Boston College Law School gives its students a wide range of classes to take that are taught by some of the best scholars in the field. Yet, while learning about the law in a classroom is crucial to becoming a successful attorney, nothing prepares you for day-to-day practice more than getting hands-on experience before graduating. That’s where BC Law’s clinics come in.

Law students in their second and third years of study can apply for coveted spots in any of the school’s fifteen clinics. No matter what someone’s legal interest is, there’s a clinic for them! To help students better understand the opportunities available to them, the BC Law Impact Blog is highlighting each of these clinics this semester. Here is our interview with the director of the Boston College Innocence Program, Sharon Beckman.

Tell us about your clinic!

Students in the Boston College Innocence Program work as a team to free clients wrongfully convicted and imprisoned in Massachusetts. They meet with clients, interview witnesses, investigate crime scenes, work with forensic experts and co-counsel, research and write motions and memoranda of law, and assist in court hearings. They also collaborate with community partners and all three branches of state government on systemic reforms aimed at remedying and preventing wrongful convictions.

Does the Innocence Program have any exciting success stories to share?

Since we filed our first motion in 2018, our clinic has vacated the wrongful convictions of eight clients who collectively served 175 years prison for crimes they didn’t commit! Innocence Program students also helped pass a 2018 law that doubled the amount of compensation for exonerees in Massachusetts; research and draft the Massachusetts Model Jury Instructions on Eyewitness Identification and Implicit Bias; research and draft a Guide for Best Practices for Prosecution Conviction Integrity Units; and research and draft amicus briefs on various issues, including access to forensic testing to prove innocence and the duty of prosecutors to investigate and disclose exculpatory evidence.

What makes the Innocence Program unique?

The Innocence Program is the first (and only) in-house Law School Innocence Clinic in the New England
region. Students also have the opportunity to learn a wide range of legal skills from a team of three supervising attorneys — staff attorneys Charlotte Whitmore and Lauren Jacobs (BC Law Class of 2019) and myself. Another unique feature of the Innocence Program is that it’s paired with an interdisciplinary academic seminar that focuses on the harms and underlying causes of wrongful convictions and ways to address these injustices.

What do you love most about directing the Innocence Program?

Innocence Program students and staff attorneys form the most vibrant and supportive community. The stakes are unusually high for a law school clinic — we’re usually trying to overturn wrongful murder convictions, which is the hardest thing there is to do in law — but the respect and compassion our students have for our clients, the way they show up for them, their eagerness to learn and apply new legal skills, the good ideas they have that I never would’ve thought of, and their kindness toward each other and to supervisors inspire me every day. If there’s one thing more exhilarating than watching an innocent client walk free for the first time in decades, it’s the added joy of doing so with students and alumni who helped make that dream a reality. I know that, whatever type of law any Innocence Program student goes into, they’ll know how to seek justice in that field.

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Tess Halpern is a third-year student and president of the Impact blog. Contact her at halperte@bc.edu.