The Roger Williams University Criminal Defense Clinic offers law students an extraordinary opportunity to experience the actual practice of law, representing real defendants in pending criminal cases under the direct supervision of a full time member of the School of Law’s tenured faculty.
Law students personally handle all stages of criminal litigation in the Criminal Defense Clinic, beginning with interviewing the client and including investigating the case, counseling the client, negotiating with the prosecution, and ultimately, if the case proceeds that far, trying the case. Some clinic students will also be assigned to appellate and post-conviction work.
The majority of the Criminal Defense Clinic caseload consists of misdemeanor criminal cases that are pending in the Rhode Island District Court, involving charges such as domestic violence, drunk driving, disorderly conduct, assault, larceny, drug possession, and weapons possession. The clinic also carries a caseload of cases at the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal, including refusal to submit to a breath test. In any given semester, several Criminal Defense Clinic students will have the experience of handling an actual trial to verdict before a judge.
In addition to the trial level caseload, the clinic handles a variety of appellate and post-conviction matters, exposing the clinic students to litigation experience in the Supreme and Superior Courts of Rhode Island. Over the past few years, Criminal Defense Clinic students have enjoyed several extraordinary experiences through these cases.
A Criminal Defense Clinic student recently became the first law student in Rhode Island history to try a case before a jury in Superior Court, achieving a full acquittal for his client. In recent years, Criminal Defense Clinic students have argued cases before the Supreme Court of Rhode Island.
One last component of the Criminal Defense Clinic is its Innocence Project. The Clinic’s first foray into Innocence Project work resulted in the complete exoneration of a single mother of two children who was facing a lengthy prison term and then deportation to her native Dominican Republic.
Since then, the clinic has entered into a formal partnership with the New England Innocence Project (“NEIP”) to handle NEIP cases in the Rhode Island criminal justice system. The first stage of each case is to conduct a preliminary investigation to determine if DNA testing would be likely to support the inmate’s innocence claim.
Based on protocols established by the National Innocence Project, this first stage is essentially a screening function. Evidence must be located and preserved and the trial transcript copied and analyzed. The end product of the investigation is a lengthy memorandum to NEIP that concludes with a recommendation as to whether NEIP should undertake to represent the inmate and seek DNA testing.
When NEIP accepts a Rhode Island case for DNA testing, the Criminal Defense Clinic will be likely to represent the defendant in whatever post-conviction proceedings are necessary. Several students each semester will have the opportunity to work on these cases. Students assigned to NEIP cases will also be assigned a caseload of District Court and Traffic Tribunal clients, but students with a particular interest in innocence work are assured that they can be assigned to a NEIP case.
