February 15-19

Hello Readers,

This week I did more week on the case I talked about last week. Arizona Innocence Project is in the process of filing a brief, written by Collen Maring, trying to uphold the ruling they got from the Arizona Court of Appeals. My role is basically a fact-checker. I go through the trial transcript and other available documents and cite the quotes that Colleen wants to include. I also make sure that the things we are looking for actually exist and we can back them up. It’s important that we don’t distort facts or take them out of context, because unlike in trial law, we are limited in the documents we can use. If a fact cannot be found in the trial transcript, it doesn’t exist.

This can be a tedious task, because it requires a lot of flipping through papers, hoping I can find the part of the transcript that best supports Colleen’s argument. It can be very disappointing to find bad news (“That witness that seemed great? He actually doesn’t help us at all”). But it is also very rewarding to find good quotes and citations that strengthen the case. And, even though it’s disappointing to realize that an argument isn’t supported by the transcript, it’s important to find out early on, when we still have lots of time to edit the argument.  

Another part of my role is to go through and find factual arguments that support our case that aren’t already included. I’ve only barely begun this process, but it’s very exciting for me, because contributing my own ideas and interpretations forces me to think about the case from a completely new perspective, and gives me a much deeper understanding of the case.

Next week I’ll be doing some work for a trial case and I hope to compare and contrast that process with the appellate process.

February 8-12

Hello Readers,

Welcome back to the blog previously titled “The Status of Juvenile Conviction as Adults in Arizona.”

This week, the goal was to familiarize myself with the case I will be assisting until the beginning of March. So I sat down, read over 200 pages of Evidentiary Hearing transcripts, motions, etc. to try and figure out what is going on with this case. And I’m sure that’s what everyone wants to hear about: what is going on with this case?

For confidentiality reasons, I can’t disclose any names or identifying facts, but I’ll tell you what I can, and then I’ll tell you what my role is going forward.

In the state of Arizona, the person who I will be referring to as John Doe was accused of murdering a stranger. And there was some circumstantial evidence against John: he was in the same place at the same time that the murder took place, he was armed (the victim was killed by gunshot), and there were no witnesses to say John hadn’t committed the act. But there was also “scientific” evidence against John.

And at the time, this was considered rock-solid evidence. And John reacted the way many falsely accused people react when such damaging evidence is presented: he started to believe he had done it. He saw the evidence that seemingly directly linked him to the crime and he thought “How can I argue with that? I must have accidentally shot this person.”

So that’s what he and his lawyer argued in court. With such damaging “scientific” evidence, they couldn’t say he hadn’t done it. So instead they said he had, but he had done so accidentally. He was convicted of manslaughter and went to jail for a decade.

Years later, it came out that this “science” that had been used was proved to be completely baseless, and cannot be used as evidence. And with this revelation, there was finally hope.

Where are we now? The Arizona Court of Appeals has thrown out the guilty verdict on this case, agreeing that the new findings on this evidence would have changed the entire case. AIP’s goal is to keep this ruling. This week, I have been familiarizing myself with the case and the arguments being made by both sides. I have read through the most important transcripts and motions.

Right now, I’m excited about this case. My goals for next week are to learn more about the appellate process, as well as look into a specific brief for the case.

An Introduction and an Evolution

 My name is Rachel Kuntz, and I’m a senior at BASIS Flagstaff. My blog and research project are currently named “The Status of Juvenile Conviction as Adults in Arizona,” but that may be a misleading title at this point, since my project has drastically evolved since it started.

Several months ago I reached out to Arizona Innocence Project, an organization that provides representation for incarcerated people who claim to have been falsely convicted. AIP seeks to free these innocent people.

When I met with Colleen Maring, she informed me that the project had only a small handful of people claiming innocence who had been convicted as adults when they were juveniles, and she wanted to know why. Are juveniles in Arizona simply not at a high risk of being falsely convicted as adults in Arizona? And if they were, how could AIP reach out to this group?

I explored the first question in a literature review, where I looked the current Arizona and Federal law regarding trying juveniles as adults, and scientific articles that suggested juveniles may be at higher risk of false conviction. Studies involving false confession and juvenile impulse control suggested that yes, juveniles are more likely to confess to crimes they did not commit, and may be more likely to be falsely convicted. One study also showed that juveniles convicted as adults may receive harsher sentences than their young adult counterparts. As far as the law, Arizona legislation changed in 2010, setting much stricter standards for trying juveniles as adults. However, juveniles convicted before the change in legislation still may be at risk, and therefore still a group that could need AIP’s services.

The second question, however, became irrelevant recently because AIP will no longer be at NAU after this semester, and exploring an outreach program for this group would no longer be helpful or implementable. So, with this change happening at the start of my internship, it is hard to tell the exact direction in which my project will be progressing.

But Colleen Maring is currently working on an appellate case that will be the bulk of her focus for the month of February. I’ve been given the information for this case and slowly but surely been reading the hundreds of pages of transcripts and motions. This case is particularly interesting because I have absolutely no experience with appellate court cases. In my experience working for a criminal defense attorney and participating in Mock Trial, I feel fairly familiar with trial lawyering, and I’m interested to see how it compares to the appellate process. Overall I’m excited to enter into this process and see the changes in my research project. I am thrilled to be involved in this case and other appellate cases and to learn about this system.