40 Years Later—Assessing the Promise of Gideon

Director of OSI's Gideon Project
Moderator

Jacqueline Baillargeon is the director of OSI's Gideon Project. Prior to joining OSI, Baillargeon worked for the Special Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, as a staff attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, and at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Baillargeon clerked for the Hon. William G. Young of the United States District Court in Boston and the Hon. Cecil F. Poole of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. She spent a semester as a clinical professor teaching and supervising second and third year students at Catholic University's General Practice Clinic and has served as an adjunct professor at American University's Washington College of Law.

Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights
Panelist

Stephen B. Bright is the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a public interest legal project. Bright teaches courses on the death penalty and criminal law at Harvard and Yale law schools. For more than two decades, he has represented people facing the death penalty at trial, on appeals, and in post-conviction proceedings.

Bright's work and that of the Center have been featured in two books: Proximity to Death, by William McFeely (W.W. Norton, 1999), and Finding Life on Death Row, by Katya Lezin (Northeastern University Press, 1999). He has received many awards including the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award, the Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty presented by the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Kutak-Dodds Prize presented by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association.

Panelist

Jimmy Ray Bromgard became the 111th person in the United States to be exonerated with DNA testing. He had spent more than fifteen years behind bars for a crime that he did not commit. At his initial trial, Bromgard's defense counsel was inadequate. His attorney did no investigation, hired no experts, gave no opening statement, didn't prepare a closing statement, and failed to file a postconviction appeal. Bromgard was convicted of three counts of sexual intercourse without consent and sentenced to three 40-year terms in prison.

The Innocence Project began working on Bromgard's case in 2000—the same year that he was turned down by the parole board—bringing to light the causes of his wrongful conviction: fraudulent science and incompetent representation.

Adjunct Professor of Law, Rutgers University School of Law
Panelist

John J. Farmer, Jr. is an adjunct professor of law at Rutgers University School of Law. From 1999-2002, he served as the New Jersey Attorney General. Prior to that, he was assistant U.S. attorney, District of New Jersey, assistant counsel to Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R), the deputy chief counsel to Whitman, and a commissioner for the New Jersey State Commission on Investigations. He clerked for Justice Alan B. Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court for two terms and was in private practice at Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland, and Perretti. A graduate of Georgetown University College and Law Center, he also taught at Seton Hall University School of Law. He is on the board of trustees for the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice.

Partner at Arnold & Porter, Washington D.C.
Panelist

Abe Krash is a partner at Arnold & Porter in Washington D.C., where he has been engaged in antitrust counseling and litigation since 1953. Prior to joining the firm, Krash assisted Abe Fortas—who later joined the U.S. Supreme Court as a Justice—in representing Clarence Earl Gideon in 1963. Krash has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center since 1993—teaching courses in constitutional law, the federal courts, and the legal profession—and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School. Since 1992, he has served as the president of the Friends of the Law Library of Congress. Krash has published articles on constitutional and criminal law, antitrust and trade regulation, legal ethics, and federal civil procedure.

Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama
Panelist

Bryan A. Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama in Montgomery, Alabama, and an associate professor of law at the New York University School of Law. He and his staff have been largely responsible for reversals or reduced sentences in more than 65 death penalty cases. He represents indigent defendants, death row prisoners, and juveniles who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.

Stevenson has earned many awards including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Reebok Human Rights Award, the ACLU's National Medal of Liberty, the Thurgood Marshall Medal of Justice, the American Bar Association's John Minor Public Service and Professionalism Award. He was named the 1996 Public Interest Lawyer of the Year by the National Association of Public Interest Lawyers. He won the Gleitsman Foundation's National Citizen Activist Award in 1999, and the Olaf Palme Prize in 2000.

Senior Vice President for Programs at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association
Panelist

Jo-Ann Wallace is the senior vice president for programs at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA), a national organization devoted to ensuring competent legal representation for indigent people in the United States in both civil and criminal cases. She served on NLADA's Board of Directors from 1995 to 1999, when she was elected chairperson. Prior to her work at NLADA, she was the director of the public defender service for the District of Columbia.

Wallace is a founding co-chair of the American Council of Chief Defenders, a leadership council of top defender executives from across the United States and the founder of the District of Columbia Appellate Practice Institute. She has lectured on criminal justice topics at Harvard Law School's Trial Advocacy Workshop, the District of Columbia Criminal Practice Institute, the District of Columbia Delinquency and Neglect Practice Institute, and NLADA's National Defender Leadership Institute.