #1, Wednesday, September 16, 2020: Co-instructors Mark Hall and Robin Emmons/Course Introduction
Mark Hall recently completed a 10-year prison journey that has given him a unique perspective into the world of criminal justice and social justice. At 50, after a life of privilege and career status, he found himself behind prison walls. During his time of incarceration, he made many discoveries worth sharing.
Robin Emmons is an award-winning social entrepreneur and owner of Robin Emmons Consulting. She has been recognized by CNN Heroes, 50 Most Influential Women, and Athena International, and covered in national and local media. She is a highly sought-after consultant and speaker, Global Eisenhower Fellow, William C. Friday Fellow for Human Relations, and proud resident of the Bull City since 2019. Read more about Robin Emmons here.
Class #2, Wednesday, September 23, 2020: Tessie Castillo, author of Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row and Terry "Chanton" Robinson, death row resident and co-author of Crimson Letters
Tessie Castillo is a journalist and author from Durham, North Carolina. She co-wrote her first book, Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row, with four men serving death sentences in North Carolina, whom she met while volunteering at Central Prison in Raleigh in 2014. Castillo is a writer and public speaker on criminal justice, drug policy, prison reform and racial equity issues. Her work challenges audiences to confront their stereotypes, in particular about incarcerated people and people who use drugs. Through her work promoting Crimson Letters, audiences are invited to speak directly with the four co-authors, who call in from prison to lead discussions on the death penalty, criminal justice reform, restorative justice, and other topics. When we see, hear and witness the humanity of people on death row, our assumptions and stereotypes are challenged in powerful ways. tessie@tessiecastillo.com, 919-809-7718, www.tessiecastillo.com
Terry Robinson, also known as Chanton, has been incarcerated on North Carolina’s death row since in 2000. He is a proponent for social justice and a voice against recidivism. Chanton has a passion for learning and is dedicated to reform. He participates in Toast Masters, psychology, drama and other classes to improve his social skills. He is a contributing author of Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row. When not writing stories to challenge the stereotype of people on death row, Chanton unwinds in the pages of fantasy books or hosts Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games. He is currently working on an urban fantasy novel and his memoir. His writing can be found on the blog, Walk in Those Shoes.
Class #3, Wednesday, September 30, 2020: Jamie Lau, Duke Law School's Wrongful Convictions Clinic/Ronnie Long Story
Jamie Lau is an associate clinical professor of law, supervising attorney for the Duke Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic, and faculty adviser to the Innocence Project. Lau also co-teaches a seminar on wrongful conviction. Lau’s law practice includes representing inmates asserting innocence in state and federal court. He has played a role in several exonerations, including that of Wrongful Convictions Clinic client Howard Dudley in May 2016, after nearly 24 years of wrongful incarceration.
Previously, Lau worked for the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, where he investigated post-conviction claims of innocence and served as lead investigator in the case of State v. Kenneth Kagonyera. Following the NCIIC investigation, Mr. Kagonyera and four co-defendants were exonerated by the courts for their alleged role in a murder. Notably, all five defendants in the Kagonyera case had pleaded guilty, which Lau says highlights the great pressure defendants face to accept plea deals even when they are innocent .
Lau earned his JD, cum laude, from Duke Law School. He has a B.A. in economics, with distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley. Before entering law school, Lau taught middle school mathematics in New York City and earned an M.S. in secondary mathematics education from Lehman College.
Previously, Lau worked for the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, where he investigated post-conviction claims of innocence and served as lead investigator in the case of State v. Kenneth Kagonyera. Following the NCIIC investigation, Mr. Kagonyera and four co-defendants were exonerated by the courts for their alleged role in a murder. Notably, all five defendants in the Kagonyera case had pleaded guilty, which Lau says highlights the great pressure defendants face to accept plea deals even when they are innocent .
Lau earned his JD, cum laude, from Duke Law School. He has a B.A. in economics, with distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley. Before entering law school, Lau taught middle school mathematics in New York City and earned an M.S. in secondary mathematics education from Lehman College.
Class #4, October 7, 2020: Molly Gill, vice president of policy for Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), a nonpartisan, sentencing reform organization
Molly Gill is a lawyer, advocate, and expert on sentencing law and policy, with almost 15 years experience working in the criminal justice field. She coordinates FAMM’s sentencing reform campaigns in states across the country and works with state lawmakers, affected family members, and other criminal justice stakeholders. They work together to promote sentencing and prison policies that are cost-effective, protect public safety, fit the crime and the individual, and preserve families. Gill also serves as a commissioner of the District of Columbia Sentencing Commission.
Prior to coming to FAMM in 2007, Gill practiced construction and commercial litigation. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Oral Roberts University, graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School and began her legal career in the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis, assisting with the prosecution of murders, gang crimes, and gun offenses. A member of the District of Columbia Bar, Gill has drafted legislation and testified before legislatures across the country on proposed sentencing reforms. She has appeared as an expert on mandatory minimum sentences, sentencing law, and executive clemency issues on leading news programs; spoken widely at academic panels and been a frequent guest lecturer for American University. Her work has been published in numerous journals and newspapers.www.famm.org
Prior to coming to FAMM in 2007, Gill practiced construction and commercial litigation. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Oral Roberts University, graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School and began her legal career in the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis, assisting with the prosecution of murders, gang crimes, and gun offenses. A member of the District of Columbia Bar, Gill has drafted legislation and testified before legislatures across the country on proposed sentencing reforms. She has appeared as an expert on mandatory minimum sentences, sentencing law, and executive clemency issues on leading news programs; spoken widely at academic panels and been a frequent guest lecturer for American University. Her work has been published in numerous journals and newspapers.www.famm.org
Class #5, October 14, 2020: Melissa Radcliff, program director, Our Children's Place of Coastal Horizons Center
Melissa Radcliff has been with Our Children’s Place of Coastal Horizons Center, based in Wilmington, N.C., since February 2007. Our Children’s Place is a statewide education and advocacy program focused on children of incarcerated and returning parents. Prior to that, Melissa was the executive director and a founding staff member of the Family Violence Prevention Center of Orange County (now the Compass Center for Women and Families), the local domestic violence agency serving Orange County, N.C. She has worked in the area of victim services since the 1990s at a domestic violence agency, rape crisis center, prosecutor’s office, and police departments in Rhode Island, Arizona and North Carolina. She serves as chair of the pre-release committee for the Orange Correctional Center, a minimum custody men’s prison facility located in Hillsborough, N.C. www.ourchildrensplace.com
Class #6, October 21, 2020: Elizabeth Kelly, J.D.
Elizabeth Kelly, of Spokane, Washington, is a criminal defense attorney with a nationwide practice focused on representing people with mental disabilities. She is a national and international lecturer and frequently provides commentary for radio and television.
Her experience includes co-chairing the Criminal Justice Advisory Panel of The Arc’s National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability, serving on the editorial board of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Criminal Justice Section magazine, and serving three terms on the board of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), where she also chaired its mental health and membership committees.
As a part of a delegation sponsored by the United Nations Commission on Drugs and Crime and the NACDL, Elizabeth traveled to Liberia in 2009 and 2014 to train Liberia’s criminal defense bar.
In her hometown of Spokane, Elizabeth has served on the boards of The Arc of Spokane and The Museum of Arts and Culture (The MAC), and as a vice president of the Spokane Symphony. She was also appointed to the Police Ombudsman Commission by the Spokane City Council.
Elizabeth is the editor of Representing People with Mental Disabilities: A Practical Guide for Criminal Defense Lawyers, published by the ABA in 2018
Her experience includes co-chairing the Criminal Justice Advisory Panel of The Arc’s National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability, serving on the editorial board of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Criminal Justice Section magazine, and serving three terms on the board of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), where she also chaired its mental health and membership committees.
As a part of a delegation sponsored by the United Nations Commission on Drugs and Crime and the NACDL, Elizabeth traveled to Liberia in 2009 and 2014 to train Liberia’s criminal defense bar.
In her hometown of Spokane, Elizabeth has served on the boards of The Arc of Spokane and The Museum of Arts and Culture (The MAC), and as a vice president of the Spokane Symphony. She was also appointed to the Police Ombudsman Commission by the Spokane City Council.
Elizabeth is the editor of Representing People with Mental Disabilities: A Practical Guide for Criminal Defense Lawyers, published by the ABA in 2018
Class #7, October 28, 2020: Ashley Adams and Jonathan Kubakundimana, Equal Justice Initiative (EJI)
Ashley Adams, EJI staff attorney, earned a B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 2008 and graduated from the University Of Tennessee College Of Law in 2011. Prior to joining EJI in 2017, she was assistant public defender and district court supervisor for the Tuscaloosa County Office of Public Defender, represented indigent clients as a trial attorney with Jefferson County Public Defender's Community Law Office in Birmingham, Alabama, and conducted civil litigation as an associate attorney at Gaines Gault Hendrix, P.C., in Birmingham. aadams@eji.org, www.eji.org
Jonathan Kubakundimana, program manager for EJI, graduated from Furman University in 2016 with a B.A. in political science. Prior to joining EJI, he interned for U.S. District Judge Bruce Howe Hendricks in the District of South Carolina, where he researched rehabilitative approaches to federal non-violent drug offenders for the nation’s first federal drug court. As a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, he has helped lead initiatives in the United States and around the world to raise awareness of genocide and other crimes against humanity. jkubakundimana@eij.org, www.eji.org
Class #8, November 4, 2020: (to be confirmed) Kristie Puckett Williams, manager of the Campaign for Statewide Justice/ACLU of North Carolina
Kristie Puckett-Williams is a working scholar in mass incarceration with a focus on the treatment of women, including pregnant women in carceral facilities. Kristie holds an M.A. in human services counseling: addiction and recovery counseling. Having survived domestic violence, drug addiction, and long-term incarceration via community corrections, she is now an advocate and activist, fighting for the rights of all marginalized and disenfranchised people.
Recently, Kristie was appointed by North Carolina’s Governor to serve as the chair of the Women in Incarceration Workgroup for the State Reentry Council Collaborative. She is currently traveling across the state of North Carolina with the attorney general and his staff to conduct roundtables to talk about pretrial detention practices in the state. Kristie serves on the Domestic Violence Advocacy Council, the Domestic Violence Speakers Bureau, and the Domestic Violence Fatality Review team in Mecklenburg County.
Her goal is to use her educational and life experiences to convey a message of strength and hope in the community as well as a message of recovery, restoration, and redemption.
Recently, Kristie was appointed by North Carolina’s Governor to serve as the chair of the Women in Incarceration Workgroup for the State Reentry Council Collaborative. She is currently traveling across the state of North Carolina with the attorney general and his staff to conduct roundtables to talk about pretrial detention practices in the state. Kristie serves on the Domestic Violence Advocacy Council, the Domestic Violence Speakers Bureau, and the Domestic Violence Fatality Review team in Mecklenburg County.
Her goal is to use her educational and life experiences to convey a message of strength and hope in the community as well as a message of recovery, restoration, and redemption.
Class #9, November 11, 2020: Sister Helen Prejean, author and subject of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.
Sister Helen Prejean is known around the world for her tireless work against the death penalty. She has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on capital punishment and in shaping the Catholic Church’s vigorous opposition to all executions.
Born April 21, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1957. After studies in the USA and Canada, she spent the following years teaching high school, and serving as the religious education director at St. Frances Cabrini Parish in New Orleans and the formation director for her religious community. In 1982, Sister Helen moved into the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans in order to live and work with the poor. While there, Sister Helen began corresponding with Patrick Sonnier, who had been sentenced to death for the murder of two teenagers. Two years later, when Patrick Sonnier was put to death in the electric chair, Sister Helen was there to witness his execution. In the following months, she became spiritual advisor to another death row inmate, Robert Lee Willie, who was to meet the same fate as Sonnier.
After witnessing these executions, Sister Helen realized that this lethal ritual would remain unchallenged unless its secrecy was stripped away, and so she sat down and wrote a book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. Dead Man Walking hit the shelves when national support for the death penalty was more than 80% and, in Sister Helen’s native Louisiana, closer to 90%. The book ignited a national debate on capital punishment, and it inspired an Academy Award winning movie, a play and an opera. Sister also embarked on a speaking tour that continues to this day.
Sister Helen works with people of all faiths and those who follow no established faith, but her voice has had a special resonance with her fellow Catholics. Over the decades, Sister Helen has made personal approaches to two popes, John Paul II and Pope Francis, urging them to establish the Catholic Church’s position as unequivocally opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances. After Sister Helen’s urging, under John Paul II the catechism was revised to strengthen the church’s opposition to executions, although it allowed for a very few exceptions. Not long after meeting with Sister Helen in August of 2018, Pope Francis announced new language of the Catholic Catechism which declares that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, with no exceptions.
Today, although capital punishment is still on the books in 30 states in the USA, it has fallen into disuse in most of those states. Prosecutors and juries alike are turning away from death sentences, with the death penalty becoming increasingly a geographical freak. Sister Helen continues her work, dividing her time between educating the public, campaigning against the death penalty, counseling individual death row prisoners, and working with murder victims’ family members. Sister Helen’s second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, was published in 2004; and her third book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey, in 2019.
hprejean@sisterhelen.org, 504-948-6557, www.sisterhelen.org
Born April 21, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1957. After studies in the USA and Canada, she spent the following years teaching high school, and serving as the religious education director at St. Frances Cabrini Parish in New Orleans and the formation director for her religious community. In 1982, Sister Helen moved into the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans in order to live and work with the poor. While there, Sister Helen began corresponding with Patrick Sonnier, who had been sentenced to death for the murder of two teenagers. Two years later, when Patrick Sonnier was put to death in the electric chair, Sister Helen was there to witness his execution. In the following months, she became spiritual advisor to another death row inmate, Robert Lee Willie, who was to meet the same fate as Sonnier.
After witnessing these executions, Sister Helen realized that this lethal ritual would remain unchallenged unless its secrecy was stripped away, and so she sat down and wrote a book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. Dead Man Walking hit the shelves when national support for the death penalty was more than 80% and, in Sister Helen’s native Louisiana, closer to 90%. The book ignited a national debate on capital punishment, and it inspired an Academy Award winning movie, a play and an opera. Sister also embarked on a speaking tour that continues to this day.
Sister Helen works with people of all faiths and those who follow no established faith, but her voice has had a special resonance with her fellow Catholics. Over the decades, Sister Helen has made personal approaches to two popes, John Paul II and Pope Francis, urging them to establish the Catholic Church’s position as unequivocally opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances. After Sister Helen’s urging, under John Paul II the catechism was revised to strengthen the church’s opposition to executions, although it allowed for a very few exceptions. Not long after meeting with Sister Helen in August of 2018, Pope Francis announced new language of the Catholic Catechism which declares that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, with no exceptions.
Today, although capital punishment is still on the books in 30 states in the USA, it has fallen into disuse in most of those states. Prosecutors and juries alike are turning away from death sentences, with the death penalty becoming increasingly a geographical freak. Sister Helen continues her work, dividing her time between educating the public, campaigning against the death penalty, counseling individual death row prisoners, and working with murder victims’ family members. Sister Helen’s second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, was published in 2004; and her third book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey, in 2019.
hprejean@sisterhelen.org, 504-948-6557, www.sisterhelen.org
Class #10, November 18, 2020: Conclusion
