A rumored terrorism plot at Uganda’s main airport has come and gone with little left in its wake.  Such threats are becoming commonplace in Uganda as fears that the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab will enlarge its target area beyond Kenya once again.  Some may recall that Al-Shabaab managed to simultaneously detonate two bombs in Kampala during the World Cup finals four years ago, killing nearly 100 and maiming numerous others at an outdoor viewing area.

The pace of our efforts here in Uganda has made it difficult for me to provide daily updates, so I will combine the prior three days into a truncated post.

Thursday began with a breakfast meeting at the hotel to plan the remainder of the case briefing following Wednesday’s completion of the more than 160 prisoner interviews at three Ugandan prisons (Luzira Upper, Luzira Women’s, and Murchison Bay).  After the meeting, the eight teams reassembled, though three students returned to the prosecutors’ office to continue gathering and scanning police files.  In the early afternoon, the film crew and I assembled at the same office to interview Mike Chibita, the lead prosecutor for Uganda.  Film director Andy came up with a general outline that served as my base of questions, which he followed by a series of big picture questions to close the Q & A session.  John the cinematographer captured about ten minutes of “vignettes” of Director Chibita in various poses and places in his office.

Every time I’m with Director Chibita, my respect and admiration for this brilliant and focused leader climbs yet a notch higher – he was a great sport and offered such hope and vision for Uganda.

The case preparation among the Pepperdine lawyers paused for a few hours on Thursday evening (while the students pressed ahead) as we gathered for dinner with numerous judges who had visited Pepperdine over the past few years.  We also invited the Officers in Charge of the prisons with whom we have worked on this trip and enjoyed hearing their hopes and dreams for the future.  (Even as I write, we are organizing a trip to the United States early next year so the prison leaders of Uganda can come to the United States to share best practices).

Friday began with an interview of Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki.  He is truly the Thomas Jefferson of Uganda – he was the lead drafter on Uganda’s 1995 Constitution and served more than ten years as Chief Justice before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70 in March of 2013.  Controversy still surrounds the President’s use of a legal loophole many believe doesn’t exist to nominate Odoki to resume the post of Chief Justice.  This critical legal issue is now before the Court of Appeals after a Member of Parliament filed a Constitutional challenge to the appointment.

Like Director Chibita, Justice Odoki was full of hopes and dreams for Uganda, but he was also somber and reflective about the past.  He eloquently described the transition from the “Rule By Law” under despot Idi Amin to the “Rule Of Law” in recent years.  At times he was playful; at times he was serious.  But he was always humble and personable.  He surprised us all by readily agreeing to don his robe and wig for about ten minutes of John filming him with his magic MOVI camera.  Truly, a good time was had by all.

I had an inconclusive afternoon meeting with the Dean of Makerere Medical School in an effort to further advance Henry’s medical school aspirations.  The upshot of the meeting was that the competition for the few spots remaining after the government sponsored spots were allocated has increased again this year such that a place in Makerere’s class (top in the country) now seems to be a bit of a longshot.  Henry is meeting me in Kampala on Monday so we can explore additional options at other medical schools before I head home on Tuesday.

We bid farewell to Professor Carol Chase, Jared Johnson, Karissa Freano, Bryan Pereboom, and Dana Hinojosa before those of us who were still here (including the fourteen students) had a lovely dinner at the home of Director Chibita.  The Principal Judge (head of the Ugandan High Court) delivered and encouraging and quite gracious speech at the dinner about how the partnership with Pepperdine has led to important and lasting change in Uganda.

Early Saturday morning, the Goodmans, Nootbaar Fellow Susan Vincent, and most of the students headed north for a safari at Murchison Falls.  I stayed behind with the film crew for some final work, though this wasn’t a huge sacrifice – after three safaris there over the past four years, the luster has faded.  That being said, a contact I have at the US Embassy arranged for the group up to be joined by a Ugandan wildlife official who supposedly has a GPS tracker on the lions, so this should be a safari to remember.

Eric Hagen and Erica Olson also left Kampala, though they were bound for Rwanda where they will do some gorilla and chimp trekking before heading home.  Later that morning, I headed back to Luzira with Andrew and the film crew for some final planning for the future and a few last shots the crew wanted to capture.  When we arrived, we learned that a huge portion of the prison staff were off duty because they were engaged in a soccer match against one of the prison teams.  As I have said before, the feel of the prisons in Uganda is quite different than in the United States.  There is very little animosity between the guards and the prisoners; perhaps playing soccer together is part of that winning formula.  (Staff 3, Prisoners 0).  The filming at Luzira fittingly ended with a touching moment between Andy, John, and a prisoner named Wilson who has been serving as one of our main translators this week.  He softly, but beautifully, sang a song that reflected the fact that while he was a prisoner here on earth, he has eternal freedom in the Lord.  I really hope that makes the final cut of the film.  There won’t be a dry eye among the viewers.

In the afternoon, I connected with some dear friends (Jay, Jill, Jake, Jared, and Jayne Gregston) for a meeting with them, their lawyer, the Registrar of the Family Division of the High Court, and the boy they are desperately trying to bring to the United States for life-saving cranial surgery.  Two prior operations only served to temporarily slow the spreading tumor behind the eye it has already claimed.  Please pray for favor and speed within the courts – the Gregstons have secured wonderful doctors and a generous hospital in Oklahoma who have agreed to treat the boy if he can secure an order from the Ugandan courts and a visa from the US Embassy.

The final day of filming will be tomorrow.  I really can’t wait to see the final product.  I have no doubt that it will be visually stunning.  I also have no doubt that the director has his work cut out for him.  Imagine having 10,000 puzzle pieces spread out before you and then trying to assemble a coherent and captivating image from the 500 of them.  I have a great deal of confidence he will put together an inspiring story of transformation among our students and the Ugandan judicial system.

Tomorrow morning, the film crew will be pointing the camera at yours truly before they fly out in the afternoon.  Please pray I will be able to keep my composure as I talk about Henry, the Pepperdine students, and the people of Uganda – all of whom I love deeply.

(The internet connection is too slow to upload photos — I will do so later.

By the end of Monday, it became clear that we needed to divide and conquer.  The initial interview work was going well and relatively quickly.  What we gained in speed, though, we lacked in depth because we didn’t have access to any of the evidence against the accused persons prior to the interviews – only the barebones indictments and the prisoners’ description of the events in question.  We had, of course, endeavored to get access to the prosecution files in advance, but Uganda is still working to remedy inefficiencies in its systems.

So on Tuesday morning, two of our student interns, Paula Hernandez and Mena Gehart, split off from the group and went to the headquarters of the prosecution office, where they are interning this summer.  Three of the eight interviewing groups had finished their initial batch at Luzira Upper, and so they went directly to Murchison Bay, the adjoining medium security prison on the larger prison compound.  Five of the eight groups returned to Luzira Upper and continued their interviews from the day before and added in other prisoners who have decided to opt into the pilot program.  Pepperdine film professor Craig Detweiler, Producer Michelle Abnet, and I set off in one car, with Director Andy Reale, Cinematographer John Pope, and Camera Assistant Tyson Van Skiver in another.

I had been looking forward to this road trip for several months – I always enjoy returning to Henry’s home and reuniting with his family.  Four hours after we left Kampala, we arrived at Henry’s village.  Four hours after that, the interview with Henry was wrapping up.

I am, obviously, way too close to this story to have an objective view, but those in our group who are just learning of the gritty details of Henry’s wrongful incarceration and the resulting personal and spiritual battles that followed were quite moved.  The story is still playing out, but suffice it to say that his faith is strong and his future is increasingly promising.

After Henry’s interview, John got lots of B-roll shots in and around Henry’s home before we ventured out into the village area.

They filmed inside Henry’s old classroom, where he was with his fellow classmates when the events that set his saga into motion took place.  At dusk, the film crew captured a few precious moments of Henry and I walking and talking about how our lives have been impacted by knowing each other, and the tangible results for Uganda’s justice system his case sparked.

Back in Kampala, the number of prisoners interviewed by the eight groups climbed into the mid-100s, though the number of prosecution files we have now secured has just crept into double-digits.

Wednesday will be more prisoner interviews in Kampala, more file searching at the prosecution office, and more late night case summaries.  Meanwhile, the film crew, Henry, and I will be spending the day at the juvenile prison where Henry spent two years of his life languishing and praying for access to justice.  It will likely be an emotional day for all of us, but especially Henry.  Your prayers are coveted.

As in all of life’s ventures, it was important for us to establish a firm foundation before attempting to build upon it this week.  So the Pepperdine lawyers who have traveled to Uganda and many of the students living here this summer gathered on Sunday morning in a hotel conference room for a time of worship and prayer.  After Henry opened us in prayer, the manager of the Nootbaar Institute, Dana Hinojosa, led us in a few songs with accompaniment from Bryon Josslyn, one of our students who is working for the Family Division of the High Court this summer.

Several among the group shared thoughts and/or led prayers, and we closed with a final prayer consisting of a poem that became special to our group last summer that captures the essence of our work:

A Future Not Our Own, by Oscar Romero

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

 

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

 

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.

 

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.

 

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

 

After our time of prayer and reflection, the attorneys went on a Kampala bus tour while Susan Vincent and I worked on final preparations for the launch session at 2:00 p.m.  By 2:05, the conference room at our hotel we had secured was overflowing with Ugandan prosecutors, Ugandan defense lawyers, Ugandan students, members of the judiciary, members of the prison authority, Pepperdine students, Pepperdine lawyers, and the film crew.  In all, there were close to seventy in attendance for the orientation meeting for The Luzira Project.

After brief introductions around the room, the Chief Registrar of the High Court (fourth in command of the judiciary) led off with a welcome and overview of the program.  This was followed by further remarks of encouragement by Andrew, the Secretary of the Plea Bargain Task Force, who provided details to the group of the Task Force’s trip to Malibu that concluded just over a week ago.  We then watched the fifteen-minute video the Task Force had prepared about plea bargaining.  Then it was my turn to provide an overview and description of Pepperdine’s relationship with the judiciary and to explain the parameters of The Luzira Project.  I told them that there were going to be eight groups interviewing prisoners, each consisting of one or two American law students, one American lawyer, one Uganda Christian University student, and one Ugandan lawyer.  I also showed them a sample copy of the final report we will be delivering to the Ugandan lawyer at the end of the week.

The Luzira Prison Warden followed me and told the group that Luzira’s capacity as constructed is 600 prisoners, and described the challenges associated with having over 3300 inmates – nearly six times capacity.  He also described the prisoners’ frustrations with the pace of justice and his (and their hopes) for the Project.

Professor Carol Chase then provided an overview of the plea bargaining process in the United States so they could get a sense of what might be possible after successful implementation.  We closed with a group photograph after a thirty-minute Q & A session.  All in all, a firm foundation was established for the prison work that begins in earnest Monday morning.  The film crew captured the entire gathering, up close and personal.  All in attendance patiently endured the moving cameras, close ups, and periodic light adjustments incidental to the filming.

The opening film shot of everyone entering Luzira for the first time on Monday morning will be a critical stage-setting piece, so two members of the film crew took the Luzira warden to dinner to develop a good rapport with him in advance of what will be unprecedented access to the facility to capture the true living conditions inside.

The two cameramen and I went back into the city to capture more B-roll footage of the bustling and raw life of Kampala.  I won’t go into details of what we encountered (you can ask me in person sometime), but suffice it to say that our biggest fears were realized with the police.  We were stopped, interrogated, searched, and threatened.  It became necessary to present our,  um, “documentation” for our work.  There were some really tense and uncertain moments, but we finally got an approving smile and an “it is OK.”  A few minutes later, the same officer was back at our window – this time with a warning.

“These people are poor and uneducated and don’t know that what you are doing is approved.  If you stay in this area much longer, they will give you trouble and you will be in danger.”

“What about if you are with us?” I asked.

“They will not disturb you if I am with you.”

“Would you like to come for a ride with us and learn about what we are doing?”

“It is OK.  Let me come.”

So for the next two hours, we had a police escort in the car with us.  He cleared the way to capture everything they could conceive of capturing, including John filming from the roof of the safari minivan, through the open sliding door as he hung out into traffic, and from the open trunk after Tango wrapped a seat belt around him that I held tight from the seat behind him.

Excellent footage.

A quick team meeting before bed closed the evening.  We head for the prison first thing in the morning.

Friday morning started off quite promising, but those promises were soon broken, sending me into panic mode and forcing me against my better judgment to scramble onto the back of a motorcycle taxi in the rain.

While I was with Andrew on Thursday, he called his friend and mine, the former Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki, to schedule an opportunity for us to drop by and bring him greetings on Friday morning.  CJ Odoki is uniformly held in high esteem as the father of Uganda’s constitution, having served as the lead drafter on the constitutional committee in 1995.  Under the constitution he authored, Supreme Court justices are termed out at age 70.  He reached that age mid-year last year and retired.  Shortly thereafter, Uganda’s President Museveni appointed him back on the bench under a temporary contract, which is allowed by the constitution, but then sought to make him Chief Justice again.  This caused a furor among Uganda’s lawyers (they disbarred the Attorney General for advising the President that the appointment was constitutional) and a lawsuit by a Member of Parliament seeking to block the appointment.  This litigation is still ongoing, and Uganda has been without a substantive Chief Justice for more than a year.

While he was CJ, Odoki signed in 2009 (along with then-dean Ken Starr) the Memorandum of Understanding between Pepperdine and the Ugandan Judiciary solidifying the relationship that had begun two years earlier.  Odoki came to Pepperdine in 2010 and later permitted me the opportunity to be admitted to Uganda’s bar to argue the appeal in Henry’s case.  He also invited me to move to Uganda for six months, which my family did, to assist in the development of Uganda’s juvenile justice program.

On Friday morning, we had a chance to catch up for about ninety minutes on a variety of topics, including the Luzira Project on which we are now working.  It was good to see my old, though sharp and vibrant, friend.

Because President Museveni was giving a speech at my hotel, the roads were barricaded around the hotel for 500 meters in every direction, so my uphill walk in a suit carrying a backpack drenched me in sweat.  At the hotel, I met up with the first member of the film crew to arrive (Thursday night) and walked her downhill to Tango, the driver who would be picking up the other three crew members, and off they went at 11:30 a.m. for a 1:00 p.m. pick up.  I walked back up to the hotel looking like I had just been swimming.

At 1:30, my phone rang.  It was Tango.  He proceeded to hand the phone to Andy, the director of the documentary film we are making.  Andy was not in a good mood.  They had just flown more than thirty hours on a three-leg journey and he was tired, hungry, and angry.  The customs official at the airport had detained their five cases of camera equipment and was insisting on a substantial payment in exchange for its release.

“What do we do?” he asked.

I don’t know, I thought.  I had never encountered customs issues before.  I called Andrew, our go-to guy, for help.  I am convinced that it is not a coincidence that Andrew had just exited the office of the Chief Registrar of Uganda’s High Court.  After I caught him up on the situation, he promised to call me back.

For the next hour, I paced and attempted shuttle diplomacy, trying to assure Andy that we were doing everything we could, and trying to find out from Andrew if there was anything we could do.  The camera guys, John and Tyson, weren’t about to leave behind their highly valuable, cutting edge equipment, so any logjam would have to be broken at the airport.  Finally, Andrew called me and told me to meet him at the High Court and that we would go out to the airport together with a letter from the High Court Registrar.

“Will it work?” I asked.

“I don’t know.  I pray it will,” Andrew said.

So threw my sweaty suit back on and raced downstairs . . . into the rain.  I flagged down a motorcycle taxi, hopped on the back, and held on for dear life.  On a rain-slicked road, we hopped onto sidewalks, weaved between stopped cars, and rode for stretches on the wrong side of the road.  Good thing I was wearing Depends.  At least the rain diluted my sweat-soaked suit.  When I arrived at the Registrar’s office, I was a mess.  But protocol demanded that I sit and talk and have some fruit with them.  It was mango, and it was good.  But I knew we had a ninety-minute airport ride in front of us and the traffic jam would intensify with every passing minute.  Finally, we left and tracked down Susan Vincent’s court-assigned driver and set off for the airport.  Within two minutes, the car sputtered.  It lurched.  It belched.  It flipped us the bird and refused to move.  In the middle of traffic.

Are you blanking kidding me?

We trudged a quarter mile uphill in the rain back to the High Court to jump in Andrew’s private car.  Finally, we were off.

When we arrived at the airport, Andrew went to work.  He talked our way through security and Andy escorted the customs official over to meet with him.  Andrew spoke calmly and directly, and presented him with the letter.  Since they were speaking Luganda, I didn’t know when I was allowed to breathe so I just slowly turned purple.  Andrew pointed out the signature and seal on the letter, and the man nodded slightly and left with Andy.

“Well?” I asked Andrew.

“He will check with his supervisor.  We must wait and see.”

Thanks.  That is precisely the answer I was hoping you would give.  He was calm.  I was not.

Twenty minutes later (which seemed like six hours), we saw through glass walls all three of our team pushing luggage carts toward a customs office.  For the next forty-five minutes, they disassembled and catalogued every piece of film equipment they had, writing down the serial numbers on a customs form.  Finally, the customs official told Andrew he would release them only if Andrew would surrender his official government credentials as collateral until the film crew flew home.  Andrew didn’t hesitate.  My hero.  I felt like I needed both a cigarette and a stiff drink, and I don’t partake in either activity.

Needless to say, the guys were relieved to be released but were so ready to get to the hotel.  They did – three hours later.  The traffic was as bad as I have ever seen.

While the team wanted me to ride with them to discuss the upcoming week, protocol demanded that I ride with Andrew.  Back at the hotel, just as we sat down to eat, Henry arrived, after having dinner with the Gregston family.  I was supposed to have been there with our Twin Family, but duty called elsewhere.

For the next two hours, we discussed the upcoming week and they learned Henry’s full story of wrongful juvenile imprisonment and ultimate redemption, which will likely play an important role in the documentary.

Professor Carol Chase arrived just before midnight after a much less eventful trip through customs.  Before bed, I presented Henry with the commemorative photo frame Joline had made before I left.  Henry’s father passed in March of this year.  He was quite touched.

I appreciate your continuing prayers.  Please pray for less excitement as the film crew tries to capture life around Kampala on Saturday, which we hope won’t include more detention and disassembly.  As I know from personal experience, the Ugandan police can and will detain people taking pictures in ways they don’t like.

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.