STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Who’s the star? Jessica Kaufman with documentary subject Darnell Williams.
Back from the Brink
J
essica Kaufman ’06 was working as a legal intern to free a death-row prisoner last summer at Northwestern University School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions (CWC), when her case became the subject of an A&E documentary, American Justice: Countdown to an Execution. The prisoner, Darnell Williams, had been on death row for 17 years, convicted of murdering John and Henrietta Rease, an elderly couple who looked after foster children. Convinced that there was persuasive evidence that Williams was wrongly convicted, CWC attorney Juliet Yackel spent years seeking to overturn the jury’s decision. However in 2004, Williams lost his final appeal before the Indiana Supreme Court; his execution was set for the following month. In desperation, Yackel took Williams’s case to the media, and a documentarian agreed to produce his story. Ultimately, Countdown to an Execution, while sympathetic to Williams, reveals how gray the truth can be. The evidence uncovered by the CWC team, which included an eyewitness recantation, new DNA evidence and proof of Williams’s memory loss, as well as a medical condition that made him particularly sensitive to alcohol, was not enough to overturn the conviction. But it raised enough questions to compel former acting Governor of Indiana Joseph Kernan
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THE LAW SCHOOL
to make Williams the first person in Indiana in almost 50 years to receive a gubernatorial commutation from capital punishment to life in prison without parole. When the documentary debuted on A&E in March, Kaufman invited Yackel and writer/producer Shane DuBow to show the
film at the Law School and answer questions. DuBow talked about his ambivalence regarding Williams’s innocence or guilt: “I don’t think I ever got one thing to hold onto to make me feel one way or the other.” Kaufman, who wrote two sections of the clemency petition that was submitted to the governor, interviewed jurors, attended hearings and talked with victim’s families, said, “Darnell’s case made me realize the power of generalized fear, and how expendable the life of one young black man can be in the face of it.” She also criticized the lack of resources applied to his case: “Some of the difficulty in knowing what really happened in Darnell’s case stems from inadequate police work, inadequate lawyering at trial and an inadequate sense that the obligations of the justice system should not change with the race and the wealth of the defendant.” Kaufman also described how she became emotionally affected by Williams’s life story. “One thing that will stay with me for a long time was the sense of sadness I felt when I read a social worker’s report on Darnell’s background,” she said. “Just before any of this started, Darnell had overcome so many enormous challenges. He had a good job that he was successful at, he was engaged, he had plans. And then, seemingly all of a sudden, he was on death row.” Darnell Williams will likely remain in prison for the rest of his life, his legal recourses at a virtual end. Kaufman’s life has also changed. She has become dedicated to “not just winning an individual case, but working for broader justice.” ■
Sister Advocate Kelia Cummins marshalls her legal resources to overturn policy at her sister’s high school
W
hen school officials prevented 18-yearold Kimberly Cummins from applying to Harvard University, she enlisted help from her big sister Kelia Cummins ’05. The result was what Kelia called “a political and administrative campaign to change an unfair and ridiculous policy.” Kimberly began her senior year at Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School excited and ready to apply to colleges. In a class of more than 1,000 students, Kimberly was ranked 11th—still within the top one percent—with an 86.6 GPA. Though she was aware that Harvard was far from a lock, Kimberly wanted to apply early-action. Not only was she involved in a number of extracurricular activities while carrying Advanced Placement courses, she had
attended a program at Harvard the previous summer. At a scholarship informational meeting during the fall, the high school’s two college advisers informed the senior class that only the top five students would be allowed to apply to Ivy League schools, and that no one would be permitted to apply to any schools to meet the early-action or earlydecision deadlines. The school provided no explanation for this policy, though Principal Spencer Holder claims the incident was a misunderstanding. School officials refused to clarify their policies until after Kelia Cummins took up her sister’s complaint. When she attempted to meet with school officials, Kelia was told that they were under no obligation to explain their policies, and AUTUMN 2005