The Luzira Project

My apologies for being a little opaque about the project we are working on during this trip, so what follows is an overview.

In the summer of 2009, while two Pepperdine law students (Greer Illingworth and Micheline Zamora) were interning for the head of Uganda’s Criminal Division of its High Court, they noticed that Uganda’s prisons were overcrowded, to put it mildly, and inquired about the resolution of criminal cases.  They learned that those arrested essentially had two options: plead guilty to all charges filed, or wait “on remand” in prison for their case to go to trial.  At that time, the wait time was five to seven years, and getting longer.  When they suggested the idea of plea bargaining, their judicial boss asked them to write a report.  Following the report, they were asked to do a presentation to the entire Criminal Division.  The idea was well received, and the report was passed along to the Chief Justice of Uganda.

In January of 2010, Jay Milbrandt, David Barrett, Ray Boucher, and I journeyed to Uganda in an effort to bring relief to a group of twenty-one juveniles on remand awaiting their trial in a juvenile remand home, some for as long as two years.  This trip was inspired by a Bob Goff speech at a Christian Legal Society conference.  Bob arranged for the Uganda Country Director of Restore International, which was started and run by Bob Goff and Danny DeWalt, to provide logistical assistance for us.  And since Pepperdine’s first Nootbaar Fellow (law school alum serving a one-year fellowship for the courts in Uganda), John Napier, was already in Uganda, he joined the team of six.  During this one-week project, we prepared all twenty-one cases for resolution by the Ugandan court system.  Many of the cases were dismissed, some kids pled guilty and were sentenced to time served, and a few went to trial.  This was the week I met Henry, the Katikkiro (Prime Minister) of the inmate government, who served as my interpreter for the week, and who is now essentially part of my family.

When one of the cases went sideways, I flew back to Uganda in April of 2010 to assist in the preparation of the sentencing report.  During that trip, I met with the Head of the Criminal Division, who told me he was interested in arranging a plea bargaining study tour to the United States in the wake of the Chief Justice’s receptivity to our students’ report on plea bargaining.  The following month, six Ugandan judges came to Pepperdine for a week of intense study of what plea bargaining was and whether it might work in Uganda.  Two months later, I came back to Uganda with another group of Pepperdine lawyers (including former Vice Dean Tim Perrin) for another week of intense case preparation at a different juvenile remand home.

The plea bargaining idea continued to bubble along, and was discussed further when I returned again in the summer of 2011 with another group of lawyers for another week of case preparation in a juvenile remand home.  That group of lawyers included Pepperdine Provost Darryl Tippens (honorary lawyer), Pepperdine Law interim dean Tom Bost, and Pepperdine alumnus Eric Hagen.  In advance of that week’s activities, I coordinated with American lawyer Brian Dennison, who is on faculty at Uganda Christian University’s law school, and we developed the idea of teams of lawyers that included Pepperdine law students and Pepperdine lawyers, and Uganda law students and Ugandan lawyers.  That combination proved quite successful and became our model.

Along the way, I accepted the Chief Justice’s invitation to move to Uganda to help them re-envision the process through which juveniles move from arrest to trial.  Out of that six months emerged the J-FASTER system whereby kids would be moved through much more quickly.  Several successful pilot programs were run (including one in the summer of 2012 in which Professor Carol Chase joined the team) and the system was integrated, with the excellent and ongoing assistance of an American NGO called Sixty Feet.  As I departed in July of 2012, I delivered to the Chief Justice a roadmap for integrating J-FASTER into the adult realm.  The first recommendation on my list was the formation of a plea bargaining task force.

Last summer, another group of American lawyers joined me for our first foray into the adult realm.  It went reasonably well, but more importantly, it spurred the appointment of the aforementioned task force.  The members of the task force launched a pilot adult program earlier this year that was fully run by Ugandans.  Lessons were learned and then shared last week during the task force’s visit to Pepperdine, as discussed here.  After a week of fine tuning in the United States, the Luzira Project was finalized which launches this weekend.

The Luzira Project will be a collaboration of fourteen Pepperdine law students (twelve interning in Uganda this summer, and two flying in from their internships in Rwanda), ten Pepperdine lawyers, about ten Ugandan lawyers, and about ten Ugandan law students.  The group of more than forty of us will descend upon Uganda’s maximum security prison, called Luzira, for an intense week of case preparation involving more than one hundred adult prisoners who have been waiting on remand for as long as five years for a lawyer and a resolution of their cases.

As is always the case in Uganda, there have been some logistical challenges we are navigating, which is why I came in five days before most of the team, but things are heading the right direction with the excellent assistance of Susan Vincent, Pepperdine’s current Nootbaar Fellow.  The first member of the team to land in Uganda isn’t a lawyer or law student – it is film producer Michelle Abnet, from Revolution Pictures.  Revolution (based in Nashville) began filming a documentary of Pepperdine’s relationship with the Ugandan Judiciary a couple months ago when it interviewed our summer student interns before they left Malibu for Uganda.  Michelle lands on Thursday evening to do some location scouting and logistics.  Then on Friday afternoon, the rest of the film crew arrives – Andy Reale (Director), Tyson Van Skiver (camera), and John Pope (Director of Photography).  Incidentally, John’s last documentary “Blood Brother” won the 2013 Sundance Grand Jury and Audience Awards, as well as a dozen others.

Then on Friday evening, Pepperdine Professor Carol Chase flies in for her third prison project trip.  On Saturday, the bulk of the team lands, including Dana Hinojosa (Nootbaar Manager who is a stellar logistical coordinator and proved it in last summer’s project), Eric Hagen (second prison project), Erica Olson (former colleague of Eric’s and mine from Kirkland, now an intellectual property lawyer for Amgen), Jared Johnson (Las Vegas lawyer), Karissa Freano (Los Angeles lawyer), Bryan Pereboom (flying in from China where he practices with an American firm), Pepperdine Professor Christine Goodman, Pepperdine General Counsel Mark Goodman, and their son Alex.  On Sunday, Pepperdine film professor Craig Detweiler and his family arrive.  Craig was instrumental in the envisioning and logistical navigation of the documentary project from its inception, and will assist the story crafting and filming.

So that’s what we’re doing here.

Incidentally, Wednesday was a day of meetings and logistical planning capped off with a nice dinner with the students.  There are countless ways this entire project could jump the rails in crippling ways, so your prayers are appreciated.