Law School hosts inaugural Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform event

Exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown, attorney Brian Stolarz discuss wrongful imprisonment, handling of cases

Monday, March 27, the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform at the College of William and Mary Law School hosted an inaugural event featuring a conversation with Senior Counsel at Norton Rose Fulbright United States L.L.P. Brian Stolarz and exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown. Stolarz served as the habeas corpus attorney for Brown, the 13th exoneree from Texas’ death row and the 154th exoneree from death row nationally. R. Hugh and Nolie Haynes professor of law and Director of the College’s Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform Kami Chavis moderated the conversation.

“Mr. Brown was o cially exonerated in 2015 for a crime he did not commit, after spending 12 years incarcerated, nine of which were on Texas’ death row,” Chavis said. “He maintained his innocence throughout this time, and I think this is such an important case because it really exempli es and embodies so much of what is wrong with our criminal justice system in the United States.”

Chaviz mentioned that during Brown’s time in prison, the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence from his case, thus leading to his wrongful conviction. Stolarz previously worked in both a private practice and in the criminal defense eld before taking on Brown’s case pro bono.

“For many years, Mr. Stolarz worked to make sense of the limited evidence that was available, and it was revealed that some exculpatory evidence that corroborated Mr. Brown’s alibi was found. He could not have been at the scene of the crime when prosecutors alleged that he was,” Chavis said.

Stolarz is also the author of “Grace and Justice on Death Row: e Race against Time and Texas to Free an

CAMPUS

Innocent Man,” which tells the story of Brown and the commitment to release him from his wrongful imprisonment.

Stolarz was a rst-generation college and law student at the Columbus School of Law. After he graduated from Columbus, he became a public defender in Brooklyn, New York. Stolarz defended thousands of clients and described the many lessons he learned during his cases.

“I learned a ton of good lessons. One, I can humanize anybody if I get to know them, put myself in their shoes, and gure out who they are, and two, no one is as bad as their worst act. It was my job to humanize those people from the judge and get them the best possible deal I could, ghting for their rights,” Stolarz said.

A senior partner of Stolarz called him and requested his assistance on Brown’s case. Stolarz recalled meeting Brown after the call.

“I knew he was innocent the moment that I met him,” Stolarz said. “How? It was like a lightning bolt right to my heart. Like when you meet your life partner for the first time or hold your child or grandchild for the first time, you feel a love and a truth way deep down. When I walked out that day when I went and saw him, I felt sick. I threw up next to the rental car on the way back to the airport because this was not Brooklyn. This was Texas, death row.”

During the event, Stolarz described the Clark and Jones murder case for which Brown was wrongfully convicted of inciting. Officer Charles R. Clark, 45, and Alfredia Jones, 25, were shot at Ace Cash Express, a check-cashing store in Houston, Texas. Police sought out three suspects, who were described by a truck driver who supposedly witnessed them exit the store.

Deshawn Gillespie testified against Brown and Elijah Joubert, who is still on death row for the convicted murder of Jones. Gillespie received a 30-year prison sentence. Brown’s trial took only three

Cold War of Language: Unpacking Global China

ursday, March 30, the College of William and Mary’s Global Research Institute and the interdisciplinary research lab AidData hosted

Dr. Marina Rudyak’s lecture

“Unpacking Global China: Beijing’s View on Development, Modernization, and the World,” in James Blair Hall. at same day, the United States co-hosted the Summit for Democracy 2023, bringing together world leaders to discuss the challenges currently facing democratic systems and human rights around the globe. China was not invited to the Summit, even though Chinese President Xi Jinping argued China was the world’s “broadest, most genuine and most e ective democracy” and a protector of human rights in a speech in 2017. is highlights the discrepancies that China and the United States have in their de nitions of democracy and human rights.

“We have a Cold War of language in the international system,” assistant professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University Dr. Marina Rudyak said.

Rudyak explained the Chinese government’s use of alternative de nitions of key terms. e Chinese government recently became the largest provider of international development assistance in the world

“We’ve seen a discourse change since Xi came to power,” Rudyak said. “ is is part of an e ort to create an international discourse system that is capable of shifting de nitions. Not in the way that terms like democracy and human rights are replaced with Chinese understandings and de nitions, but rather

Party, the Chinese government portrays itself as a consultative democracy. It argues that its “broad participation in consultation” for laws and party days, resulting in the wrongful conviction of murder and robbery.

“Guilt was forestalled from the very beginning. His lawyer didn’t do a great job for him. ey didn’t have a public defender system. It was just lawyers who could be paid a fee to be court-appointed,” Stolarz said.

Brown had a solid alibi, which he had told his rst appointed lawyer. He was at a girlfriend’s apartment the morning of the Clark and Jones murders, which is solidi ed by the evidence of his phone call to his girlfriend’s workplace.

“The simplest alibi ever heard, but the hardest to prove,” Stolarz said. “Three days, three-day trial. He didn’t testify in his own defense, and the defense put up no witnesses, not a single piece of evidence. The only time he spoke was during the sentencing in Houston. In Texas, the same jury to find you guilty or innocent decides if you live or die.” normalizing a plurality of de nitions for terms the West has considered universal.”

Brown was found guilty, sentenced to death and sent to the police unit 60 miles north of Houston in Livingston, Texas. Stolarz described Brown’s conditions in the prison cell, which had a small slivered window and tight dimensions.

Stolarz also described the many deep-rooted problems with the state’s handling of Brown’s case. One such problem was rooted in the falsification of Brown’s IQ testing results. In the U.S., an individual is required to have an IQ at or above 70 to qualify for execution. During the time of Brown’s conviction, his IQ was 69.

“You got to have a certain level of intellectual functioning. But he didn’t. So they hired the state, hired Dr. George Jankowski. He’s a doctor who analyzed Dewayne and bumped up his IQ by 4, to over the 70 line, to be eligible for execution, saying that he was nervous, anxious and depressed at the time of testing,” Stolarz said.

AfterlivingandworkinginChina for the German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, Rudyak co-created the Decoding China Dictionary, a guide to understanding the Chinese meanings of rede ned terms regarding international relations and development cooperation.

Rudyak compared the utilization of these words by the West with o cial Chinese discourse.

“What this event is all about is to try to understand how China looks at the world from the perspective of foreign development assistance,” AidData senior research scientist Dr. Ammar Malik said. “I think it’s critically important for us to step back and revisit this as a more foundational issue.”

Despite not holding national elections and engaging in centralized decision-making under the Chinese Communist roots are democratic, Rudyak said. e Chinese government has been critical of the United States’s judgement and has argued in a white paper that “whether a country is democratic should be judged by its people, not dictated by a handful of outsiders,” according to a CNN analysis.

China has undergone intense criticism of its human rights record in recent years, particularly regarding the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region and suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong. According to Rudyak, the Chinese government has downplayed and sought to justify its actions as protecting what it deems to be the paramount human rights consideration: the right to development.

“[Development] is seen as something that leads to social progress, which is the basis for improving people’s livelihood,” Rudyak said. “Development requires social stability, which is spelled out in [China’s]

Global Security Initiative. Social stability means the absence of dissent. So if you really think that’s true, then you can explain every suppression of folks, including in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang policy, as a protection of human rights.” China also thinks about aid di erently than the West, which stems from a di erent understanding of modernization. Both nations are competing for development projects in the Global South. ere is a very long history [of the idea] for China that modernization does not have to and should not equal Westernization,” Rudyak said. “[According to Xi], it has shown an alternative modernization path for developing countries and o ers a Chinese solution to humanity’s search for a better social system.”

While both models herald visions for a technologically and socioeconomically modern society, the two see di erent ways of achieving this vision. While the West sees secularization, democratization and the advancement of human rights as necessary precursors to modernization, the Chinese model works towards similar aims without the same degree of political and social liberalization. Rudyak explained how the West has fallen short in global development projects in recent years, which has led developing countries to increasingly accept aid from China.

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Youngkin introduces “Right Help, Right Now”

Saturday, April 1, the Student Assembly hosted the rst Student Sustainability Forum in the Sadler Center. e forum, led by Sydney ayer ’24 and the Student Sustainability Council, promoted communication and collaboration between sustainability-focused groups at the College of William and Mary. ese groups included the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the Environmental Humanities department and the students working in the O ce of Sustainability. At this forum, each group had the opportunity to share their perspectives on the College’s current sustainability initiatives. e rst group to present was the College’s chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby. CCL is a national organization that establishes chapters around the country to advocate for legislation promoting sustainability. The group discussed its current initiative, which focuses on raising awareness for passing a Carbon Tax and Dividend legislation. Organizations at the forum discussed the idea of a “snowball effect” to build support for sustainability initiatives. For example, Environmental Humanities, a new major at the College that combines environmental science with economics, political science, public health and the arts, hopes to build support for its program in a similar fashion. By doing so, it hopes to encourage widespread sustainability practices across campus.

“It has a lot of movement in terms of making connections between people within the humanities and the sciences,” program founder Isabel Schruer ’23 said. “So solving climate change from a way that everyone can be involved and making sure that when you’re going into solving a problem, you’re aware of all the biases present. You just go through the science lens. You can forget a lot about the impact it would have on society or how to actually influence people and the environment.”

Thayer, Student Assembly Secretary of Sustainability and now president-elect, shared her perspective on sustainability activism in the College community.

“I think the change that happens at William and Mary is very much student driven,” Thayer said. For Thayer, advocacy from the student body is extremely important, and the driving factor that will drive the College towards a more eco-friendly community. Thayer and the Office of Sustainability, the third organization to present at the meeting, emphasized how students can advocate on behalf of themselves.

Plan To Address Behavioral Health

Virginia ranks 48th in youth mental health nationally, over $230 million allocated for new resources

According to Youngkin, the state is projected to run a $3.6 billion budget surplus this year. With the additional funds, Youngkin and his administration plan on expanding programs such as “Right Help, Right Now” while also cutting taxes.

“It’s an ‘and’ moment, not an ‘or’ moment, and we can accomplish both,” Youngkin said.

Youngkin also told e Flat Hat about his administration’s recent e orts to deliver his mental health initiative.

“Our Department of Behavioral Health is the primary department that will deliver a lot of the infrastructure, although it is across government,” he said.

“I think a key to this is the collaborative way we work together, then bringing in systems and processes to make sure that we have accountability as well.”

According to Littel, 120 individuals at the state-level are working on implementation of the plan.

“This is not government fixing everything,” Youngkin said. “It is, in fact, the state government providing a big initial push and bring together all the stakeholders.”

During the lunch break, attendees broke out into small groups for the rst roundtablesessiontodiscusstheirrolesand experiences with mental health in schools.

Rebekah Cohodas ’23, a wellness ambassador and student in one of Crace’s classes, attended the event. In her rst roundtable, Cohodas learned from individuals with a diverse set of roles across the state.

“I talked with people who had di erent positions within mental health,” Cohodas said. “ ere was someone from K-12, someone from a two-year university and someone from a four-year university. ey were really interested in and appreciated having the student at the roundtable. Some things that people might consider to be great policies look good on paper, but then if students don’t adopt it in the way it’s intended, it doesn’t actually work. And students can be wary of seeking that help.”

According to Cohodas, she left the event feeling inspired by her fellow attendees’ work in mental health across the state.

“I thought it was really inspirational to be surrounded by people who genuinely care about the mental health of our youth,” Cohodas said. “It was very inspiring and I like seeing tangible things that we could improve in the future for mental health.”

As part of the event, Youngkin and the First Lady toured the Wellness Center, which she had visited earlier this semester with Littel.

During her speech, Suzanne Youngkin discussed the opioid epidemic and substance abuse issues as roots of the mental health crisis. She highlighted the importance of Naloxone nasal sprays, which can save the life of an individual who has overdosed, and contextualized the role of the governor’s policy proposal in the broader landscape of attendees’ collective e orts to improve the landscape of mental health care in Virginia.

“Government doesn’t change lives, it just doesn’t,” Suzanne Youngkin said. “‘Right Help, Right Now’ is critically important. Putting government resources to work for the people that it’s intended to support is critically important. But you, you are the ones that change lives.

So this is a thank you to you for each and every thing that you do every single day.”