OXFORD, Miss.
– For the fifth consecutive year, the Court of Appeals of Mississippi
plans to move its proceedings to the University of Mississippi School
of Law for a special session in which law students have the unique
opportunity to deliver oral arguments in cases pending before the court.
The
court convenes at 1 p.m. Tuesday (April 21) in the William N. Ethridge
Jr. Moot Court Room on the third floor of the Lamar Law Center. The
three-judge panel will allow law students to participate in a brief
question-and-answer session after hearing two cases presented by
third-year law students enrolled in the law school’s Criminal Appeals
Clinic.
The proceedings are open to the public and all UM students are encouraged to attend, especially those with an interest in attending law school. The special session is to be conducted with full security search requirements, and no exit and re-entry will be allowed. Cell phones are not allowed in the courtroom. Arrival by noon is strongly encouraged to ensure that everyone can be seated before the court is called to order. Overflow seating will be available in Moot Court Room II.
The two cases to be argued are John Gales v. State of Mississippi, argued by law students E. Daniel Martin of Oxford and Lora E. Boggs of Grenada; and Terrance Watkins v. State of Mississippi, argued by Krystal D. Walker of Louisville and Andrew Seth Robbins of Gautier.
The brief-writers for the cases are Roslyn N. Griffin of Madison and Brian K. Harris of Hernando for the Gales case, and J. Nathaniel King of Nashville, Tenn., for the Watkins case.
Clinic students have written 42 appeal briefs since the program was created in 2002, said Philip Broadhead, law professor and director of the Criminal Appeals Clinic, which is part of the National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law.
“Of that number, 35 have been decided by the appellate courts, resulting in reversals in eight of those cases,” he said.
Eighty-eight students have been trained in the clinic during the past seven years. The program is designed to give third-year students practical experience in criminal law and procedure in the pro bono representation of indigent persons in cases pending before the state appellate courts. Through the program, students research, write and file a brief on an assigned case pending before the court. If the court agrees to hear oral arguments in a pending case, two Criminal Appeals Clinic students are chosen to argue the case before a panel of three judges, Broadhead said.
The students are allowed to be appointed as special counsel in the cases by order of the state appellate courts under the Mississippi Limited Practice Act, which permits third-year law students to be admitted to the Bar under the oversight and supervision of a clinical professor who also is a licensed, practicing Mississippi attorney.
“One of the features of the Criminal Appeals Program’s teaching goals is to expose the students not only to the art of brief writing and the skills of legal research but also to general trial practice,” Broadhead said. “The most satisfying part of the program has been seeing the students develop a passion for trial practice, which may change the direction of their career plans, with many graduates going into public service positions.”
For more information about the Criminal Appeals Program and the National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law , call 662-915-6897 or go to http://www.ncjrl.org . For more information on the School of Law, visit http://www.law.olemiss.edu. For assistance related to a disability, call 662-915-6900.