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Hi, guys.

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My name is Emily.

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I'm a senior here
at Mount Holyoke.

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I'm a sociology major
with statistics minor.

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And this summer I worked at the
law offices of Cliff Gardner.

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I got this internship through
contracting alums, anybody

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I knew in high school,
really just anybody

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I knew in the legal field.

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I knew I wanted to do
something in public defense.

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So I ended up
contacting Cliff Garner,

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asking him if he would put me
in contact with anybody who

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was doing this type of thing.

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He looked at my
resume and he was

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like how about you work here.

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So I did.

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The law offices of Cliff
Gardner does post commission

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representation.

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So this means that
once a criminal has

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been tried and sentenced
the first time, we come in

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and we support them through
appellate representation

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and habeas corpus
representation.

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So that means that after
they've been sentenced,

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then we go back and look
at their trial record

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and look at what
could have gone wrong.

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So things like an ineffective
assistance of their attorney,

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or an alibi that didn't
come out the first time.

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So in appellate
representation, we

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can only use things that came
out in the original trial.

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But in habeas corpus
representation,

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we can look at anything
and everything.

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And they basically
get a whole new trial,

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which is really cool.

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But we cannot do that alone,
because there's so many people

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who need assistance
in this area.

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And our office is only
about four attorneys.

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So we work with several other
organizations that are all

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funded by the government.

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The California
Appellate Project,

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the Habeas Corpus
Resource Center,

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and the office of the state
public defender in California.

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All of these offices
have different attorneys

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who come out and
meet with our clients

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to make sure that
they're all on track

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with their appellate
representation

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and habeas corpus
representation make sure

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that we can do the best
that we can as attorneys.

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So going into this
internship, I really

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knew nothing about post
conviction representation.

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I knew sort of
about the process.

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But I didn't know that it
was so underrepresented.

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Once people are sentenced, a
lot of people will sort of just

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forget them.

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They assume that our clients
who are mostly on death row

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are just going to be sentenced
to death and be executed

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and that's the end of it.

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But that's really not
the end of it for them.

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A lot of them have
new DNA evidence

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that hasn't come
out yet, or things

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like an alibi that
wasn't explored in trial

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because their attorney didn't
really do their trial justice.

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So that's our job to go
back and fix those things.

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But there are 749 inmates
on death row in California.

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We only represent about
50 of them at a time.

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But some of our cases sit
around for years and years,

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because it takes about 25
years for a habeas corpus case

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to be called in to Supreme
Court or an appellate case.

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So many death row
inmates sometimes

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die of old age on the row,
or they just don't ever

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really get called to trial.

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A lot of the Supreme Court
cases or different courts

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around the country can't take
that many cases per year.

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So they get about
8,000 and only release

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about 90 decisions a year.

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So that means that
a lot of people

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are just waiting and waiting
until their case can be called,

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or they get something called
a postcard denial, which

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basically says nope,
sorry, you're denied.

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So that's a lot of
people that are just

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sitting around and sort
of marginalized by the law

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and waiting for their
trials to be retried.

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So one of the places I
got to go this summer

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was San Quentin, which is
where all of the male death row

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inmates are housed
in California.

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So this is East Block where
they are housed in the prison.

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And then if you look at
this picture right here

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is death row.

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So one of the big
parts of my job

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was to look at other
old trial records

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and see what kind
of problems we could

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pursue on appeal or
through habeas corpus.

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But my favorite part of my
job was the legal research

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that I did.

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Most law students are learning
how to do legal research.

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So I was sort of
thrown into the fire

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by my boss, who gave
me a big legal research

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project with a client
that we were working with.

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He was a juvenile
that was sentenced

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to life without parole
when he was 17 in 2006,

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I believe it was.

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So then in 2012, the Supreme
Court of the United States

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released a decision
called Miller V. Alabama,

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which basically says that
juveniles cannot be sentenced

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to life without parole
unless there's a rare case,

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so unless their crime's
especially heinous.

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So California was one
of the first states

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and one of the
five states so far

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to release a decision that
said that all juveniles

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that had been sentenced
to live without parole,

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now get to go back and be
resentenced and retried.

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But my boss had an idea that
maybe juveniles in California

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were, in fact, being resentenced
to life without parole

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and that every
case was being seen

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as the rare, heinous crime.

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And that is a big injustice.

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So my job was to look through
every county in California,

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every case of a
juvenile being sentenced

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to life without parole,
and see if this was true.

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And, in fact, it did turn
out to be true in California.

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Most juveniles that have
been sentenced to life

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without parole are
now being resentenced,

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have been resentenced
to life without parole,

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and are being told that their
crime was the rare case.

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But if every case
is a rare case,

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then nothing's the rare case.

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So that really interested
me and I was really excited

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about that research.

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And it really helped
our case and hopefully,

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the young men that
we represented

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will have his case
reheard and hopefully,

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that argument that we
discovered in California

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can be an argument
in the court and he

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won't get the same outcome.

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But right now, I'm actually
working on an independent study

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to look at all the other
state in the United States

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and see what they're doing
with this kind of thing,

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to see how they are
sentencing their juveniles.

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So hopefully that
independent study

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will help me discover
more about this

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and go into another independent
study next semester.

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I had a lot of challenges
while working at the law firm.

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I was given a lot of tasks
that law students and attorneys

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were doing in the office.

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I assumed that I would be
getting coffee, making copies,

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just sort of following
the attorneys around.

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But I was really just
sort of thrown into it.

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I had to do legal research
and I had never done before.

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I had to read records and try
to find what was important

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and try to decipher
that for myself, which

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was difficult at first.

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But I really ended
up loving doing that.

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And I also had to relate
to clients and families.

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I had to go meet with
a death row inmate

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at San Quentin, which was scary.

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But also really fun
and interesting.

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But it was really hard to
read these heinous crimes

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that people were committing
and then come home

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after a long day of
work and sort of detach

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yourself from that.

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So that was a really big lesson
that I learned this summer

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about being in this line
of work that I still

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am not done learning.

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But hopefully in the future,
I'll get better at it.

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The last I that
really challenged me

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was the amount of
reading that I did.

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I had to sit and just read about
these horrible crimes all day

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long.

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And I really
learned about myself

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that in the future,
whatever job I go into,

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I really want to be able to
interact with clients more.

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And I think that was partially
because I was an intern.

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But also, in the future
maybe, another sort of

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representation where
I get to interact

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with clients and their
families a little bit more.

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And this is a picture
of the exercise

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yards at San Quentin, where
death row inmates get to go out

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and they don't get to
exercise with other inmates,

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so they're in a
little cell outside.

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And I just wanted
to say thank you

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to Cliff Gardner, who hired
me, for allowing me to be part

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of the link process and to
[INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE]

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for letting me come
to their trainings

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and teaching me about this group
of people who is represented

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and waiting for
their trials to come.

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[APPLAUSE]

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