criminal justice – The Blackacre Times

In this blog series, real GSU law students tell you about their legal research experiences over the summer.

by Carlos Becerra-Gomez , 2L

During my junior year of undergrad, I took a course called, “Eyewitness Testimony” taught by the famous psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. Throughout the course, we learned about how unreliable eyewitness testimonies can be, but how the general public, including juries, put a lot of weight on eyewitnesses during a criminal trial. Dr. Loftus introduced us to the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization whose sole mission is to liberate those who have been innocently incarcerated. After such introduction, I was intrigued by the project, and I decided to attend law school to be somehow a part of this organization. As soon as my first semester of law school ended, I started to send out my resume and a cover letter to multiple Innocence Projects around the country. Fortunately, the project from my hometown emailed me back and offered me an internship position. It was impossible to say no, so I gladly took the position.

“I decided to attend law school to be somehow a part of this organization. As soon as my first semester of law school ended, I started to send out my resume and a cover letter to multiple Innocence Projects around the country. “

On my first day, I hit the ground running and I was immediately assigned to a case: a 1980’s homicide. This particular case was deemed a cold case for almost twenty years until our client was tried and convicted in the early 2000s. Sadly, our client has been imprisoned for almost twenty years for a crime that he consistently claims he did not commit. The managing attorney provided me with at least 1,000 pages worth of records for me to thoroughly review. The attorney asked me to read each record to find anything that could be valuable to our client and his innocence. At first, I felt absolutely overwhelmed; a human being’s life was placed in my hands. Each day I was reading these records was one more day he was spending in prison. That overwhelming feeling turned into motivation to give my best effort to help our client prove his innocence.

“Each day I was reading these records was one more day he was spending in prison.“

My primary duties were to investigate and read all police reports, identify witnesses and potential suspects, analyze the murder scene photographs and videos, analyze the incriminating DNA data, locate and interview these witnesses and suspects. Each day consisted of something different, we even spent hours driving throughout the state just to locate witnesses and suspects. I quickly realized that this type of research was completely different to the traditional research work a legal intern does, but I absolutely loved it. Every day I came into the office was a new day to challenge myself to find something helpful for our client. There were some days that were harder than others, such as watching the brutal crime scene video that showed the lifeless body in a pool of blood. Days like those made me truly realize that this was not just another day in law school, but this was real life.

One of my proudest moments during the summer was when I found a huge piece of evidence that had not been previously discovered that affected the state’s argument. In fact, the managing attorney admitted that she never had seen that piece of evidence before. I was happy to be able to contribute to the case in such a drastic way, but I was also motivated to continue to find other useful evidence. At the end of the summer, the managing attorney asked me to write an investigative legal memorandum that included my own theory of who committed the murder and why. In conclusion, I absolutely loved this experience and it only reassured my desire to work for the project or indigent defense to help those in need of justice and representation.

Looking for a frightful distraction from the stress of law school? Perhaps you should investigate the law library’s true crime collection, currently on display. But don’t forget to think critically about the power of these depictions to shape perceptions of the law.

For the increasing numbers of readers, viewers, and listeners who have fallen victim to the thrills of true crime, the genre is an important source of exposure to criminal justice. So it’s no surprise that many scholars have explored the relationship between the consumption of true crime media, fear of crime, and attitudes towards the legal system.

Some have bemoaned the purported link between the public demand for punitive criminal laws in the late 80s/early 90s and the increased popularity of true crime books. More recently, however, commentators are encouraged by the genre’s capacity for informing the public about our system’s shortcomings (such as the prevalence of wrongful convictions), but wary of risks that that same informative quality could also misinform the public. But those risks might be overstated: when it comes to legal concepts like the insanity defense, true crime addicts are no less informed than the general public.

Others have focused on the genre’s effects on the fear of crime. Compared to viewers of fictional crime dramas, true crime viewers are more fearful of crime, and that fear even appears to undermine their confidence in the criminal justice system. That lack of confidence might even mean that true crime viewers are more likely to acquit criminal defendants. And these effects can vary depending on viewers’ race and ethnicity, perhaps due to the genre’s overrepresentation of white female victims.

As an important actor within the legal system, these intriguing findings should give you something to ponder as you probe our ref-section ‘crime scene’ (pictured). Our display includes some of the genre’s most notorious works, while also highlighting accounts of crimes that occurred here in Georgia, such as the infamous Atlanta Child Murders (depicted in the most recent season of Netflix’s Mindhunter). Check them out!