Location: Montgomery 3

Diverse and representative juries are a placeholder for fairness in criminal jury trials. Yet selecting a jury from a fair cross-section of the community and having an actual jury of one's peers is often not the reality. Learn about how the law, policy, and practice relating to jury administration prevents the fulfillment of the 6th amendment right to an impartial jury selected from a fair cross-section of the community and the solutions to combat this reality. Participants will also learn more about jury nullification.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the policies contributing to removing diversity and representativeness from the criminal jury.
• Articulate the solutions to these mechanisms removing diversity and representativeness on criminal juries.
• Incorporate jury nullification into their voir dire without raising objections.

Location: Montgomery 5

Stay tuned! More information coming soon.

Location: Montgomery 6

Location: Montgomery 7

In a series of decisions culminating in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court gutted the anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which hasopened the door for aggressive gerrymandering that isolates and dismantles minority representation in the political process. We will review the history of and context for the Voting Rights Act, providing a timeline of pivotal milestones like Bloody Sunday and the March in Selma, and we will examine the Supreme Court’s own march toward nullifying the protections of the VRA, as well as the collateral consequences that flow from its decision(s). Participants will hear updates on the work being done by organizations like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Democracy Forward, League of Women Voters and others fighting voter suppression and intimidation, poll accessibility and other advocacy initiatives and legislation, and will be provided with resources for helping minority communities and justice-impacted people protect and restore their right to vote.Resources will be included for participants to download.

Location: Montgomery 9

Court rules and practices that were once explicitly anti-Black, blatant badges and incidents of slavery, have been invalidated over time. However, many of these rules have been replaced with facially neutral policies and practices that serve to tip the scales against Black criminal defendants and perpetuate a race-based system of mass incarceration. Such is the case with Rule 609 of the Federal Rules of Evidence which allows juries to hear of defendant’s prior convictions if the defendant takes the stand to testify at their trial. Rule 609 effectively prevents most Black defendants—saddled with prior criminal convictions due to discriminatory policies and policing—from exercising their right to take the stand. As such, Rule 609 provides a facially neutral method of continuing the slavery-era notion that Black people are inherently untrustworthy, lack moral character and should be incompetent to testify in a criminal court. Rule 609’s admission of prior convictions increases the likelihood of a criminal conviction even in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The use of prior convictions, like badges and incidents of slavery of the past, relegates Black criminal defendants back to the condition of a slave—or a horse for that matter. The Thirteenth Amendment grants Congress the power to pass laws eradicating any badge or incident of slavery. Rule 609, by providing for inherent untrustworthiness of Black criminal defendants and creating a major obstacle for Black people to testify in their own defense in their criminal trials, is a badge and incident of slavery that must be discredited and eliminated in its entirety. In doing so, I upend Senator John McClellan¾the chief drafter of Rule 609¾ and sympathizers like him will be exposed and their race neutral justifications for limiting the testimony of criminal defendants will be invalidated as badges and incident of slavery in violation of § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Learning Objectives:

• To share tools to challenge the admission of prior convictions.