12 alums are among 2017 ‘Leadership in Law’ honorees

Twelve UB law alums were among the honorees at The Daily Record‘s Leadership in Law event, held May 11 at the BWI Hilton:

Peter Angelos, LL.B. ’61 (Law Office of Peter G. Angelos) — 2017 Lifetime Achievement honoree

The Hon. John Debelius, J.D. ’78 (Circuit Court for Montgomery County) — 2017 Lifetime Achievement honoree

Steven K. Fedder, J.D. ’77 (Fedder & Janofsky)

Renee Lane-Kunz, J.D. ’03 (Shapiro Sher Guinot & Sandler)

Brett S. Lininger, J.D. ’05 (Semmes, Bowen & Semmes)

Cylia E. Lowe-Smith, J.D. ’03, M.S. ’08 (U.S. Office of Personnel Management Office of the General Counsel)

Sierrah B. Mitchell, J.D. ’12 (Meng Law)

G. Adam Ruther, J.D. ’07 (Rosenberg Martin Greenberg)

Lisa Y. Settles, J.D. ’94, M.P.A. ’94 (Pessin Katz Law)

Jennifer J. Stearman, J.D. ’99 (McGuireWoods)

Ryan Walburn, J.D. ’14 (Franklin & Prokopik)

Flavia Williamson, J.D. ’08 (Social Security Administration)

Congratulations to all!

Fannie Angelos Program founders accept ABA diversity award

The “two Mikes”: Fannie Angelos Program founders Michael Meyerson (left) and F. Michael Higginbotham at a gala celebration for the program in 2014.

Professors F. Michael Higginbotham and Michael I. Meyerson, founders of the UB School of Law’s Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence, accepted the Diversity Leadership Award from the American Bar Association on May 3 at the ABA Section of Litigation’s annual conference in San Francisco.

The “two Mikes” began the program in 1995. Inspired by Baltimore lawyer Fannie Angelos, LL.B. ’51, the initiative finds talented young people and helps them to overcome obstacles on their path to becoming top-notch litigators and advocates.

The program works with Maryland’s four historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs — Bowie State University, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Coppin State University and Morgan State University.

Each year, eight applicants are chosen as Fannie Angelos Scholars, qualifying them to receive a full scholarship to the UB School of Law. The program also admits up to 72 additional HBCU students, enabling them to attend a rigorous LSAT review course.

“We do not consider ourselves a diversity program,” said DLA Piper Professor of Law and program director Michael Meyerson. “We are a talent search. We have found that if you discover talent and truly level the playing field, diversity will happen.”

The Fannie Angelos Program not only helps students from the HBCUs gain admittance to law school; it also encourages them to excel in law school and assists them in finding jobs upon graduation.

“Our students have overcome the odds,” Dean Joseph Curtis Professor of Law F. Michael Higginbotham said. “It could be poverty, racism or other socioeconomic barriers that present a significant obstacle to their success. Yet they still thrive. All of us have deep respect for what these students have achieved. They have a drive and a focus that shows through in so many ways.”

Learn more about the Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence.

Fannie Angelos, LL.B. ’51, at an October 2014 gala celebration for the Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence. Angelos died in April 2015 at age 88. (Photo by Jim Burger.)

Babb named director of new Certificate in Family Law program

Professor Barbara Babb

Professor Barbara Babb has been named director of the nation’s first Post-J.D. Certificate in Family Law, UB School of Law Dean Ronald Weich announced Thursday.

The new program, which begins in the fall, is designed to meet a critical need for an enhanced, in-depth family law curriculum.

Babb, director of the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts, or CFCC, joined the UB law faculty in 1989. In her scholarship, Babb advocates an interdisciplinary approach to family law — using therapeutic jurisprudence and employing an ecological/holistic perspective — as well as the creation of unified family courts. She has served in numerous roles to develop unified family courts in Maryland and across the country.

Babb has published and spoken extensively on family law issues. In 2016, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts named Babb editor in chief of the Family Court Review, on whose editorial board she has served since 1999.

The Post-J.D. Certificate in Family Law was developed to address a growing demand for a family law curriculum that offers a holistic blend of theory and practice, as described in a recent Family Court Review article by Babb. The CFCC assembled a practitioners’ advisory work group made up of UB law professors, CFCC staff, judges, attorneys and others who are experts in the field of family law. The work group first examined the feasibility of the program and then collaborated with UB law faculty to design the curriculum.

The certificate program is intended both for new attorneys beginning to practice family law and for attorneys seeking to add family law expertise to their practice.

Students can complete the 16-credit program over 12 months or at their own pace. Faculty include UB law professors, attorneys and judges, all of whom bring decades of real-world insight and experience to the classroom.

Click here for more information about the Post-J.D. Certificate in Family Law or to apply online.

Learn about the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts.

McClean article focuses on the plight of ‘bad paper’ veterans

Professor Hugh McClean

Professor Hugh McClean, director of the UB School of Law’s Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, co-wrote an article that appeared in the April 17, 2017, issue of the MSBA Bar Bulletin.

In “Leaving Other Than Honorable Soldiers Behind,” McClean, with co-author Dan Scapardine, discussed the plight of the roughly 16 percent of soldiers who received other-than-honorable, or OTH, discharges.

McClean served in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General Corps from 2003 to 2014 and held positions as a prosecutor, defense attorney, law professor and assistant general counsel.

Scapardine, a 2L at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, has a related article forthcoming in the Maryland Law Review (Vol. 76, Issue 4).

An OTH discharge bars veterans from receiving most military benefits and generally prevents them from benefiting from legislation that supports veterans, McClean and Scapardine wrote, adding that veterans with an OTH discharge carry the label for life unless it is corrected.

Many “bad paper” veterans suffer from PTSD or depression, and many have been discharged for disciplinary reasons when proper mental-health care was needed but not provided, they said.

The practice of wrongfully discharging veterans has placed the burden of caring for them on the criminal justice system.

Wrote McClean and Scapardine: “The military has shifted the burden of care for these veterans to civilian society, which at large does not fully understand issues facing the veteran community. The result is that more veterans are homeless, incarcerated, or without healthcare than in previous decades.”

While law clinics like UB’s help these veterans understand the rules governing their cases and also help them collect evidence crucial to the presentation of their cases, more work is needed, the authors said:

“A comprehensive remedy that addresses the shortcomings of the discharge process for veterans with mental health issues needs to be developed. This remedy must go further than the limited remedies available to veterans with OTH discharges, and must attempt to give these veterans a second chance.”

Read the MSBA Bar Bulletin story here.

Learn more about Professor McClean and The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic.

Dionne Koller named winner of 2017 President’s Faculty Award

Professor Dionne Koller

Professor Dionne Koller has been named the recipient of the 2017 President’s Faculty Award. 

University of Baltimore President Kurt L. Schmoke announced the news to university faculty and staff Friday morning:

It is my pleasure to announce that Dionne Koller, professor in the School of Law and director of its Center for Sport and the Law, is the recipient of the 2017 President’s Faculty Award. Prof. Koller will be honored at a luncheon during the fall semester.

In nominating her for this award, School of Law Dean Ronald Weich wrote to the selection committee: “Professor Koller relies on core principles of quality teaching, such as thorough preparation, clarity, organization, and respect for students. She is not afraid to experiment with approaches to the material that challenges her students to sharpen their legal skills and achieve their own professional excellence.” He added that students “find her teaching so effective that they apply the learning techniques she models in other courses. It seems clear that Professor Koller’s high standards coupled with clear instruction on how to meet them keep students fully engaged.”

Prof. Koller also leads a center that is devoted to exploring the interstices of athletics and the legal system―an area rich with opportunities to effect positive change in the modern world. For example, she has spoken out repeatedly on the reforms that are necessary for the Olympics to be viewed as a true standard-bearer for fair play in amateur sport.

Please join me in congratulating Dionne on this achievement, and in thanking the selection committee for its work. 

Sincerely,

Kurt L. Schmoke
President

MVLS joins trafficking clinic to expand services to survivors

The Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service has joined the UB School of Law’s Human Trafficking Prevention Project to offer expanded services to human-trafficking survivors and others at risk of exploitation.

According to a May 3 story in The Daily Record – “Pro bono group, UB Law launching expanded human trafficking prevention effort” – the move will allow the clinic to take on more cases and to expand its reach beyond Baltimore.

The expansion is part of a two-year grant from the governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, the paper reported.

Laurie Culkin, J.D. ’16, has been hired as the coordinator of the clinic, which is directed by Jessica Emerson, J.D. ’13.

“The goal is to train attorneys to handle these cases and train statewide,” said Culkin, who has a background in victims’ rights and family law advocacy for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

The clinic is working with bar associations and law firms to raise its profile and to encourage attorneys to take cases pro bono.

Under Maryland’s 2011 “vacatur” law, sex-trafficking survivors can have their prostitution convictions vacated. With the expanded program, The Daily Record reported, MVLS staff and pro-bono attorneys will work with survivors on criminal-record expungement, shielding and vacatur, which will enable survivors to access employment, housing, public benefits and student loans.

“Employment hurdles on top of their emotional distress can be debilitating to survivors of human trafficking, especially as they try to better their lives,” said Bonnie Sullivan, executive director of MVLS. “Our partnership with the University of Baltimore School of Law presents an opportunity to help survivors heal from their trauma by reducing the stigma associated with having a criminal record that resulted from a history of trafficking.”

A free training for attorneys will be offered June 9 at the UB School of Law. Information can be found on the MVLS website.

Read The Daily Record story here.

Learn more about the Human Trafficking Prevention Project.

‘Traumatic’ open parole hearings highlighted in column, letter

Dan Rodricks’s April 26 Baltimore Sun column, “Pain, anger and a plea for parole,” described an open parole hearing for Carleana Kirby, a client of UB’s Juvenile Justice Project.

Kirby was 15 in 1998 when, during a botched robbery of a bar in Southwest Baltimore, she fatally shot server Terry Ambrose. Charged as an adult with felony murder, Kirby was sentenced to life in prison, with all but 50 years suspended.

Rodricks described the scene earlier this week at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup at Kirby’s first parole hearing. Ambrose’s daughter, Crystal Ambrose, gave a “sobbing, trembling, anguished and bitter narrative of her life since the night of Feb. 11, 1998,” Rodricks wrote.

Ambrose clutched a piece of paper with bullet points, including one that said: “You want to get out [of prison] at 35 to start your life? Her life ended at 35.”

The victim’s daughter implored the parole commissioners to deny Kirby parole. They did. Kirby is eligible for another hearing in 10 years. The decision cannot be appealed.

In a letter published in The Sun the following day, former Juvenile Justice Project clinical fellow Eve Hanan and current fellow Lila Meadows said Rodricks’s column offered a rare glimpse into the emotionally charged environment of open parole hearings but failed to mention the “larger context” in which the exchanges take place:

“The Maryland Parole Commission’s procedures for open parole hearings create an environment that is dehumanizing and traumatic for victims and for offenders, who spend decades working to become productive members of society only to learn that parole is rarely granted, especially if the victim opposes release. This works an injustice in many cases, and is likely unconstitutional in cases involving juveniles serving life sentences.”

The Maryland Parole Commission has strict rules for open parole hearings. Only statements from the victim’s family are permitted. No one can speak on behalf of the prisoner. While prisoners themselves are allowed to speak, they must be seated so they cannot see, or make eye contact with, the victim’s family.

“Forbidden to speak at the hearing are our clients’ family members, clergy, correctional officers, attorneys and other supporters who can speak to the change they’ve seen over the years as these juvenile lifers have quite literally grown up in prison,” Hanan and Meadows wrote.

Moreover, they noted, the Maryland Parole Commission is required as a matter of state and constitutional law to consider, in cases like Kirby’s, “the unique attributes of youth that render adolescents both less culpable and more likely to change into better people over time.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has “made it clear that we must look beyond the circumstances of the crime when deciding whether a juvenile lifer such as Ms. Kirby deserves a second chance,” Hanan and Meadows wrote. “The parole commission must look beyond the pain and anger that are ever-present in many open hearings to make a deeper, legally mandated inquiry into the change our clients have undergone after decades of incarceration.”

Learn more about the Juvenile Justice Project.

Zina Makar is recognized as Public Interest Lawyer of the Year

Zina Makar, co-director of the Pretrial Justice Clinic

Zina Makar, clinical fellow and co-director of the Pretrial Justice Clinic, has been named the Public Interest Lawyer of the Year by the Bar Association of Baltimore City. (See news release here.)

In a message to UB law faculty and staff, Professor Colin Starger, Makar’s colleague in the Pretrial Justice Clinic, said Makar had played a critical role in advancing the cause of bail reform in Maryland this year.

“Her tireless and brilliant work in pursuit of pretrial justice inspires our students and energizes everyone in the community fighting for reform,” Starger said.

Makar, the 12th recipient of the award, will be honored at the Bar Association’s annual reception, to be held May 8 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on the second floor of the Mitchell Courthouse (100 N. Calvert St.). Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh will be the guest speaker.

To RSVP for the event, write info@baltimorebar.org or call 410-539-5936.

Learn more about Makar and the Pretrial Justice Clinic.

Read “Bail Reform Begins with the Bench,” an op-ed by Makar in The New York Times (Nov. 17, 2016).

Congratulations, Zina!

Malcolm Bryant dies at 42 after less than a year of freedom

Malcolm Bryant addresses a UB School of Law symposium on wrongful convictions on Sept. 29, 2016. Professor Michele Nethercott, director of UB’s Innocence Project Clinic, is at right.

Less than a year after he was freed from prison, where he spent nearly 18 years for a murder he did not commit, Malcolm Jabbar Bryant died of a stroke a few weeks shy of his 43^rd birthday.

Bryant died March 8, according to a notice from the Beverly D. Cromartie funeral home. Born April 6, 1974, Bryant was buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery in Baltimore, the notice said.

Bryant, a client of UB Innocence Project Clinic director Michele Nethercott, proclaimed his innocence for nearly two decades before his convictions were vacated in May 2016.

He was convicted in 1999 in the murder of Toni Bullock, a 16-year-old girl who was repeatedly stabbed after being dragged into an empty lot off Harford Road. Though four friends of Bryant’s testified they’d been with him elsewhere the night of the murder, the jury believed the sole witness, a friend of Bullock’s, who picked out Bryant from a “six-pack” photo lineup.

Bryant was freed after long-sought DNA tests confirmed what he’d insisted all along: The state had the wrong man.

The state for years fought the release of the physical evidence that ultimately proved Bryant’s innocence.

“We had a fight every step of the way on the DNA testing,” Nethercott said in the Fall 2016 issue of Baltimore Law magazine. (See the cover below.)

It wasn’t until last spring that a judge ordered DNA testing of the victim’s T-shirt in the area most likely to have come into contact with the murderer; Nethercott suspected the attacker might have been cut on the hilt of the knife as Bullock was stabbed “in a frenzy.”

She was right. The laboratory that tested the spot on the T-shirt found a full male profile consistent with the DNA under the fingernails of the victim, who had tried to fight off her attacker. The DNA profile was not Bryant’s.

Bryant walked out of Baltimore’s Courthouse East a free man on the afternoon of May 11, 2016. (Read Baltimore Sun story here.)

In a television interview that night, Bryant offered hope to other wrongfully convicted prisoners: “Don’t give up. An angel is coming.”

Nethercott described Bryant as one of the kindest, sweetest clients she ever represented, a man who never failed to express his concern for and appreciation of the Innocence Project staff that assisted him.

“He endured so much tragedy throughout his life, including years of incarceration for a murder he did not commit, but he never gave up the fight to prove his innocence and that strengthened my resolve to never give up either despite many setbacks over the years,” Nethercott said. “I will always remember him and I miss him.”

Bryant leaves two sons, his parents and his sisters.

Godspeed, Malcolm.

Click on the image above to read the Fall 2016 issue of Baltimore Law, the magazine of the University of Baltimore School of Law. Malcolm Bryant appears on the cover with Professor Michele Nethercott (left) and Towanda Luckett, J.D. ’16.

Grossman to assess nominees to Inter-American rights body

Professor Nienke Grossman

Professor Nienke Grossman, deputy director of UB’s Center for International and Comparative Law, been named to an independent panel that will assess six nominees competing for three positions on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The Inter-American Commission, established in 1959, is charged with monitoring human rights across the Americas.

The five-member panel is made up of jurists and academics from the human rights community. In addition to Grossman, the panel members are Miguel Sarre, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México; Miguel Gutiérrez Saxe, Programa Estado de la Nación, Costa Rica; Cecilia Medina Quiroga, lawyer, academic and former member of the panel, Chile; and Elizabeth Salmón Garate, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Read a press release from the Center for Justice and International Law.

Learn more about Professor Grossman.