Events

The Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center presents our STAR (Small, Tribal, and Rural) Justice Series. 

Professor Pamela Metzger leads a panel discussion of the judicial conflicts of interests that arise for judges presiding over criminal cases in small towns and rural areas. Panelists will identify issues that arise for judges and practitioners in criminal proceedings in STAR communities and explore approaches to addressing them.

Following the national reckoning and subsequent backlash concerning racial equity, and in the wake of the highly publicized Rittenhouse and McMichaels' trials, please join us and Attorney Johanna Jennings as she discusses the legal issues and implications for future legal proceedings arising out of the racialized rhetoric utilized in both trials and others like them.

Johanna Jennings is the Founder and Executive Director of The Decarceration Project, a nonprofit dedicated to mitigating the decades-long trend of inequitable and inhumane mass incarceration. In that role, she engages in projects to alleviate systemic racial inequity, represents individuals directly in strategic litigation, and advocates for policies to reduce mass incarceration.

Professor Jordan Gross and Dr. Laura Kirsch supervise the Rural Justice Initiative (RJI) at the University of Montana. In Fall 2021, in collaboration with the Montana Court Administrator’s Office, RJI surveyed Montana judges about their bail and pretrial decision-making practices and procedures. Follow-up interviews will explore the unique challenges and opportunities that rural communities face in the administration of pretrial justice and the implementation of bail reform initiatives.

Professor Maybell Romero leads a panel discussion about the experiences of Black, Native, Latinx, Asian, and other people of color in small, tribal, and rural (STAR) criminal legal systmes. Panelists address the issues that confront justice-involved people in rural and small-town communities of color.

Jessalyn Walker, Director of the ABA Legal Education Police Practices Consortium (LEPPC), discusses the consortium's approach to addressing policing and public safety issues in the future.

The Legal Education Police Practices Consortium is a collaboration between the ABA and more than 50 American law schools. The consortium examines issues of police conduct, oversight, and procedure with the goal of addressing racial equality and public safety in our criminal legal systems.

Professor Amy Kimpel is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Legal Instruction and the Director of the Criminal Defense clinic at the University of Alabama School of Law. She presents her work-in-progress examining how the growing immigration docket and the increase in non-U.S. citizen defendants are eroding important constitutional and procedural norms causing debasement of the courts and infiltrating federal case law to the detriment of citizens and non-citizens alike.