OXFORD,
\nMiss. – The author of a book detailing her attempt to free a woman who
\nwould unfairly spend 28 years in prison for robbery and murder speaks
\nThursday (Nov. 6) at the University of Mississippi School of Law.<\/p>\n
Abbe
\nSmith, a Georgetown law professor and author of “Case of a Lifetime: A
\nCriminal Defense Lawyer’s Story” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), was a
\nsecond-year law student in 1980 when the case of Patsy Kelly Jarrett
\ncame to her attention. Jarrett’s case was the first that Smith took on
\nas an attorney and remains the most memorable case in her career.
\n
<\/p>\n
\nSmith is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. in the law library’s mezzanine room. Her appearance is co-sponsored by the Mississippi Innocence Project and the National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law. Planned especially for law students, the event is also open to the public.<\/p>\n
“Abbe Smith is a longtime colleague of mine,”said Tucker Carrington, director of the Mississippi Innocence Project housed at the UM law school. “She’s a terrific advocate for her clients, but she is also a very thoughtful voice about what it means to defend, why defenders do the work and why, ultimately, zealous defense benefits all of us.<\/p>\n
“She does not shy away from the difficult issues but confronts them readily and honestly. She will be an enjoyable speaker whether you’re a defense lawyer or not, because so many of these issues are of interest to so many of us.”<\/p>\n
Smith met Jarrett in 1980, three years after Jarrett was sentenced to life in prison for driving the getaway car in a 1973 felony murder in upstate New York, according to a news release from Georgetown Law School. Convinced that Kelly, whose conviction was based on eyewitness testimony, was innocent, Smith agreed to take on her case, and she became a tireless advocate over the next 25 years trying to secure her freedom.<\/p>\n
“Kelly showed me that sometimes – not often, but sometimes – being a good lawyer also means being a good friend, no matter how uncomfortable I am with the idea,” Smith notes in the book. The book also discusses her attempt to come to terms with the fact that it was a parole, not her own efforts, that finally gained Kelly’s prison release in 2005.<\/p>\n
Publishers Weekly says, “The book’s strength is Smith’s openness about her life as a criminal defense attorney and her sophisticated thinking about the moral and ethical dilemmas criminal lawyers routinely navigate.”<\/p>\n
“This is an extraordinary, profoundly moving book,” notes Anthony Lewis, Pulitzer Prize- winning author of “Gideon’s Trumpet.” “I know of no other book that says as much about a<\/p>\n
defense lawyer’s motivations, self-doubt, frustrations. I finished it with tears in my eyes.”<\/p>\n
An essay by Smith, adapted from “Case of a Lifetime,” appeared in the Washington Post Magazine June 29, 2008. Smith, who came to Georgetown Law in 1996, is co-director of the Criminal Justice Clinic and E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program. From 1990 to 1996, she taught<\/p>\n
at Harvard Law, where she was education director and later deputy director of the Criminal Justice Institute.<\/p>\n
She has also taught at City University of New York School of Law, Temple University School of Law and American University Washington College of Law. In 2005 and 2006, she was a senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of Melbourne Law School in Australia. From 1982 to 1990, she was a trial attorney with the Defender Association of Philadelphia..\n<\/p>\n