Randolph N. Stone Herschella G. Conyers

Project students

THIRD YEAR STUDENTSDarcy BoriasCaroline Chanenson
Bryce Cooper
Sara Feinstein
Jessica Gioia
Stefanie Heck
Eryn Karpinski
Lauren Kramer
Cathy Yu

SECOND YEAR STUDENTS
Garrett Garfield
Laura Heinrich
James Moon
Shannon Murphy
Dominique D. Nong
Viniyanka Prasad
Jessica M. Waller  

Goals: The goals of the Project include: providing quality legal representation to juveniles accused of crime; expanding the concept of legal representation to address the social, psychological, medical and educational needs of our clients (including developing sentencing alternatives to incarceration); exposing our students to public service careers; teaching our students to apply and critically examine legal theory; improving the system of justice in the juvenile and adult criminal court; and developing policies and implementing strategies for effective crime prevention. For the most part, our clients live on Chicago's South Side, range in age from fourteen to eighteen and are supported by Aid to Families with Dependent Children andor low wage earning parents and guardians. We have accepted older clients and some from other areas of the city. The Project has developed an active caseload in the Juvenile and Criminal courts of Cook County and the state appellate court. The Project meets regularly for group case conferences, case preparation and to discuss ethical issues and recent legal developments. Individual student-teacher conferences are frequent. Second year students new to the Project are teamed with returning third year students to foster collaboration and to ensure continuity in representation. The Clinic social worker and social work students are actively involved in many of our cases. A Project manual, revised each year and containing relevant readings, case law and statutes, is provided to each student.

Significant developments: In May 2004, the Civil Rights Police Accountability Project and Criminal and Juvenile Justice Project received the Clinical Legal Education Association's 2004 Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Project. The award recognized the work of Professors Randolph Stone and Craig Futterman, together with more than twenty Clinic students and hundreds of public housing residents, in Williams v. Brown, a federal civil rights class action lawsuit challenging the Chicago police raid of a community basketball tournament held in Stateway Gardens, a South Side public housing community. After a three-year struggle, the Clinic won a half million dollar settlement from the City of Chicago. A significant portion of the award will go to the Stateway Civil Rights Project to support resident-led human rights monitoring and reporting, initiatives that improve policy/community relations, and the revitalization of the Stateway basketball tournaments and other local community programs.