Criminal Clinic prevailed in habeas corpus action on behalf of prisoner by showing that a 1996 parole eligibility law violates the ex post facto prohibition in the federal constitution. Testimony established that the petitioner and over 800 other Connecticut inmates in like circumstances (in prison for offense committed before effective date of new parole law) must under the law serve an extra 35% of their sentences before becoming parole eligible. The Attorney General appealed. Two Trial Division students represented petitioner at his habeas trial. After an appellate clinic student argued the case on appeal, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in our client’s favor. Johnson v. Commissioner, 258 Conn. 804 (2002).

Seven day trial in 1997. Two inmates at Connecticut’s “supermax” facility, Northern Correctional Institution, made multiple statutory and constitutional challenges to an administrative directive that denies inmates confined in that institution the opportunity to earn statutory “good time” reductions in their actual term of incarceration. Student co-tried case and two students appeared in the cases on appeal. Beasley v. Commissioner, 50 Conn. App. 421 (1998), aff’d, 249 Conn. 499 (1999).

Four month murder trial in Rockville Superior Court. Four legal interns acted as co-counsel with a Clinic attorney and the Public Defender. Students had active involvement in pretrial motions practice and hearings, jury selection, developing trial strategies, performing investigations, client counseling, etc.

Clients ran underground needle exchange program in Willimantic to combat spread of AIDS through sharing of needles by IV drug users. Common law necessity defense raised; efforts included joining in successful lobbying effort to have legislature de-criminalize possession of hypodermic needles.

Client charged with first degree larceny for AFDC, TFA, and Food Stamp Fraud of over $10,000 in benefits. After investigation, the Clinic prevailed on prosecutor to reduce charge to third degree larceny, making client eligible for Accelerated Rehabilitation (“AR”). Negotiated terms of AR to reduce restitution sum to $4,000, with further reduction of that figure by set-off for sums that the Department of Social Services was already administratively recouping by reducing client’s current benefits. Client in the end paid less than $2,000 in out-of-pocket restitution. The prosecution was dismissed in September, 2000.

The Clinic successfully procured a pardon for a woman originally from Eritrea who had three convictions for shoplifting stemming from the period ten years ago when she was still making the radical shift from life in that impoverished, war-ravaged country to life in the U.S.A. An unexpected opportunity to meet an individual who could educate her attorneys on the Ethiopia/Eritrean struggles of the last two decades. As a rule, we take pardons cases very infrequently. In this instance the client found us and hearing her story was enough to overcome our policy.