At De-Bug’s ACJP, we have worked with countless families on a case by case basis on how they can construct a mitigation packet — a collection of letters, photos, certificates — to be submitted to their public defender to use for charge or sentence reduction. The packets have helped stop life sentences, have removed strike priors, turned felonies into misdemeanors, and over all reduced the amount of incarceration for community members. This week we held our first workshop, walking through the process, requirements, and approaches for families to create effective packets. In the room are mothers who sons were facing significant prison time, families who’s loved ones faced deportation, and others. We are excited to share the workshop to whomever is interested so they too can help bring the power of family story into the courtroom to impact cases. Feel free to email us if interested in a workshop! In the image, on the wall on the right, are pictures of families we have done social biography videos for, and a map of where we have trained public defenders on the concept.

In a small group setting at De-Bug, Charisse and Cece leads families through a presentation on creating effective mitigation packets.

Much respect to Gideon’s Promise warrior Anna Kurien of the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office, who after attending a workshop we gave on how public defenders can make social biography videos to reduce sentences, took the plunge and tried one for the sake of her client. Anna is a profoundly committed advocate, and we had great conversations when she would call to get feedback on interviews and production, and she spent weekends getting footage with her client and family. Read her story to see her remarkable results!

Anna Kurien of the Fulton County Public Defender Office made her first social biography video to amazing success.

My 41 year client faced a charge that carried a mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison with no possibility of parole. Given my review of the case, I knew that I had to put all my energy towards mitigation and hope for a miracle. After attending the Gideon’s Promise training on social biography videos conducted by Raj from De-Bug’s ACJP, I knew this was a compelling case for mitigation and that a social biography video would humanize  my client to the State.

After hours of attorney-client conversations and meeting with our office social worker, we developed the main points we wanted to communicate through the video. Continue reading →

ACJP organizers Stacey McGruder and Blanca Bosquez at a Yes on Prop 47 event.

In 1999, about this time of the year, I was hanging billboard-size banners off freeway overpasses with a bunch of people I just met that morning. The spray-painted bedsheets read “No on Prop 21!” and “Stop Criminalizing Youth of Color.”

We were part of California’s burgeoning youth movement – mainly twentysomethings who were coming of age at a fork-in-the-road moment for the state in terms of how it viewed, responded to and served its young people.

Proposition 21 was a “tough-on-crime” initiative from a continuum of policies set in the 1980s. Under its language, juveniles could be charged as adults, which would significantly increase prison sentences for a broad array of felonies. Ultimately, it promised to dramatically increase California’s incarceration rates.

California voters passed Proposition 21 (despite massive organizing by young people). It committed California — financially and ethically — to the notion that “lock-them-up politics” was a sound public safety framework to move us forward. Generations of California’s youth have been paying the price ever since.

Our prisons are now so crowded that the U.S. Supreme Court found them in violation of constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. And the money required to support the exponential growth in California’s incarceration numbers has depleted public resources that could have gone to opportunities and supportive structures for youth through education and social services. Continue reading →

As we head into the November 4th election, let’s take a look at the election process involving judicial candidates. Are we the public getting a fair shake from the candidates? Are we being as fully informed on the issues as the First Amendment allows? Or are the candidates for judicial office playing the public and the voters for fools?

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, in Republican Party v. White, 536 U.S. 765, struck down Minnesota’s so-called announce clause, a portion of a judicial canon that prohibited candidates from announcing their views on the hot button and disputed legal, political and social issues of the day.

The rationale for the announce clause being that any candidate, who publicly expressed his or her views on controversial issues, would be precluded from hearing cases involving similar issues, once they took the bench, on the theory that having once expressed a view on a given issue, that might later come before the candidate on the court, would evidence a disqualifying bias. Continue reading →

“Tony” erases his name at a Participatory Defense meeting ceremony — where families who bring loves ones home from incarceration eras their names from the whiteboard.

Tony is 13 years old and just got out from 99 days in juvenile hall. He sat shyly at the edge of the table next to his mother, responding respectfully to the “congratulations” and “welcome homes” that were directed to him from strangers who knew him only through his mother’s stories and seeing his name on a whiteboard at the meeting they all attend every week. Tony is at what we’ve dubbed our ‘family justice hub’ meeting — weekly gathering of families whose loved ones are facing criminal charges. He is here to be a part of the one ceremony we have – when a family brings a loved one home by either beating the charges, receiving a reduced sentence, or a dismissal as a result of their intervention into the case — and they erase their name from the board. The room of roughly 20 people breaks into applause when Tony takes the eraser to his name, his mother thanking the community who walked with her and her son through the darkest 99 days of their lives. She is in tears. Tony was facing years of incarceration, but due to her advocacy and the public defender’s lawyering, her son will be able to have his 14th birthday at home.

If tradition holds, Tony’s mom will continue attending the meetings, and assist other families who find themselves in the position she once did. She will share with them what she learned here from others — how to partner with or push the public defender, how to dissect police reports and court transcripts, and how to build a sustained community presence in the courtroom to let judges and prosecutors know the person facing charges is not alone.

We call the approach “participatory defense” – a community organizing model for people facing charges, their families, and their communities to impact the outcome of cases and transform the landscape of power in the court system.

As incarceration rates balloon to astronomical levels – 1 out of 100 Americans are currently locked up — participatory defense may the most assessable way directly affected communities can challenge mass incarceration, and have the movement building dynamic of seeing timely and locally relevant results of their efforts. It is a penetration into the one domain that facilitates people going to prisons and jails, yet has been left largely unexplored by the ground up movement to end mass incarceration – the courts. Please believe there are Tony’s across the country waiting to come home, and communities that, if equipped, can do just that – bring him home. Continue reading →

Image from our most recent social biography video in New York. Charisse capturing this mother’s reflection of the first time she stood in the backyard of the home her son bought her.

We are here in her backyard to do a video to keep her son out of prison. She never had a backyard before. She raised her kids, as a single mother, in apartments down the hill in this small New York town. When her son was grown, he walks her by this house and asks her if she likes it. He used to cut the lawn during summers there as a boy. She says yes, and he says, “It’s yours now ma, I bought it for you.” She has cancer now, has had part of her lungs removed. She can’t come out back that often because it gets hard to breath, but standing here used to be her favorite thing. The day she first stood in her backyard (the moment she is recalling now and telling Charisse) she says is the happiest moment of her 85 years. Her son, who now takes care of her full time, is facing prison time, and she is is sharing with us his story, her story, the family story, so we can produce this social biography video for the judge to know the impact of his possible incarceration.

She was scared when probation first came barging in her house, pushing her aside to get her son. But at 85, she is still her son’s mother, and stepped in front of them, and told them not to disrespect the house. When they come now, they knock first, as she asked. She sees them through the window but asks, “Who is it?” They answer, now as polite as she has trained them. And then, sometimes, she makes them wait, just for a brief beat of moment.

Our friend, colleague, and mentor Jonathan Rapping has just received a McArthur Genius Award! Rapping and the Gideon’s Promise team are revolutionizing public defense in this country by both being innovative and forward thinking, yet deeply embedded in the traditions and values of America’s civil rights movement. Check out the piece we wrote on Rapping last year, Gideon’s Army Deserves Back Up. We have been honored to partner with Rapping to train his lawyers at Gideon’s Promise gatherings in Atlanta and North Carolina on our social biography video concept. Below is a pic of Rap with Fernando a couple months back at Wake Forest Law School. Congrats to Rapping and the Gideon’s Promise team! Click the image to see the video on Rapping on the McArthur website.

We recently went to St.Louis to produce a social biography video for a capital case. The attorneys, as committed as we have ever seen, are determined to saving their client’s life. Their state of Missouri had been on a torrid  execution pace — averaging an execution a month this year. We were asked to capture the story of the community their client grew up in during 1990’s — a decade defined as a “war zone” for that part of the city. Their client, the man who’s life we are fighting for, said, “You grow into the shape of the container you were raised in.” The poetic reflection gave us a framework for our video. We would ask people — the survivors of an era of extreme violence, drugs, and political corruption — to describe their city in the 90’s. The first response we got from someone as he showed us all of his bullet woulds and stabbing works. He said, “Three words? Do or die.” The following photos by Jean Melesaine shares some of the visions we saw — a post-war city, still holding on to what got them thru: dignity, love, and each other. (Click the image to see the full photo essay on De-Bug.)

“Bone” shows us where he was shot in his abdomen and his tattoos. When asked why we didn’t see more men of his age in the municipality, he said, “They are all dead or in prison.” His tattoos read: “Gods Son.”